Si, Parliamo Italiano

This study constitutes a first of a kind, as it examines how we might arrive at a more accurate number of people who speak Italian in the United States. In so doing, Christine Gambino and Vincenzo Milione look at the social surveys available to the public and analyze those figures against the background of a century-long evolution of the speaking, studying, and teaching of Italian nationwide. The reader of this study will come to understand that the socio-linguistic landscape for Italian is much more broad than we might have thought, precisely because the current tools available to us are outdated and, to some degree, dismissive of the situation.