Italian ( italiano (help·info), or lingua italiana) is a Romance language extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkans (Dacian, spoken as a native language by about 70 million people in Italy Italy (pronounced /ˈɪtəli/ ; Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine, San Marino San Marino, officially the Most Serene Republic of San Marino (pronounced /ˌsan maˈriːno/ SAN-mə-REE-noh; Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a country situated on the eastern side of the Apennine Mountains. It is a landlocked enclave, completely surrounded by Italy. Its size is just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi) with an estimated and parts of Switzerland Switzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation (Confœderatio Helvetica in Latin, hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe[note 4] where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to, Croatia Croatia (pronounced /kroʊˈeɪʃə/ , kroe-AY-shə; Croatian: Hrvatska pronounced [xř̩ʋaːtskaː]), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska listen (help·info)), is a country in Central Europe and Southeastern Europe at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Adriatic Sea. Its capital and largest, Slovenia Slovenia /sloʊˈviːniə/ sloh-VEE-nee-ə, officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: Republika Slovenija, [reˈpublika sloˈveːnija] (help·info)), is a country in Central Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy on the west, the Adriatic Sea on the southwest, Croatia on the south and east, Hungary on and France France is a founding member state of the European Union and is the largest one by area. France has been a major power for several centuries with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and in the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th.^[1] In addition, it is spoken by an additional 120 to 150 million people as a non-native language.^[2] Most native speakers are native bilinguals of both standardised Italian and regional varieties Italian dialects refer to the various Romance languages other than Italian that are spoken in Italy. [improper synthesis?] Ethnologue, the registrar of the ISO 639-3 recognizes them as languages of Italy.[improper synthesis?].^[3]

In Switzerland Switzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation (Confœderatio Helvetica in Latin, hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe[note 4] where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to, Italian is one of four official languages The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Only three of these languages, however, maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation: German, French, and Italian, spoken mainly in the Swiss cantons of Grigioni Graubünden or Grisons (German: Graubünden, [ɡʁaʊˈbʏndən] ; Italian: Grigioni [ɡɾiˈdʒoni]; Romansh: Grischun [ɡɾiˈʒun]; see also other names) is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland. The canton shares international borders with Italy (Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol and Lombardy), Austria (Vorarlberg) and Liechtenstein and Ticino Canton Ticino or Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Named after the Ticino river, it is the only canton in which Italian is the sole official language. Ticino borders the Canton of Uri to the north, Valais to the west (through the Novena Pass), Graubünden to the northeast, Italy's regions of Piedmont and Lombardy to the south and. It is also the official language of San Marino San Marino, officially the Most Serene Republic of San Marino (pronounced /ˌsan maˈriːno/ SAN-mə-REE-noh; Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a country situated on the eastern side of the Apennine Mountains. It is a landlocked enclave, completely surrounded by Italy. Its size is just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi) with an estimated, as well as the primary language of Vatican City Vatican City /ˈvætɪkən ˈsɪti/ or Vatican City State, officially Stato della Città del Vaticano (pronounced [ˈsta(ː)to delːa tʃiˈtːa del vatiˈka(ː)no]), which translates literally as "State of the City of the Vatican", is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome,.^[4] The Italian language adopted by the state after the unification of Italy Italian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century. Despite a lack of consensus on the exact dates for the beginning and end of this period, many scholars agree that the process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and the end is based on the Tuscan The Tuscan language , or the Tuscan dialect (dialetto toscano) is an Italian dialect spoken in Tuscany, Italy dialect, which beforehand was only available to upper class In sociology an upper class is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area, but only to the extent that the power of the state can intervene in free exchange or distort investment. This expression of class refers to Florentine society.^[5] Its development was also influenced by other Italian dialects Italian dialects refer to the various Romance languages other than Italian that are spoken in Italy. [improper synthesis?] Ethnologue, the registrar of the ISO 639-3 recognizes them as languages of Italy.[improper synthesis?] and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman invaders The Migration period, also called the Barbarian Invasions or German: Völkerwanderung , was a period of human migration that occurred roughly between the years 300 to 700 CE in Europe, marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. These movements were catalyzed by profound changes within both the Roman Empire and the so-.

Italian derives diachronically from Latin and is the closest national language to Latin. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. As in most Romance languages extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkans (Dacian, , stress In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense is distinctive. In particular, among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native speakers, a small number of scholars can fluently speak it and it continues to be taught in schools and universities and has been, and currently is, used in the process of in terms of vocabulary A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge.^[6] Lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words is 89% with French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in, 87% with Sardinian, 85% with Catalan Catalan is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencià (Valencian), as well as in the city of Alghero on the Italian island of Sardinia. It is also spoken in the, 82% with Spanish Countries where Spanish has official status. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population, 78% with Rhaeto-Romance Rhaeto-Romance languages are a Romance language sub-family which includes multiple languages spoken in North and North-Eastern Italy, and Switzerland. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the province of Rhaetia once in the Roman Empire and 77% with Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə] ("the Romanian language") or româneşte (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania,.^[1][7]

History

The Italian language has a long history, but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin was the nonstandard form of the Latin language; because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography, and only Classical Latin was used in writing. It is sometimes called colloquial Latin) are legal formulae from the region of Benevento that date from 960-963.^[8] What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri , commonly known as Dante, was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. He was born in Florence. He died and is buried in Ravenna. The name Dante is, according to the words of Jacopo Alighieri, a hypocorism for Durante. In contemporary documents it is followed by the patronymic Alagherii or de Alagheriis; it was Boccaccio who, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Italiano Meridionale-estremo language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria (where it is called Southern Calabro); in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento (where it is known as Salentino); and Campania, on the Italian, with his native Florentine in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had, to which Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian pronunciation: [bokˈkattʃo]) was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his later affixed the title Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language and, thus, the dialect of Florence Florence (Italian: Firenze listen , pronounced [fiˈrɛntse]; alternative obsolete spelling: Fiorenza, Latin: Florentia) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 367,569 inhabitants (1,500,000 in the metropolitan area) became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.

Italian was often an official language of the various Italian states pre-dating unification, slowly usurping Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as the Spanish in the Kingdom of Naples The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of Naples to distinguish it from the island-based polity, or the Austrians in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia was a kingdom in northern Italy, and part of the Austrian Empire. It was established after the defeat of Napoleon, according to the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, on 9 June 1815. The Kingdom ceased to exist when the remaining portion of it was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866), even though the masses spoke primarily vernacular languages and dialects. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and described as the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe. The union was a result of the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867, under which the Austrian.

Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city since the cities were, until recently, thought of as city-states Whereas nation-states rely on a common heritage, be it linguistic, historical, economic, etc., the city-state relies on the common interest in the function of the urban center. The urban center and its activity supplies the livelihoods of all urbanites inhabiting the city-state. Those dialects now have considerable variety In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a form of a language used by speakers of that language. This may include dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard language variety itself. "Variety" avoids the terms language, which many people associate only with the standard, however. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Rome (English pronunciation: /ˈroʊm/; Italian: Roma listen , pronounced [ˈroːma]; Latin: Rōma) is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality (central area), with over 2.7 million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi). While the population of the urban area was estimated by Eurostat to have been 3.46 Italian and Milanese Milan (Italian: Milano, listen Italian pronunciation: [miˈla(ː)no]; Western Lombard: Milan, listen (help·info)) is a city in Italy and the capital of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1,310,000, while the urban area is the first in Italy and the fifth largest in the European Union Italian are the gemination In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant of initial consonants and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in some cases (e.g. va bene "all right": is pronounced [va ˈbːɛne] by a Roman (and by any standard-speaker, like a Florentine), [va ˈbene] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of La Spezia-Rimini Line The La Spezia-Rimini Line , in the linguistics of the Romance languages, is a line that demarcates a number of important isoglosses that distinguish Romance languages south and east of the line from Romance languages north and west of it. Romance languages on the eastern half of it include Italian and the Vlach languages (Romanian, Aromanian,); a casa "at home": Roman and standard [a ˈkːasa], Milanese and generally northern [a ˈkaza]). (See Raddoppiamento fonosintattico).

In contrast to the Northern Italian language, southern Italian Southern Italian is a group of Italo-Western Romance dialects spoken in Southern Lazio, Southern Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Basilicata, Apulia, and Northern Calabria. Part of a language continuum, they are all mutually intelligible and are often referred to as Neapolitan languages (based on Naples' historic role as capital of the region) dialects and languages were largely untouched by the Franco-Occitan Occitan is a Romance language spoken in Occitania, that is, Southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain. It is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese . It is a co-official language in Catalonia, Spain (known as Aranese in Aran Valley). Modern Occitan is the closest relative of Catalan influences introduced to Italy, mainly by bards In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities from France France is a founding member state of the European Union and is the largest one by area. France has been a major power for several centuries with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and in the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th, during the Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in but, after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of Northern Italian language, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. (See La Spezia-Rimini Line).

The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages), gave its dialect weight, though Venetian language remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, as well as Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. Also, the increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of Medici's bank, Humanism and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.

Middle Ages

The re-discovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. Scholars divided into three factions:

• The purists, headed by Pietro Bembo (who in his Gli Asolani claimed the language might only be based on the great literary classics...notably, Petrarch and Boccaccio). The purists thought the Divine Comedy not dignified enough because it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language.

• Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times.

• The courtiers, like Baldassarre Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino, insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new standard.

A fourth faction claimed the best Italian was the one the papal court adopted. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and led to publication of the first Italian dictionary in 1612 and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582-3), the official legislative body of the Italian language.

Modern era

Two notable defining moments in the history of the Italian language came between 1500 and 1850. Both events were invasions. The rulers of Spain invaded and occupied Italy down to Rome and the Vatican in the mid-16th century (see the aftermath of the Italian Wars). This occupation left a lasting influence upon the formerly irregular Italian grammar, simplifying it to conform more with the dominant Spanish language.^{[citation needed]} The second was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy, and pushed the Italian language into a lingua franca. The increased unity among people on the Italian peninsula weakened many regional languages.^{[citation needed]}

Contemporary times

Italian literature's first modern novel, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Alessandro Manzoni further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river), as he states in the Preface to his 1840 edition.

After unification a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages ("ciao" is Venetian, "panettone" is in the Milanese dialect of the Lombard language etc.). Only 2.5% of Italy’s population could speak Italian language when the nation unified in 1861.^[9]

Classification

Italian is most closely related to the other two Italo-Dalmatian languages, Sicilian and the extinct Dalmatian. The three are part of the Italo-Western grouping of the Romance languages, which are a subgroup of the Italic branch of Indo-European.

Show All>>

What Links Here:

Recently Viewed Pages:

• Home
• Musical Terminology: Encyclopedia
• Allegro: Dictionary
• Tempo: Dictionary
• Speed: Dictionary
• Tempo: Blogs
• Tempo: Images
• Accelerando: Answers
• Accelerando: Blogs
• Audio Timescale-pitch Modification: Blogs

Most Popular Pages:

• Download
• Allegro: Dictionary
• Magnitude
• Tempo: Blogs
• Jangan Lebay: Blogs
• Dibujo: Blogs
• Accelerando: Answers
• Mejar: Blogs
• Tempo: Dictionary
• Tempo: Images

Related 'Italian Language' Searches: