"(...) anyone, of any Italian region, can accuse a state or a power imposed on him by his (...) a language that has had, if anything, only the power of culture. Florence did nothing, if not take advantage of the talent of its great writers. As for the current 'Padania' (...) not forget that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who did most to give a modern language to all the inhabitants of the peninsula, making out Tuscan dialects and narrow, were the Lombard Manzoni, the Ligurian piemontesizzato De Amicis, the Turin d'Azeglio, the Dalmatian Tommaseo, Fogazzaro Veneto, Emilia Romagna to the pasture, the Genoese Mazzini. And that, even before the Asti Alfieri, the subalpine Baretti, the Milanese Verri and Beccaria had done much to entrench the common language .(....) fact remains that dialects are a treasure. But it is a treasure even more the instrument gradually became common, almost a thousand years, at least 60 million people. In its own right, without the need for government decrees protected by the police " (Vittorio Messori, The Italian, a language of democracy," Corriere della Sera, August 19, 2009).
