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SOME FACTS

Italian language, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Romance languages). The official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, Italian is spoken by about 58 million people in Italy, 24,000 in San Marino, 840,000 in Switzerland, another 1 million in other European countries, and approximately 5 million in North and South America. Historically, Italian is a daughter language of Latin (see Latin language). Northern Italian dialects are the Gallo-Italian—including Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, and Emilian—and Venetian. Further south, the major dialects are Tuscan and various others from Umbria to Sicily. Sardinian, spoken on the island of Sardinia, is sufficiently distinct from other dialects to be considered by some a Romance language in its own right. The Rhaeto-Romance forms, similar to the dialects of northern Italy, are spoken in the border region between Italy and Switzerland. It is not known exactly when Italian could be distinguished from its parent tongue; however, no text in Italian is recorded before the 10th cent. A.D.

The idiom of Florence, one of the Tuscan dialects of Italian, became dominant from the end of the 13th cent. to the middle of the 14th cent., largely owing to the growing prestige of the city of Florence and the literary works written in the Florentine dialect during that period. These literary works included Dante's Divine Comedy and the vernacular writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Thus, although Italian had—and still has—a great many dialects, it was the culturally important idiom of Florence that in time gave rise to modern standard Italian. The dialect of the Italian capital, Rome, also has influenced modern standard Italian. The Roman alphabet is used for Italian. The employment of diacritics is limited to the grave and acute accents, which sometimes serve to make clear where the stress of a word is to fall (as in caffe=“coffee”); they also serve to distinguish between homonyms (as with ne=“of it” or “of them,” but ne...ne=“neither...nor”). The pronunciation of the language follows the spelling very closely. Italian is often described both as the language of art and music and as the language best suited to singing. Since the Renaissance its general cultural importance has been considerable.

ITALIAN: a language of Italy
SIL code: ITN
ISO 639-1: it
ISO 639-2: ita

Population 55,000,000 mother tongue speakers, some of whom are native bilinguals of Italian and regional varieties, and some of whom may use Italian as second language. Population total all countries 62,000,000.
Region Also spoken in 29 other countries including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, Eritrea, France, Germany, Israel, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Philippines, Puerto Rico, San Marino.

Alternate names ITALIANO

Dialects TUSCAN, ABRUZZESE, PUGLIESE, UMBRIAN, LAZIALE, CENTRAL MARCHIGIANO, CICOLANO-REATINO-AQUILANO, MOLISANO.

Classification Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Italo-Western, Italo-Dalmatian.

Comments Regional varieties coexist with the standard language; some are inherently unintelligible (Nida) to speakers of other varieties unless they have learned them. Aquilano, Molisano, and Pugliese are very different from the other Italian 'dialects'. Piemontese and Sicilian are distinct enough to be separate languages (F.B. Agard 1981, personal communication). Venetian and Lombard are also very different (Philippe Cousson 1981, personal communication). Neapolitan is reported to be unintelligible to speakers of Standard Italian. Northern varieties are closer to French and Occitan than to standard or southern varieties (Agard, N. Vincent). 89% lexical similarity with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Rheto-Romance, 77% with Rumanian. Most Italians use varieties along a continuum from standard to regional to local according to what is appropriate. Possibly nearly half the population do not use Standard Italian as mother tongue. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak standard Italian when it became a unified nation in 1861. Investigation needed: intelligibility with Pugliese with Standard Italian. National language. Grammar. SVO. Bible 1471-1985.

Also spoken in:
Croatia Language name ITALIAN
Population 70,000 in Croatia whose mother tongue is Italian or Venetian, including 30,000 ethnic Italian and 40,000 ethnic Croats and Istrian people (1998 Eugen Marinov).
Comments Official language. Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.


Eritrea Language name ITALIAN
Comments Spoken as a second language. A few monolinguals. Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.


France Language name ITALIAN
Population 1,000,000 in France (1977 Voegelin and Voegelin).
Comments Few, if any, speakers of Italian dialects in France do not know French. Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.


San Marino Language name ITALIAN
Comments National language. Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.


Slovenia Language name ITALIAN
Population 4,009 in Slovenia (1991 census).
Comments Acknowledged as autochtonous communities and protected by the constitution. Official language. Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.


Switzerland Language name ITALIAN
Population 195,000 in Switzerland (1990).
Comments People in all in the Italian cantons speak Italian as first or second language. Used for education in Italian- and Ticino- (Lombard) speaking areas. Official language. Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.


Vatican State Language name ITALIAN
Comments Bible 1471-1985. See main entry under Italy.