Italy: War of the Words in South Tyrol | European Journal

A political fight has erupted in the idyllic mountainous region about signs in German. Many rivers, lakes, meadows, paths and mountains in South Tyrol have had German names for centuries.Italy's minister for the regions now wants signs across South Tyrol to be in both German and Italian and he has threatened to send in the army to remove any that are only in German. The province of South Tyrol enjoys wide-ranging autonomy, and that is something the government in Rome does not like. It wants to pursue the Italianization of the region, which was annexed at the end of the First World War.