The Italian language is an officially recognized minority language in Slovenia, along with Hungarian.

Geographic Distribution and Population

Italian is co-official with Slovene in three municipalities in the Slovenian portion of Istria: Piran (Italian: Pirano), Koper (Italian: Capodistria) and Izola (Italian: Isola d'Istria). The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians in the country (0.11% of the total population). However, 3,762 people (0.2% of the total population and a slight dip from the number in the 1991 census) reported themselves to be mother tongue speakers of the language, of whom 1,832 declared themselves as being ethnic Italian, 1,195 as ethnic Slovenes, 34 as Croats, and 37 belonged to an ethnicity that was not listed.

Of the total 3,762 Italian speakers in Slovenia, 2,853 live in one of the three municipalities where it is co-official: 1,174 in Piran, 1,059 in Koper, and 620 in Izola.

A multilingual sign in Slovenian and Italian (also partly in Croatian) near Koper.