- published: 29 Jul 2015
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Italians (Italian: italiani) are an ethnic group native of Southern Europe that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence (though the principle of jus sanguinis is used extensively and arguably more favorably in the Italian nationality law), and are distinguished from people of Italian descent and, historically, from ethnic Italians living in the unredeemed territories adjacent to the Italian Peninsula.
In 2012, in addition to the 60 million Italians in Italy and 3,000 in San Marino, Italian-speaking, autonomous groups are found in neighboring countries: about 500,000 in Switzerland, a large, but undefined population in France (Nice, Corsica), and smaller groups in Slovenia and Croatia, primarily in Istria. If regarded as an ethnic group, they constitute one of the world's largest.
Because of wide-ranging and long-lasting diaspora, about 4 and half million Italian citizens and over 70 million people of full or part Italian ancestry live outside of Italy, most notably in South America, North America, Australia and parts of Europe.
The English (from Old English: Englisc) are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, a Germanic people originally from Northern Germany who migrated to Britain.
Historically, the English population is descended from several genetically similar peoples—the earlier Britons (or Brythons), the Germanic tribes that settled in the area, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, who founded what was to become England (from the Old English Englaland), and the later Danes, Normans and other groups. Following the Act of Union in 1707, in which the Kingdom of England became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain, English customs and identity became closely aligned with British customs and identity.