Language Diversity - Language Diversity - Map of Minorities & Regional and Minority Languages of Europe for and about linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe.

Language

Italian (Italiano)

Description

The Italian language belongs to the Italic-Romance branch of the Indo-European language family and belongs to the group of the Italo-Dalmatian languages.

Italian is an official language in the following states (the number indicates mother tongue speakers):

  • Italy: approximately 52.5-56 million
  • Switzerland: 230,000-480,000
  • San Marino: approximately 30,000
  • Holy See: approximately 1,000 

Italian has the status of a regional official language in Slovenia (3,000 speakers) and Croatia (20,000 speakers).

Italian developed out of Vulgar Latin, which differed from the Latin written standard language. The first written texts of Italian are from the 9th century.

A northern, a central and a southern Italian dialect zone can be distinguished. From the central dialects the Toscan variety is the most important, as it is the basis for the modern Italian language standard. Many northern Italian dialects have been significantly influenced by the Gallo-Iberian languages, like for example by French and Occitan.

Important Words

Hello - Ciao!

Bye - Ciao!

Thank you - Grazie!

Please - prego

Cheers - cin cin

You are not alone - Non sei solo/ sola

Special

Of all the Romance languages, Italian retained most of the structures of Vulgar Latin.

Language families

  1. Indo-European
  2. Italic
  3. Romance
  4. Italo-Western Romance
  5. Italian

Countries (Official language)

Italy (52.524.000 Speaker)
San Marino (25.000 Speaker)