Читать книгу The History of Yugoslavia - Henry Baerlein - Страница 84

As for Dalmatia, where also the Italian-speaking population was not fundamentally Italian by race or sentiments, we may turn to the renowned Nicolo Tommaseo, whose authority the Italians do not dispute. "We must not abolish the Italian language," he said—and this was in the year 1861—"for it would be a dream of fools to wish or hope to be able to abolish it immediately in public life without causing offence and confusion and injury even for those who speak Illyrian; this would be a tyranny the more abominable as it would be powerless … because the Illyrian tongue, as is the case more or less with all the Slav languages, spoken by nations which up to the present have not entirely participated in the abstractions of science and in the refinements of European art, is not as yet equipped with all that reserve of terms and locutions which is demanded in a highly developed social life, although that language possess in itself all the elements." This capacity which he recognized in the Slav languages and which came subsequently to the surface in Russian and Czech literature, would, he said, in two generations cause the Slav to be employed as the official language of Dalmatia. He stipulated for two generations "because, in the first place, it is necessary that this language should be learned regularly in the schools from the lowest to the highest class, without for that reason ever banishing Italian; and secondly, it is requisite that men should become skilful in the use of this language and should render it adequate for the needs of social life."