Fig. 22—The dotted line indicates the divide between the areas of French and Italian language. Black dots near the Swiss border show Italian villages where German is the vernacular of the natives.
The city of Alghero and its environs in the island of Sardinia contain a colony of Catalonians whose language is identical with the vernacular in use on the Balearic islands. This group consists of 9,800 individuals out of a total of 10,741 inhabitants of the commune of Alghero. In 1862 this small community comprised 7,036 individuals. This rooting of a Spanish dialect on an Italian island is traced to the year 1354 when the Aragonians conquered Sardinia. The long period of Spanish rule over the island accounts for the survival of the language to this day.
The southern boundary of German speech abuts against Italian from Switzerland[51] to the Carinthian hills.[52] The intrusion of the Romanic tongue within the Austrian political line lacks homogeneity, however, for it is Italian proper in western Tyrol and Ladin in its western extension. But of the 400 odd miles of boundary between Austria and Italy a bare 60 will coincide with the linguistic divide between German and Italian. Moreover a number of enclaves of German speech exist within the area of Italian language spreading over Austrian territory. Some of these German settlements are found near Pergine and Fersina. Close to the Italian frontier, the town of Casotto in the Lavarone region is likewise peopled by German-speaking inhabitants.[53]
Fig. 23—The rearland of Nice as typified by this view of the Mediterranean Alps contains numerous bilingual settlements. The bridge in the photograph is the Pont du Loup.
Fig. 24—Nice with its pleasant approach and its Alpine background is built on the transition area between French and Italian language.
German is the vernacular of two small districts within Italian boundaries which adjoin the Swiss frontier and lie in the Alpine valleys of Piedmont. The most important of the two is situated south of Monte Rosa. It comprises the three adjacent valleys of Gressoney, Sesia and Macugnaga. The other is found in the Val Formazza or upper valley of the Toce. Both of these groups are extensions of the area of German speech which spreads over the eastern portion of the canton of Valais. This section of Switzerland was swamped between the ninth and sixteenth centuries by a flood of Teutonic invaders consisting mainly of Alemannic tribes[54] proceeding from the Bernese Oberland. All of the upper Valais, from Münster as far as Loeche and Zermatt, became Germanized during that period. The easterly spread of this movement led a number of German-speaking colonists to cross Gries Pass into the Formazza valley, while others went through the passes of Monte Moro and Monte Theodule to the upper valleys of Piedmont. According to historical documents the German settlers reached the shores of Lake Maggiore. But their language became lost in the midst of Italian speech and held its own only in the valleys already mentioned.