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120-710: Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect , and it became the language of culture throughout Italy because of the prestige of the works by Dante Alighieri , Petrarch , Giovanni Boccaccio , Niccolò Machiavelli , and Francesco Guicciardini . It later became the official language of all the Italian states and of the Kingdom of Italy when it was formed. In De vulgari eloquentia ( c. 1300), Dante Alighieri distinguishes four main subdialects: fiorentino ( Florence ), senese ( Siena ), lucchese ( Lucca ) and aretino ( Arezzo ). Tuscan

240-688: A Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and

360-522: A laminal articulation), as well as the Baltic languages . There is no single IPA symbol used for this sound. The symbol ⟨ s̺ ⟩ is often used, with a diacritic indicating an apical pronunciation. However, that is potentially problematic in that not all alveolar retracted sibilants are apical (see below), and not all apical alveolar sibilants are retracted. The ad hoc non-IPA symbols ⟨ ṣ ⟩ and ⟨ S ⟩ are often used in

480-474: A substrate from the Etruscan language of the original inhabitants prior to Romanization. The Etruscan language influence is found most saliently in the toponyms of Tuscany , as well as some parts of neighbouring Umbria and Lazio . The Tuscan gorgia affects the voiceless stop consonants /k/ , /t/ , and /p/ . They are usually pronounced as fricatives in post-vocalic position when not blocked by

600-560: A common consonant sound in vocal languages. It is the sound in English words such as s ea and pa ss , and is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨ s ⟩. It has a characteristic high-pitched, highly perceptible hissing sound. For this reason, it is often used to get someone's attention, using a call often written as sssst! or psssst! . The voiceless alveolar sibilant [s]

720-486: A direct offshoot from medieval Tuscan, even though they now constitute a distinct linguistic group. Excluding the inhabitants of Province of Massa and Carrara , who speak an Emilian dialect, and people in the area of Tuscan Romagna, speaking Romagnol , around 3.5 million people speak Tuscan. Tuscan as a whole has certain defining features, with subvarieties that are distinguished by minor details. A Romance language variety descending from Vulgar Latin , it also contains

840-565: 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 derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when

960-427: A laminal sibilant with a sound quality similar to the "apico-alveolar" sibilant of northern Iberia. Some authors have instead suggested that the difference lies in tongue shape . Adams describes the northern Iberian sibilant as "retracted". Ladefoged and Maddieson appear to characterize the more common hissing variant as grooved , and some phoneticians (such as J. Catford) have characterized it as sulcal (which

1080-471: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of

1200-657: A local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has

1320-622: A medieval S becoming either [s] or [ʃ] depending on context, much as in European Portuguese , which could attest to the previous existence of [s̺] in the Italian Peninsula . The Italian pronunciation as laminal S could also be explained by the presence of [ʃ] but not [s] , thus moving the pronunciation of [s̺] to the front of the mouth in an attempt to better differentiate between the two sounds. A voiceless laminal dental or dentialveolar sibilant contrasts with

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1440-467: A normal lengthening of the consonant preceding /j/ . What seems to have taken place is a realignment of the paradigm in accordance with the statistically-minor but highly-frequent paradigms of dare (give) and stare (be, stay). Thus so, sai, sa, sanno (all singulars and the third-person plural of 'know') has come to fit the template of do, dai, dà, danno ('give'), sto, stai, sta, stanno ('be, stay'), and fo, fai, fa, fanno ('make, do') has followed

1560-658: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as

1680-417: 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. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving

1800-575: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of

1920-411: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Voiceless alveolar fricative The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against

2040-479: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility

2160-404: A so-called " voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant " that lacks the strong hissing of the [s] described in this article but has a duller, more "grave" sound quality somewhat reminiscent of a voiceless retroflex sibilant . Basque, Mirandese and some Portuguese dialects in northeast Portugal (as well as medieval Spanish and Portuguese in general) have both types of sounds in the same language. There

2280-429: A stage / ɔ / , the vowel has then developed as a diphthong [wɔ] . The phenomenon never gained universal acceptance, however, and so forms with the diphthong have come to be accepted as Standard Italian (e.g. fuoco , buono , nuovo , duomo ), but the monophthong remains in popular speech ( foco , bono , novo , domo ). A characteristic of Tuscan dialect is the use of the accusative pronoun te in emphatic clauses of

2400-517: A synthetic pronoun form, mi (to me). The Tuscan dialect makes use of both in the same sentence as a kind of intensification of the dative/indirect object: This usage is widespread throughout the central regions of Italy, not only in Tuscany, and is often considered redundant and erroneous by language purists. It is also a standard feature in Spanish: a mí me gusta ("I like it") In some dialects,

2520-513: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to

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2640-598: A voiceless apical alveolar or post-alveolar sibilant in Basque and several languages of California, including Luiseño of the Uto-Aztecan family and Kumeyaay of the Yuman family. The term "voiceless alveolar sibilant" is potentially ambiguous in that it can refer to at least two different sounds. Various languages of northern Iberia (e.g., Astur-Leonese , Catalan , Basque , Galician , Portuguese and Spanish ) have

2760-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin

2880-613: Is a dialect complex composed of many local variants, with minor differences among them. The main subdivisions are between Northern Tuscan dialects, the Southern Tuscan dialects, and Corsican. The Northern Tuscan dialects are (from east to west): The Southern Tuscan dialects are (from east to west): Corsican on the island of Corsica and the Corso-Sardinian transitional varieties spoken in northern Sardinia ( Gallurese and Sassarese ) are classified by scholars as

3000-400: Is almost entirely shared with Standard Italian, but many words may be perceived as obsolete or literary by non-Tuscans. There are also many strictly-regional words and expressions. Characteristically-Tuscan words: Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] ) is

3120-759: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about

3240-462: Is from Obaid: "There is a Castilian s , which is a voiceless, concave, apicoalveolar fricative: The tip of the tongue turned upward forms a narrow opening against the alveoli of the upper incisors. It resembles a faint /ʃ/ and is found throughout much of the northern half of Spain". Many dialects of Modern Greek have a very similar-sounding sibilant that is pronounced with a laminal articulation. This distinction has since vanished from most of

3360-534: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since

3480-460: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it

3600-414: Is more or less a synonym of "grooved"), but in both cases, there is some doubt about whether all and only the "hissing" sounds actually have a "grooved" or "sulcal" tongue shape. Features of the voiceless alveolar sibilant: The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative (also known as a "slit" fricative) is a consonantal sound. As the International Phonetic Alphabet does not have separate symbols for

3720-504: 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

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3840-450: Is no general agreement about what actual feature distinguishes these sounds. Spanish phoneticians normally describe the difference as apical (for the northern Iberian sound) vs. laminal (for the more common sound), but Ladefoged and Maddieson claim that English /s/ can be pronounced apically, which is evidently not the same as the apical sibilant of Iberian Spanish and Basque. Also, Adams asserts that many dialects of Modern Greek have

3960-462: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around

4080-485: Is not pronounced and so anar is pronounced /ə'na/. A phenomenon similar in origin in French has led to loss of both /r/ and final /e/ in the - are class of infinitives at an early stage and so the final syllable of Modern French aimer , chanter etc. is pronounced as stressed [e] . The most important differences among dialects is in the lexicon , which also distinguishes the different subdialects. The Tuscan lexicon

4200-487: Is one of the most common sounds cross-linguistically. If a language has fricatives, it will most likely have [s] . However, some languages have a related sibilant sound, such as [ʃ] , but no [s] . In addition, sibilants are absent from most Australian Aboriginal languages , in which fricatives are rare; however, [s] does occur in Kalaw Lagaw Ya . The voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant (commonly termed

4320-786: Is opposed to a different voiceless alveolar sibilant, the more common [s] ; the same distinction occurs in a few dialects of northeastern Portuguese. Outside this area, it also occurs in a few dialects of Latin American Spanish (e.g. Antioqueño and Pastuso , in Colombia ). Amongst Germanic languages , it occurs in Dutch (and closely related Low German ), Icelandic , many dialects in Scandinavia , and working-class Glaswegian English . It also occurs in Modern Greek (with

4440-625: Is pronounced as a voiceless post-alveolar fricative between two vowels: The sequence /la ˈtʃena/ la cena , 'the dinner', in Standard Italian is pronounced [la ˈtʃeːna] , but in Tuscan, it is [la ˈʃeːna] . As a result of the weakening rule, there are a few minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the voiceless fricative (e.g. [laʃeˈrɔ] lacerò 'it/he/she ripped' vs. [laʃʃeˈrɔ] lascerò 'I will leave/let'). A less common phonetic phenomenon

4560-516: Is realized as voiced post-alveolar fricative (s and z in the English mea s ure and a z ure ): This phenomenon is very evident in daily speech (common also in Umbria and elsewhere in Central Italy): the phrase la gente , 'the people', in Standard Italian is pronounced [la ˈdʒɛnte] , but in Tuscan it is [la ˈʒɛnte] . Similarly, the voiceless post-alveolar affricate

4680-648: 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

4800-493: Is the realization of "voiceless s" ( voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ ) as the voiceless alveolar affricate [ts] when preceded by /r/ , /l/ , or /n/ . For example, il sole (the sun), pronounced in Standard Italian as [il ˈsoːle] , would be in theory pronounced [il ˈtsoːle] in Tuscan. However, since assimilation of the final consonant of the article to the following consonant tends to occur in exactly such cases (see "Masculine definite articles" below)

4920-408: Is universal in some subtypes such as Pisano-Livornese, but in the vicinity of Florence , alternations are regular and so the full infinitive (e.g. vedere 'to see') appears before a pause , and the clipped form ( vedé ) is found otherwise. The consonant of an enclitic is lengthened if it is preceded by stressed vowel ( vedéllo 'to see it', portàcci 'to bring us') but not when the preceding vowel of

Tuscan dialect - Misplaced Pages Continue

5040-549: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as

5160-509: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,

5280-991: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),

5400-505: The Baltic languages and Greece , suggests it could have ultimately been the main allophone of Proto-Indo-European s, known for ranging from [s] to as far as [ɕ] . [ʃ] , but not [s] , was developed in Italian . However, where Spanish and Catalan have apical [s̺] , Italian uses the same laminal [s] that occurs in standard forms of English: evidence, it could be argued, that S was not pronounced apically in Latin. But Neapolitan has

5520-702: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, 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

5640-852: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . 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

5760-620: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in

5880-773: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . 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 Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and

6000-559: The Middle Ages , it occurred in a wider area, covering Romance languages spoken throughout France , Portugal , and Spain , as well as Old High German and Middle High German . In Romance languages, it occurs as the normal voiceless alveolar sibilant in Astur-Leonese , Castilian Spanish , Catalan , Galician , northern European Portuguese , and some Occitan dialects. It also occurs in Basque and Mirandese , where it

6120-554: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after

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6240-528: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed

6360-399: The alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences: The first three types are sibilants , meaning that they are made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth and have a piercing, perceptually prominent sound. The voiceless alveolar sibilant is

6480-490: The double accusative pronoun me mi vedi (lit: Me you see me ) can be heard, but that is considered to be an archaic form. The singular and plural masculine definite articles can both be realized phonetically as [i] in Florentine varieties of Tuscan but are distinguished by their phonological effect on following consonants. The singular causes the lengthening of the following consonant: [i kkaːne] 'the dog'. However,

6600-477: The reflexive si ), as the first-person plural. That is basically the same as the use of on in French . It is possible to use the construction si + third-person in singular verb , which can be preceded by the first-plural person pronoun noi . The phenomenon is found in all verb tenses, including compound tenses. In those tenses, the use of si requires a form of essere ( to be ) as auxiliary verb. If

6720-455: The voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant ) is a fricative that is articulated with the tongue in a hollow shape, usually with the tip of the tongue ( apex ) against the alveolar ridge . It is a sibilant sound and is found most notably in a number of languages in a linguistic area covering northern and central Iberia . It is most well known from its occurrence in the Spanish of this area. In

6840-532: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From

6960-458: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and

7080-562: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian

7200-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has

7320-439: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . 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,

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7440-497: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from

7560-541: The actual pronunciation will be usually [is ˈsoːle] . Affrication of /s/ can more commonly be heard word-internally, as in falso (false) /ˈfalso/ → [ˈfaltso] . It is a common phenomenon in Central Italy but is not exclusive to that area; for example, it also occurs in Switzerland ( Canton Ticino ). It does not occur in a small area including Florence (except Rifredi  [ it ] ) and Prato. There are two Tuscan historical outcomes of Latin ŏ in stressed open syllables. Passing first through

7680-431: The alveolar consonants (the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized ), this sound is usually transcribed ⟨ θ̠ ⟩, occasionally ⟨ θ͇ ⟩ ( retracted or alveolarized [θ] , respectively), ⟨ ɹ̝̊ ⟩ (constricted voiceless [ɹ] ), or ⟨ t̞ ⟩ (lowered [t] ). Some scholars also posit the voiceless alveolar approximant distinct from

7800-430: The apical [s̺] , that is, Icelandic, Dutch and many Scandinavian lects. It is also found in a minority of Low German dialects. The main Romance language to preserve the sound, Castilian Spanish , is exceptional in that it had both events that produced [s] and [ʃ] , and preserved the apical S at the expense of both, that were shifted farther away. Galician , Catalan and Ladino changed only [s] . Because of

7920-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside

8040-455: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian

8160-401: The competing phenomenon of syntactic gemination : A similar phonological alternation is the intervocalic weakening of the Italian "soft" g , the voiced affricate /dʒ/ ( g as in j ud g e ) and "soft" c , the voiceless affricate /tʃ/ ( ch as in ch ur ch ), known as attenuation , or, more commonly, as deaffrication . Between vowels, the voiced post-alveolar affricate consonant

8280-405: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of

8400-408: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to

8520-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during

8640-525: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in

8760-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date

8880-534: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of

9000-478: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until

9120-409: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by

9240-433: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in

9360-476: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in

9480-503: The fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as ⟨ ɹ̥ ⟩. Few languages also have the voiceless alveolar tapped fricative , which is simply a very brief apical alveolar non-sibilant fricative, with the tongue making the gesture for a tapped stop but not making full contact. This can be indicated in the IPA with the lowering diacritic to show full occlusion did not occur. Tapped fricatives are occasionally reported in

9600-530: The infinitive is unstressed ( lèggelo 'to read it', pèrdeti 'to lose you'). A similar process is found in Romanian , with infinitives cited as a ("to") + the verb, and the -re has been dropped. As in Tuscan, the stress is on the same syllable that had it before the loss of -re . In Catalan and its dialects, in Campidanese Sardinian and for some Portuguese-speakers, final infinitive -r

9720-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as

9840-451: The language 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. During the Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak

9960-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of

10080-576: The languages that once had it in medieval times. Those languages in which the sound occurs typically did not have a phonological process from which either [s] or [ʃ] appeared, two similar sounds with which ⟨s̺⟩ was eventually confused. In general, older European languages only had a single pronunciation of s. In Romance languages, [s] was reached from -ti-, -ci-, -ce- ( [ti] , [ki] , [ke] ) clusters that eventually became [ts] , [tsi] , [tse] and later [s] , [si] , [se] (as in Latin fortia "force", civitas "city", centum "hundred"), while [ʃ]

10200-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in

10320-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian

10440-514: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of

10560-614: The linguistic literature even when IPA symbols are used for other sounds, but ⟨ ṣ ⟩ is a common transcription of the retroflex sibilant [ʂ] . In medieval times, it occurred in a wider area, including the Romance languages spoken in most or all of France and Iberia ( Old Spanish , Galician-Portuguese , Catalan , French , etc.), as well as in the Old and Middle High German of central and southern Germany , and most likely Northern Germany as well. In all of these languages,

10680-404: The literature, though these claims are not generally independently confirmed and so remain dubious. Flapped fricatives are theoretically possible but are not attested. The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative (also known as a "lisp" fricative) is a consonantal sound. Consonants is pronounced with simultaneous lateral and central airflow. Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced , to

10800-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity

10920-628: The non-retracted sibilants derived from instances of Proto-Germanic /t/ that were shifted by the High German sound shift . Minimal pairs were common in all languages. Examples in Middle High German, for example, were wizzen "to know" ( Old English witan , cf. "to wit") vs. wissen "known" (Old English wissen ), and wīz "white" (Old English wīt ) vs. wīs(e) "way" (Old English wīs , cf. "-wise"). Often, to speakers of languages or dialects that do not have

11040-465: The non-retracted variants were written ⟨z⟩ , ⟨c⟩ or ⟨ç⟩ . In the Romance languages, the retracted sibilants derived from Latin /s/ , /ss/ or /ns/ , while the non-retracted sibilants derived from earlier affricates [t͡s] and [d͡z] , which in turn derived from palatalized /k/ or /t/ . The situation was similar in High German , where the retracted sibilants derived largely from Proto-Germanic /s/ , while

11160-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on

11280-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of

11400-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:

11520-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it

11640-469: The plural permits consonant weakening: [i haːni] 'the dogs'. As in Italian, the masculine singular lo occurs before consonants long by nature or not permitting /l/ in clusters ( lo zio 'the uncle', lo studente 'the student'), but forms such as i zio can be heard in rustic varieties. A morpholosyntactic phenomenon that is found throughout Tuscany is the personal use of the particle identical to impersonal si (not to be confused with passive si or

11760-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to

11880-418: The prehistoric languages of Western Europe, as evidenced by its occurrence in modern Basque . For the same reasons, it can be speculated that retracted [s̺] was the pronunciation of Proto-Germanic s. Its presence in many branches of Indo-European and its presence particularly in the more conservative languages inside each branch (e.g. Icelandic, Spanish), as well as being found in disparate areas, such as

12000-426: The present tense of fare ( to do , to make ) and andare ( to go ). These forms have two origins. Natural phonological change alone can account for loss of /d/ and reduction of /ao/ to /o/ in the case of /vado/ > * /vao/ > /vo/ . A case such as Latin sapio > Italian so (I know), however, admits no such phonological account since the expected outcome of /sapio/ would be * /sappjo/ , with

12120-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of

12240-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to

12360-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian 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 some decades after and pushed

12480-542: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome

12600-400: The retracted "apico-alveolar" sibilant was opposed to a non-retracted sibilant much like modern English [s] , and in many of them, both voiceless and voiced versions of both sounds occurred. A solid type of evidence consists of different spellings used for two different sibilants: in general, the retracted "apico-alveolar" variants were written ⟨s⟩ or ⟨ss⟩ , while

12720-623: The same pattern. The form vo , while quite possibly a natural phonological development, seems to have been reinforced by analogy in this case. A phonological phenomenon that might appear to be morphological is the loss of the infinitival ending -re of verbs. Stress remains on the same vowel that is stressed in the full form and so the infinitive may coincide with various conjugated singulars: pèrde 'to lose', pèrde 's/he loses'; finì 'to finish', finì 's/he finished'. This homophony seldom, if ever, causes confusion, as they usually appear in distinct syntactic contexts. The infinitive without -re

12840-866: The sound, it is said to have a "whistling" quality, and to sound similar to palato-alveolar ʃ . For this reason, when borrowed into such languages or represented with non-Latin characters, it is often replaced with [ʃ] . This occurred, for example, in English borrowings from Old French (e.g. push from pousser , cash from caisse ); in Polish borrowings from medieval German (e.g. kosztować from kosten , żur from sūr (contemporary sauer )); and in representations of Mozarabic (an extinct medieval Romance language once spoken in southern Spain) in Arabic characters. The similarity between retracted [s̺] and [ʃ] has resulted in many exchanges in Spanish between

12960-434: The sounds, during the medieval period when Spanish had both phonemes. Examples are jabón (formerly xabón ) "soap" from Latin sapō / sapōnem , jibia "cuttlefish" (formerly xibia ) from Latin sēpia , and tijeras "scissors" (earlier tixeras < medieval tiseras ) from Latin cīsōrias (with initial t- due to influence from tōnsor "shaver"). One of the clearest descriptions of this sound

13080-473: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,

13200-410: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and

13320-542: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),

13440-428: The type "You! What are you doing here?". A morphological phenomenon, cited also by Alessandro Manzoni in his masterpiece " I promessi sposi " (The Betrothed), is the doubling of the dative pronoun . For the use of a personal pronoun as indirect object ( to someone, to something ), also called dative case , the standard Italian makes use of a construction preposition + pronoun a me (to me), or it makes use of

13560-417: The verb is one that otherwise selects auxiliary avere in compound constructions, the past participle does not agree with the subject in gender and number: If the verb normally requires essere , the past participle is marked as plural: Usually, si contracts before è : si è → s'è . Another morphological phenomenon present in Tuscan is what might appear to be shortening of first singular verb forms in

13680-538: The widespread medieval distribution, it has been speculated that retracted [s̺] was the normal pronunciation in spoken Latin . Certain borrowings suggest that it was not far off from the sh-sound [ʃ] , e.g. Aramaic Jeshua > Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs) > Latin Jesus , Hebrew Shabbat > Latin sabbatum ; but this could also be explained by the lack of a better sound in Latin to represent Semitic š . It equally well could have been an areal feature inherited from

13800-659: 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

13920-561: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only

14040-525: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on

14160-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of

14280-706: Was reached: In High German , [s] was reached through a [t] > [ts] > [s] process, as in German Wasser compared to English water . In English, the same process of Romance [ts] > [s] occurred in Norman -imported words, accounting for modern homophones sell and cell . [ʃ] was also reached from a -sk- cluster reduction as in Romance, e.g. Old English spelling asc for modern ash , German schiff and English ship compared to Danish skib . Standard Modern Greek, which has apical [s̺] , lacked both processes. The Germanic-speaking regions that did not have either phenomenon have normally preserved

14400-658: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by

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