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The Slovenes of Trieste
The Slovene community is a recognized national minority in Italy, living mainly in the areas of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine. In the villages of the Karst above Trieste — Prosecco (Prosek), Opicina (Opčine) and others — Slovene has been spoken for centuries, and road signs in several municipalities are bilingual. Slovene-language schools have operated in Trieste since the end of the Second World War, a daily newspaper in Slovene, Primorski dnevnik, has been published in the city since 1945, and a 2001 law set out the minority's rights to use its language in public life. Slovene is a South Slavic language with its own long literary tradition. It is written in the Latin alphabet with three letters carrying a háček — č, š, ž — the diacritical marks Alex wants to get right. Many Slovene Triestines are fully bilingual and move between the two languages within a single conversation, as Maja describes. Relations between Italian- and Slovene-speaking Triestines carry the weight of the twentieth century — fascist Italianization, the war, the postwar years — but daily life in the city today is largely peaceful and mixed, with many families, like Maja and Tommaso's, crossing the line between the languages every day.