Italian language in Croatia
As of 2009, the Italian language is officially used in twenty cities and municipalities and ten other settlements in Croatia, according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is an officially recognized minority language in Istria County, where it is spoken by 6.83% of the population on the aggregate and closer to 50% of the population in certain subdivisions.
Vlachs in the history of Croatia
The Vlachs were predominantly Orthodox Christian by religion, and also, the traditional social grouping of Vlachs was the Orthodox group itself. The Orthodox Vlachs spoke the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect while the Catholic Vlachs (the Bunjevci), spoke the Western Herzegovinian dialect. The Vlachs were also called on some occasions as "Rasciani sive Serviani" and "Valachicae seu Rascianae gentis", which was an exonym for the Serbs or Orthodox Christians. In the 1500–1800 period in Europe, the religious difference was one of the main cultural differences in ethnic groups. The state triangle at Lika in what is today Croatia was an area in which Roman Catholicism, Serbian Orthodoxy, and Islam met. Ethno-confessionally, the Orthodox Vlachs were part of the Serb identity since the mid 16th-century.