**Historical Evolution and Origins of Italian Language**:
– Italian evolved from Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire.
– Italian is the least divergent Romance language from Latin.
– Italian dialects evolved from Vulgar Latin.
– Italian language development started after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.
– Dante Alighieri standardized the Italian language in the early 14th century.
– Standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in Tuscan writers of the 12th century.
– The modern standard of Italian was shaped by recent events.
– The Renaissance era was a time of rebirth for the Italian language.
**Regional Varieties and Linguistic Features**:
– Italy has distinctive dialects for each city.
– Features of local speech were adopted into Regional Italian.
– Differences between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian include syntactic gemination and pronunciation.
– Northern Italian languages were influenced by Franco-Occitan influences.
– Sicily was the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods in poetry.
– Most native Italian words end with vowels.
– Italian has a 7-vowel sound system.
– Italian has contrast between short and long consonants.
– Gemination (doubling) of consonants is present in Italian.
– Italian is spoken by native bilinguals of Italian and a local language in Italy.
**Official Language Status and Geographic Distribution**:
– Italian is an official language in Italy, San Marino, and Switzerland.
– Italian has official minority status in Croatia and in some areas of Slovenian Istria.
– Italian is an official language of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
– Italian is one of the working languages of the Council of Europe.
– Italian is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union.
– Italian is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens.
– Italian is the official language of Italy, San Marino, and used in Vatican City.
– Italian is spoken in Switzerland, Monaco, France, Corsica, and Ticino.
– Francization led to the decline of Italian in some regions.
– Corsican idiom is linguistically close to Italian.
**Italian Language in Different Regions**:
– Italian language in Europe, Africa, Albania, the Americas, and the United States.
– Italian native tongue in Croatia and Slovenia’s Istria.
– Italian is widely spoken in Malta, with nearly two-thirds fluent.
– Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonization.
– Italian influence in former colonies like Libya.
– Italian greatly declined in Libya under Muammar Gaddafi’s rule.
– Italian spoken by immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.
– Over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, but only around one million speak Italian at home.
– Italian is the second most spoken non-official language in Canada.
– Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after Spanish.
**Cultural Impact and Modern Era**:
– Napoleon’s conquest of Italy in the early 19th century helped spread Italian.
– Italian became a lingua franca among different social classes.
– Alessandro Manzoni contributed to modern Italian language.
– Alessandro Manzoni’s novel ‘The Betrothed’ defined the modern standard.
– Civil servants and soldiers introduced diverse words and idioms post-unification.
– Only 2.5% of the population spoke standardized Italian in 1861.
– Humanists shifted focus from the church to human potential.
– The printing press enabled the spread of Italian literature.
– The Accademia della Crusca in Florence established the Italian language standards.
Italian (italiano, Italian: [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana, Italian: [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent Romance language from Latin, together with Sardinian. Spoken by about 85 million people including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy, San Marino, and Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), and is the primary language of Vatican City. It has official minority status in Croatia and in some areas of Slovenian Istria.
| Italian | |
|---|---|
| italiano, lingua italiana | |
| Pronunciation | [itaˈljaːno] |
| Native to |
|
| Ethnicity | Italians |
| Speakers | L1: 65 million (2022) L2: 3.1 million Total: 68 million |
Early forms | |
| Dialects |
|
| Latin script (Italian alphabet) Italian Braille | |
| Italiano segnato "(Signed Italian)" italiano segnato esatto "(Signed Exact Italian)" | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | 4 countries 2 regions An order and various organisations |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Regulated by | Accademia della Crusca (de facto) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | it |
| ISO 639-2 | ita |
| ISO 639-3 | ita |
| Glottolog | ital1282 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-q |
 Geographical distribution of the Italian language in Europe:
Areas where it is the majority language
Areas where it is a minority language or where it was the majority in the past | |
Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and a local language of Italy, most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin.
Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels and has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants.