World Cultures- The Italians

Italy is a country that is located in Europe. The capital of Italy is Rome, which is also Italy’s largest city. 61.6 million people live in Italy. Italian as well as French, Ladin and German is spoken in some regions in Northern Italy. Their government is a democracy. Their currency is the Euro. The colors on their flag all represent these virtues: hope (green), faith (white), and charity (red).
Main dishes in Italy contain beef and pork, seafood and potatoes, rice and pasta (wheat and egg noodles) products, and tomatoes. Usually baked in a wood-fired oven and super thin, filled with fresh vegetables or thinly sliced ham, salami, artichokes or olives, pizza is surely one of the most famous exports in Italy. Italians love their food. Several dishes are based on seafood and fresh vegetables as well. There’s tasty sweet cakes in Italy, such as the Panettone. Another tasty food is amaretti, and almond pastry. The Italians invented ice-cream.
The Italian language comes from the Latin language. You can still recognize the roots. Not everyone in Italy speaks proper Italian. Some Italians speak an Italian dialect. Some of the older people cannot speak Italian. They speak only the local dialect, or they will speak only German when living in the Northern Region of Alto Adige, a French dialect in the Valle d’Aosta or Ladino in the Trentino. The pronunciation is very melodic and soft.
Italians love sports. Skiing, Motor Racing, Soccer, and Cycling are just a few of many sports that Italians enjoy. They have good teams of sportsmen and women for these sports. Many Italians follow the Italian soccer soccer league. A few Italian soccer teams that Italians like are Inter Milan, Lazio Roma and Juventus Turin. Juventus Turin’s manager is Massimiliano Allegri. Lazio Roma’s manager is Simone Inzaghi. And lastly, the manager of Inter Milan is Luciano Spalletti.
There several special holidays that are celebrated in Italy, but I’ll only name a some. Carnevale is a holiday in which Italians throw a huge party and eat plenty of sweets to prepare for Lent. November 1, (all Saints day) is widely celebrated in Italy. March 8 is also celebrated as International Women's’ Day. December 25 (Christmas) is also widely celebrated in Italy. December 31, or New Year’s Eve, is yet another very important holiday. And lastly, another national holiday is December 26, or Saint Stephen’s Day.
Lastly, let’s talk about the demographics of Italy. 92% of the population is ethnically Italian. 1.81% is ethnically Romanian. 1.07% is ethnically North African. 0.77% is ethnically Albanian. 0.28% is ethnically Chinese. 0.31% is ethnically Ukrainian. 0.83% of the population is made up by ethnically non-Chinese Asians. 0.54% is ethnically Sub-Saharan African. 0.47% is ethnically Latin American. And lastly, 1.29% is ethnically other.