Italian Hey Sajoch if you can discuss things relaxed for a bit I do have a question I d like to ask a Ladin from Bolzano I always hear about the Italians coming and taking over But can you explain to me who exactly are the Italians As far as I know Italian in the modern sense is simply a citizen of the Italian Republic Going back a few hundred years ago I suppose people might say they are a people of Italy or the Italic peninsula But I d say that even to this day many people in Italy don t refer to themselves as Italian first Aren t the people of Sicily Sicilians The people of Napoli Napolitani As far as I can tell the Ladin are the people of the region we happen to call Trentino Alto Adige and also the Romansch speakers in Switzerland are speaking essentially the same or a VERY similar language It would make sense that this pocket of Europe has its own particular language and a language which is old Latin based So when you say you are Ladin and not Italian to me that is no different from someone saying they are Sicilian and not Italian Then that brings me back to my original question who is actually Italian Isn t the Italian language the Tuscan language actually So are Italians actually the people from Tuscany I know that Trentino is said to be majority Italian but the people there speak Italian in modern times because it is the national language They still speak their original dialects like Nones Solardo etc which are actually Ladin languages You know that right So are the people in Trentino Ladin people or have they transformed into Italians because the Italian Republic has a National Language I m just throwing these questions out there as someone interested in my own history I mentioned this once to noclador who are the Italians and all the discussion got me was him giving me the link to the Wikipedia page on Italians My guess is that some of the questions I was asking blurred the lines of a politics he would rather dream is black and white I d like to see if you d actually be interested to discuss this as you are a fellow Ladin at least