I am curious about why and how Switzerland decided to accept Italian as one of their official language.
People in Ticino speak Lombardian, traditionally, when they made the change to Italian? Why they didnt adopted French as an oficial language, as it would make integration with their country easier? Or even why didnt Switzerland addoped their "dialect" as an oficial language instead of Italian? Italian was, for all effects, an foreign language to the Swiss! Or it wasnt? Did they got any say in the creation of Italian?
I guess the same questions can be asked about the german speaking part of Switzerland.
Bonus question: How did the Swiss that speak italians reacted to the Risorgimento?
edit: I guess most people think that Italian was a natural language spoken by Italians: that is not the truth.
Nel 1861, secondo la stima di Tullio De Mauro[13], era in grado di parlare in italiano solo il 2,5% della popolazione italiana. Secondo la stima di Arrigo Castellani alla stessa data la percentuale era invece del 10%
In 1861, only 10% to 2.5% of italians could actually speak italian.
Italian people spoke natively their "dialects" (who are in fact languages as they are not all mutually inteligible, but are called dialect because of political reasons) before speaking standard Italian, not the other way around. Those "dialects" dont have Italian as their origin.
Modern Italian was built on the Fiorentin "dialect" in the 15th century onwards, and then adopted by Italy after the risorgimento.
I can see why the "italian" people of Swiss would adopt Italian. But I also see plenty of reasons to adopt german or french. I would like more then "logic". If possible I would like to see the reasoning of the people who adopted it , not our conjectures. I couldnt find it on my researches.
It's not so much as whether a language is older or younger that determines what a group of people will speak, but rather it's usefulness in knowing it.
Take for example in today's modern world. English is the lingua franca that bridges foreigners together that have no common ground. It is the language of air travel and business, in large part due to both the former British Empire and United States. This is why people choose to learn it, as it can help with getting around in places unknown to the individual.
For example, knowing how to speak Mongolian when all your neighbors do not (or few do) isn't very helpful. There is very little practical use in spending hours in teaching people the language outside of its cultural value. Unless the population is significant enough in number, then like all other languages, will die off.
Switzerland has four official languages. German, French, Italian and Romansh.
All four of these languages are spoken as native languages by people in some part of Switzerland.
About 64% of Swiss speak German (usually Swiss German dialects) as their birth tongue; 20% speak French (mostly Swiss French); 6.5% speak Italian (Swiss Italian and some Lombard dialects) and 0.5% speak Romansh (Romansh is a descendant of Latin).