L’insegnamento dell’italiano in Slovenia

The article aims to present an overview of the main characteristics and the major issues pertaining to the teaching of Italian in Slovenia. After determining the extralinguistic factors to be taken into account in analysing the situation and after presenting some fundamental geo-ethnic facts about the country, the authors offer a presentation of the current state of affairs, distinguishing between three different Italian-teaching contexts. First, the complex situation of the plurilingual area of the Slovene coast, where Italian has the status of the so-called «language of the social environment», is discussed, and an attempt is made to explain why the idea of bilingualism could not be carried out in the expected way. Second, the teaching of Italian as a second or third foreign language in the rest of Slovenia is presented and, finally, the situation concerning Italian at university is sketched out.