Italian language

Italian (italiano) is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people in the world, 60 million of them living in Italy. It is 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.

It is the official language of Italy and one of four official languages in Switzerland. It is also the official language of San Marino and the primary language of Vatican City. Of the Romance languages, Italian is considered to be the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary.

It is also the second official language in some areas of Istria, in Slovenia and Croatia. It is the primary language of the Vatican City and is also widely used and taught in Monaco and Malta, where it served as the official language until the Maltese language was made one of the two official languages in 1934 (the other being English). It is also spoken to a significant extent in France, with over 10,00,000 speakers. It is understood by large parts of the populations of Albania and coastal Montenegro, reached by many Italian TV channels. Italian is also spoken by some in former Italian colonies in Africa (Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea).

Italian and Italian dialects are widely used by Italian immigrants and many of their descendants living throughout Western Europe (especially France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg), the United States, Canada, Australia, and Latin America (especially Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela).

From the late 19th to the mid 20th century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and Venezuela, where they formed a very strong physical and cultural presence.

Standard Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on Tuscan and is somewhat intermediate between the Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and the Gallo-Romance Northern Italian languages. Its development was also influenced by the other Italian dialects and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman invaders, but first and foremost it has been directly and heavily influenced by Latin.

Italian is written in the Latin alphabet. The letters J, K, W, X, and Y are not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet, but appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky, and taxi. X has become a commonly used letter in genuine Italian words with the prefix extra-. J in Italian is an old-fashioned orthographic variant of I, appearing in the first name "Jacopo" as well as in some Italian place names, e.g., the towns of Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jesolo, Jesi, and in the alternative spelling Mar Jonio (also spelled Mar Ionio) for the Ionian Sea. J may also appear in many words from different dialects, but its use is discouraged in contemporary Italian, and is not part of the standard 21-letter Italian alphabet. Each of these foreign letters has an Italian equivalent spelling: gi for j, c or ch for k, u or v for w, and s, ss, or cs for x, and i for y.

The earliest surviving Italian texts are legal formulae from the region of Benevento dating from 960-963. What would come to be considered as Italian was first formalized in the first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina. Dante's 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 the dialect of Tuscany became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.

Italian was often an official language of the various Italian states before unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers, though the masses spoke primarily vernacular languages and dialects. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Two defining moments in the history of the Italian language came between 1500 and 1850. The rulers of Spain invaded and occupied Italy down to Rome and the Vatican in the mid-16th century. This occupation left a lasting influence on the formerly irregular Italian grammar, simplifying it to conform more with the dominant Spanish language. The second was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon - who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent - in the early 19th century. This conquest propelled the unification of Italy and pushed the Italian language to a lingua franca, further reducing regional languages to compensate for the increased united nature of the people.

In Italy, all Romance languages spoken as the vernacular, other than standard Italian and other unrelated, non-Italian languages, are called "Italian dialects". Many Italian dialects may be considered as historical languages in their own right. These include recognized language groups such as Friulian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, and Venetian, and regional variants of these languages such as Calabrian.

Non-standard dialects are not generally used for mass communication and are usually limited to native speakers in informal contexts. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local dialect.

Italian is a subject-verb-object language, though the word order can be changed in any manner for stylistic reasons. It has definite and indefinite articles. The subject is usually omitted when it is a pronoun. Subject pronouns are considered emphatic when they are used. Questions are formed by a rising intonation at the end of the sentence (in written form, a question mark).

Most nouns end in a vowel. Nouns that end in a consonant are of foreign origin. Italian nouns are either masculine or feminine. An adjective can be before or after the noun. Placing the adjective after the noun can alter its meaning or indicate restrictiveness of reference. Nouns and adjectives generally inflect by gender and number (singular and plural).

Information: Wikipedia