Immigrant parents often speak to their children using their mother tongue, even if they were born and grew up in Italy and have never visited their family's country of origin. This means that second-generation immigrants learn the language, but know little about its grammatical rules. A new project being run by the University of Florence hopes to change this. The project, called ''UNIPLURILOCAL, United against diversity," offers free courses to students with foreign parents so they can gain a better understanding of the family language and, at the same time, study at university.

Free courses across 16 languages 

The project's slogan is: ''Each language is a new universe.'' It is a collaboration between the department of languages, literature and inter-cultural studies at the university and the Confucius Institute of Florence. The initiative offers applicants four free spots per semester for each language course. The program is open to students between the ages of 18 to 24, even if they are still at high school, provided they have at least one foreign parent. Courses are divided into two six-month modules of 40 hours each and are offered in 16 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Czech, Croatian, Hebrew, Finnish, French, English, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, German, Turkish, Hungarian.

Students become cultural ambassadors

Organizers said the course aims to turn students into ''experts'' and ''cultural ambassadors.'' Applications should be submitted by September 27. The selection will be based on the age of applicants (with the youngest candidates favored in the process). Courses start in October this year and run until June 2018, with one or two courses per week. Those who attend at least 80% of a 40-hour module will receive a certificate of participation and proficiency.