The Italian language stems directly from Latin, just like other Romance languages like Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and other minority languages (Occitan, Provençal, Galician, Ladin and Friulan).
Development of the language from its origins
The Italian language has developed through a long and gradual process, which began after the Fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century.
Up until this moment, Latin had spread and had been imposed across the Empire as the ‘madre franca’, or the shared language.
After the fall of the Empire, vernacular and local forms of the language had an important role in society and the everyday life of the population.
However, for several centuries, and especially during the Middle Ages, Latin was the dominant cultural language, used throughout European Universities and in all the official acts and procedures of the Church.
First recorded writings in Italian
The first documents written in vernacular (which was the language usually spoken by the general population) date back to 960.
These are the so-called Placiti Cassinesi, which prove that some territories located near the city of Capua, in Campania, belonged to a monastery of Benedictine monks.
From the start of the 13th century large amounts of literature, and especially poems, began to be published in regional Italian. The largest push and most significant contributions were made by Sicilian Poets in the 13th century who were then followed by those from Tuscany, the most important being Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarch.
The foundations of modern Italian
From a historical perspective, it is not wrong to claim that the high, or cultured, Tuscan dialect, which the three most important poets of the 1300s (Alighieri, Boccaccio, and Petrarch) wrote in can be considered the basis of modern Italian.
Yet despite this, the Italian language as we know it today is the result of a long process of evolution and debates, which began in the 1600s, over what the correct form of the language should be. At the end, the question of what Italian to speak remained. Even though at the end of the 1900s many writers and cultural figures were being inspired by the Tuscan model, in every aspect of the language, there are several relevant historical and social factors that need to be considered.
Firstly, for centuries up until the Unification of Italy in 1861, the country was divided into a number of different states, which were usually under foreign rule. When Italy was united in 1861 the decision was taken to make Tuscan the official language of the country.
Within the Italian population, however, there were and always had been high rates of illiteracy, and this illiteracy continued predominantly in rural regions until the 1950s.
As a result, dialects were used as the everyday language for centuries, and anyone who was able to express themselves and communicate in Italian did so using grammatical, lexical and phonetical aspects influenced by regional and local dialects.
Use of dialects in Italy
The use of dialects in Italy represents a unique situation compared to the rest of Europe. Even today in many different parts of Italy dialects are used as an informal way of communicating in different social settings and within families.
Contrary to popular belief, in certain Italian regions dialects are widely used, and not only within the older generations. Even though the use of standard Italian prevails in the younger generations, many young people can express themselves in their own dialect, or at least understand it, in informal social situations.
It is also worth remembering that dialects, as well as accents, can change a lot even within the same region.
If you take Tuscany as an example, even though there aren’t real and proper dialects, the Florentine accent greatly differs from that of Pisa or Livorno and that of Lucca or Arezzo.
In other regions, it is easy to spot dialectal differences between places in the same Province, or every those just a few kilometers away from each other.
Dialects and regional Italian
For a long time, dialects have been incorrectly considered the “poor and impoverished parents” of standard Italian, which has mainly developed from the Tuscan dialect. Yet, in reality, dialects represent cultural richness.
This can be seen in the fact that in the last 50 years many regional terms, from Tuscany, Lombardy, Veneto, Naples, and Sicily, have entered the national language. As such, it isn’t surprising that dialects have been heavily studied by linguists and have been used in literature and poetry.
In the past, there was a prejudice towards dialects, with people thinking that standard Italian was the language used by the bourgeoise, while dialects were used by farmers and the working class, yet now this prejudice has mostly died out. For example, recent statistics have revealed that in Veneto, which is one of the most economically developed regions, around half of the population speak in dialect both with their families and with friends.
All you need to do is walk around one of the beautiful and historic cities of Veneto like Venice, Padua, Treviso, Verona, or Vicenza to realize just how present dialects are in urban centers.
The spreading of standard Italian
In 1950, just as the country was going through a time of complete infrastructural, economic, social, and political reconstruction, less than 20% of the Italian population spoke Italian fluently in their day to day to life.
Illiteracy and semi-illiteracy were largely present in various groups of the population. The Italian Constitution, which was established in 1948, gave everyone the right to basic education.
Yet in certain situations, this right to education was not completely guaranteed. Access to higher education and the university was pretty much only reserved for children from more affluent families, while children from working-class and farming families ended up just being an economic resource for the family.
This meant that many children didn’t even finish primary school, even though the law demanded they stay in school until they were 18 or 20, before taking part in compulsory military service.
Perhaps rather strangely, the event which had the biggest impact in kickstarting the unification of the language was the introduction of television.
TV programs began to be broadcast by RAI, the state broadcaster, in 1954 on just one channel. In the years that followed, up until the economic boom between 1958 and 1962, television did not just become a way to bring people together (as very few people actually had a TV set), but also a way to broadcast cultural programs and linguistic models.
In fact, between 1960 and 1968 RAI broadcast a show in the late afternoon which was called Non è mai troppo tardi, or “It’s never too late,” which was presented by the teacher Alberto Manzi. As a result of this show, many illiterate people learned to read and write, and it is estimated that in this period around one and a half million Italians managed to get their certificate of primary education.
And so, the spreading of a standardized Italian language was aided by economic growth, a better quality of life, the gradual spread of education and linguistic programs shown on TV.
TV and standard Italian: an interesting relationship
While, on one hand, television state broadcasting had an educational function, or at least in the first 20 years of its existence, it has also had other effects.
Since the 1980s, as television has become more commercially successful, shows have become more about just entertainment and are more trivial, and sometimes vulgar and ordinary and show behaviors far removed from reality.
With the passing of time, this has had a negative effect on the cultural education of the younger generations, and has introduced a much simpler language, full of slang but lacking in words and syntax, and even just incorrect. In other words, a form of “linguistic populism” designed to attract young people and the mass of people lacking a complete cultural education.
The impoverishment of the language
Italian is a language rich with vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, and semantic nuances. In fact, the most complete dictionaries can contain from 80,000 to 250,000 entries.
Research carried out a few years before the death of the famous Italian linguist Tullio De Mauro (1932-2017) confirmed that, in everyday conversation, around half of the population only uses 3000 words.
Furthermore, similar research confirmed that in certain groups of the population (and not necessarily the most disadvantaged), the use of certain fundamental grammatical aspects, like the subjunctive, is incorrect or sometimes just completely left out and ignored. Thanks to a state decree in 2007, the age until which school attendance is compulsory was lifted from 14 to 16. This means that students now have to complete at least 10 years of education, made up of 5 years of primary school, 3 years of middle school, and then 2 years of high school.
So, it is the job of schools, as well as families, to provide an adequate cultural and linguistic education for children.
However, in some cases this does not happen, or at least doesn’t happen completely, due to several different factors: schools and lessons aren’t exciting or up to date, which means that students can’t develop critical thinking skills; the growing invasion of technology, like smartphones, tablets, and social media; the small number of students who read; a writing ability which is less refined or is more under threat due to the other aforementioned reasons.
As a result, in certain scientific faculties of Universities, written Italian tests have been introduced to test the abilities of students. The Accademia della Crusca (the Italian linguistic academy), which is based in the Medici Villa of Castello in Firenze, is the body in charge of checking and registering every linguistic phenomenon and change.
Language borrowings
Since the birth of the Republic in 1946, the Italian language has become rich in foreign terms.
Even in the years before the Italian language was invaded by French words in the world of fashion, English in sport and German in philosophy and psychoanalysis.
The Fascist regime aimed to get rid of all these foreign “contaminations” and control the Italian language. To see the effect of this you only need to think about Italian’s national sport. Football was introduced in Italy towards the end of the 1800s by a few Englishmen, with some English terms along with it, which were consequently removed and changed under the Fascist regime.
For example, the goal became rete, penalty became calcio di rigore, offside became fuorigioco and corner became calcio d’angolo. In 1934 and 1938 Italy won the World Cup in two consecutive competitions, which only helped to grow the ridiculous national pride of the fascists.
Sometimes this nationalization of language became slightly exaggerated, for example in the Italian dubbings of Hollywood films. Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind became the very Italian Rossella.
After the war and until the 1970s French was the first foreign language taught in public schools, although at the same time English was taking off through music and culture. Obviously, in Italy over the last 40 years, English has become the main language taught and has a more and more prevalent role in certain professional sectors (tourism, IT, business, public relations, etc.).
The influence of English sometimes ends up producing contradictions, as day-to-day language often tends to replace a normal Italian word with an English alternative. To take a typical example, Italians often say “Andiamo a fare shopping” (let’s go shopping), instead of using the Italian word spese or acquisti.
Italian as a language of culture abroad
Spoken only in Canton Ticino in Switzerland and in a few communities of Istria (between Slovenia and Croatia), for almost 40 years Italian interests people of every age from all over the world. This has led to the birth of numerous Italian language schools in Italy and the creation of many courses abroad, in Universities, language schools, and also the Italian Institute of Culture.
The main motivation which leads many foreigners to choose Italian is a love for the country and its culture.
FAQs
What is the history of the Italian language? ›
Modern Italian, like many other languages, originated from Latin. After the Roman Empire fell, Classical Latin continued to be used for most writings. A different version, Vulgar Latin, became more commonly spoken by the average person in parts of Italy and eventually led to Classical Italian.
What was the original language of Italy? ›The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most likely simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups.
When did modern Italian language begin? ›Dialects were spoken, but also used in writing: the earliest examples of vernacular writing in Italy date from the ninth century. The early 16th century saw the dialect used by Dante in his work replace Latin as the language of culture. We can thus say that modern Italian descends from 14th-century literary Florentine.
Who is the founder of the modern Italian language? ›Dante is considered the “Father of the Italian Language.” Born and raised in Florence, Dante's works were not written in Latin, which was used by well-educated citizens at the time, but rather in the Italian dialect of Florence or “vernacular.” Dante set a precedent by using the local dialect, which ultimately became ...
What is the origin of Italian culture? ›Italian culture is the amalgamation of thousands of years of heritage and tradition, tracing its roots back to the Ancient Roman Empire and beyond. Italian culture is steeped in the arts, family, architecture, music and food.
Has the Italian language changed much over time? ›The Italian language has developed through a long and gradual process, which began after the Fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Up until this moment, Latin had spread and had been imposed across the Empire as the 'madre franca', or the shared language.
What language did Jesus speak? ›Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C., and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East.
What is special about Italian language? ›1: THE ITALIAN ALPHABET HAS ONLY 21 LETTERS
Derived from the Latin alphabet, it is regarded as the closest match to this “dead” language of any dialect in use today. These letters are all shared with the English alphabet, but Italian letters employ an accent system and are not pronounced the same way.
What is its origin? Just as with other languages like French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ladin and Catalan, the Italian language derives from Latin. However, not from the Classical Latin that Cicero or Julius Caesar spoke, but from what linguists call “Vulgar Latin” that was spoken in the Middle Ages.
Where did modern day Italians come from? ›There are undoubtedly many Italians alive today who are directly descended from people who lived in Italy during the Roman era, but most (if not all) of them will have at least some admixture from other European peoples too.
Who is the father of the Italian language? ›
2021 marks 700 years since the death of Dante Alighieri. Dante is often referred to as the “Father of Italian” and had a massive influence on the Italian language that is used today.
Who was the first Italian to come to America? ›The first Italian to be registered as residing in the area corresponding to the current U.S.A. was Pietro Cesare Alberti, a Venetian seaman who, in 1635, settled in what would eventually become New York City.
Why did Italians stop speaking Latin? ›To oversimplify the matter, Latin began to die out in the 6th century shortly after the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. The fall of Rome precipitated the fragmentation of the empire, which allowed distinct local Latin dialects to develop, dialects which eventually transformed into the modern Romance languages.
What are 5 traditions found in Italian culture? ›- Family. For Italians, family is the most important part of life. ...
- Music. Italians absolutely love music. ...
- Religion. Most Italians are Roman Catholic. ...
- Holidays and celebrations. Italians embrace any reason to get together with family. ...
- Architecture and art.
Notable traditional patronal festivals in Italy are the Feast of Saints Francis and Catherine, the Festival of Saint Agatha, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the Feast of San Gennaro and the Feast of Our Lady of the Hens.
What is important in Italian culture? ›The famous elements of Italian culture are its art, music, cinema, style, and iconic food. Italy was the birthplace of opera, and for generations the language of opera was Italian, irrespective of the nationality of the composer.
Why did so many Italians leave? ›Italian emigration was fueled by dire poverty. Life in Southern Italy, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, offered landless peasants little more than hardship, exploitation, and violence. Even the soil was poor, yielding little, while malnutrition and disease were widespread.
What could be the reason behind that the Italian language has not acquired? ›Expert-Verified Answer
1) option a- The statement: The Italian language had not acquired one common form and still had many regional and local variations describes the long history of political fragmentation of Italy.
Although Italian is the official language of Italy, it's not widely known that the country boasts some 34 spoken languages and related dialects. The majority of these languages are Romance-based, meaning that they evolved from Vulgar Latin. These include Sicilian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, and more.
What language did Adam and Eve speak? ›The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
What religion was Jesus? ›
Of course, Jesus was a Jew. He was born of a Jewish mother, in Galilee, a Jewish part of the world. All of his friends, associates, colleagues, disciples, all of them were Jews. He regularly worshipped in Jewish communal worship, what we call synagogues.
What did Jesus say on the cross in Aramaic? ›And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why Italian is the most beautiful language? ›Italian is a famously beautiful language with its rolled 'r's, round vowels, and melodic rhythm. Words like bellissima, piacere, and palazzo seem to roll off the tongue, even for non-native speakers. Even, “Where is the washroom?” sounds pretty good in Italian – “Dov'è il bagno?” Not bad, right?
What religions are Italians? ›The general statistics relied upon by the CIA World Factbook state that roughly 80% of Italians identify with Christianity, around 20% are unaffiliated with any religion and less than 1% identify as Muslim or some other non-Christian faith.
What are 5 interesting facts about Italy? ›- Italy has a free wine fountain. ...
- Italy is the fifth most visited country in the world. ...
- All three of Europe's active volcanoes are in Italy. ...
- Italians invented pizza in Naples. ...
- Italy has the most UNESCO World Heritage sites in the world.
Italy is home to the epicentre of the Roman Empire, the hub of Catholicism and the birthplace of the Renaissance. It has a rich heritage in art, history, religion, cuisine, architecture and fashion. These cultural legacies have been deeply influential in defining Western cultural tradition.
What are the Italians best known for? ›When we say Italy, Pizza, Pasta and the famous Rome come to our mind. Italy is worldwide famous for its Art, culture, food, beautiful location, and architecture.
Why learning Italian is important? ›Of all the romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin and it is estimated that 60% of English words derive from Latin. Learning Italian will make any other romance language, including Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian, more approachable and easier to learn.
What is Italian influenced by? ›Italian has been influenced by many languages. Some, like Latin, Spanish, and French are not that surprising. Others you may not have known include Celtic, Greek, and Arabic. There are even other ancient Italian languages, such as the Osco-Umbrian language.
Where was the Italian language born? ›The Italian language derives mainly from "vulgar" Latin, which was the spoken language among commoners and less educated citizens of ancient Rome. The other form, classical Latin, was used in a literary and ecclesiastical scope.
What type of language is Italian? ›
Italian
What was Italy called before it was founded? ›Italia, the ancient name of the Italian Peninsula, which is also eponymous of the modern republic, originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy.
When did humans first arrive in Italy? ›Homo sapiens sapiens appeared during the upper Palaeolithic: the earliest site in Italy dated 48,000 years ago is Riparo Mochi (Italy).
Who speaks the most Italian? ›Unsurprisingly, Italy is home to the most Italian speakers in the world — nearly 58 million of them.
Who named Italian? ›It was both Aristotle and Thucydides who first told of Italus being who Italy was named after. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region covering most of Southern Italy, but it was during the 1st century BC that Augustus expanded the name to cover the entire peninsula including the Alps.
Who named Italy after? ›- The name for Italy comes from the Greek "Italos", a legendary king - The official name of Italy is the Italian Republic. - Italy is the fifth most populous country in Europe. - Rome, the capital of Italy, is almost 3,000 years old.
What is a cool Italian name? ›- Leonardo.
- Francesco.
- Alessandro.
- Lorenzo.
- Mattia.
- Tommaso.
- Gabriele.
- Andrea.
| Ansley | Hermitage field | English |
|---|---|---|
| Azura | Sky blue | Spanish |
| Basma | Smile | Arabic |
| Beatriz | Voyager (through life); blessed | Latin |
| Belinda | “The beautiful river,” from the Latin bella (beautiful) and Indus (a river in Asia). | German |
- Rossi.
- Russo.
- Ferrari.
- Esposito.
- Bianchi.
- Romano.
- Colombo.
- Ricci.
On a list of the top 20 most Italian cities in the United States, a whopping seven of them are in NJ. And number one is Fairfield, in Essex County. That's followed by Hammonton, Ocean Gate, East Hanover, Cedar Grove, Wood-Ridge, and Newfield, at numbers 5,6,7,9,10 & 13, respectively.
What state has the most Italians? ›
The state of New York has the largest population of Italian Americans, at 3.1 million people.
Were any Founding Fathers Italian? ›Two of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Italian origin: William Paca and Caesar Rodney.
Who spoke Latin first? ›Originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River, Latin spread with the increase of Roman political power, first throughout Italy and then throughout most of western and southern Europe and the central and western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa.
How did Latin turn to Italian? ›Dialects were spoken, but also used in writing: the earliest examples of vernacular writing in Italy date from the ninth century. The early 16th century saw the dialect used by Dante in his work replace Latin as the language of culture. We can thus say that modern Italian descends from 14th-century literary Florentine.
What caused Latin to become a dead language? ›Latin essentially “died out” with the fall of the Roman Empire, but in reality, it transformed — first into a simplified version of itself called Vulgar Latin, and then gradually into the Romance languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. Thus, Classical Latin fell out of use.
How was the Italian language created? ›The Italian language derives mainly from "vulgar" Latin, which was the spoken language among commoners and less educated citizens of ancient Rome. The other form, classical Latin, was used in a literary and ecclesiastical scope.
Is Italian Germanic or Latin? ›However, most languages spoken throughout the world belong to a language family. For example, languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and French, all belong to the language family known as “romance languages.” The romance languages evolved from Latin, the language used in ancient Rome.
Why is Italian so different from Latin? ›In Italian, only the word order distinguishes the subject from the object, like in English, while in Latin you can distinguish the subject from the object thanks to the cases system. One of the peculiarities of Latin is that there are no words equivalent to 'a' or 'the”. Latin does not have articles.
Why is Italian so close to Spanish? ›Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. They both come from “Vulgar Latin,” that's why they have so much in common. Italian and Spanish share 82% lexical similarity.
Why is Italian language important? ›Italian is probably the language most linked to the world of art and culture. You can find Italian influence in all major areas of life and culture: from painting arts to architecture, from literature to music, from design to food and wine…
What makes Italian language unique? ›
1: THE ITALIAN ALPHABET HAS ONLY 21 LETTERS
Derived from the Latin alphabet, it is regarded as the closest match to this “dead” language of any dialect in use today. These letters are all shared with the English alphabet, but Italian letters employ an accent system and are not pronounced the same way.
The ancestors of Italians are mostly Indo-European speakers (Italic peoples such as Latins, Falisci, Picentes, Umbrians, Samnites, Oscans, Sicels and Adriatic Veneti, as well as Celts, Iapygians and Greeks) and pre-Indo-European speakers (Etruscans, Ligures, Rhaetians and Camunni in mainland Italy, Sicani in Sicily and ...
Where are Italian ancestors from? ›The ancestry and IBD analyses provided evidence of admixture in Italy with three major ancestries detected, most represented in Northern Europeans, Southern Europeans and Middle Eastern, respectively (with a small percentage of a North African component found in South Italy and Sardinia), with different prevalence ...
When did Italy stop speaking Latin? ›Historians have since stated that Latin really became a dead language around 600-750AD. This is in line with the diminishing Roman Empire where few people could actually read, and the Italian, French and Spanish spoken language was rapidly evolving.
Which language is most similar to Italian? ›According to many sources, Italian is the closest language to Latin in terms of vocabulary. According to the Ethnologue, Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian.
Why did they stop speaking Latin in Rome? ›To oversimplify the matter, Latin began to die out in the 6th century shortly after the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. The fall of Rome precipitated the fragmentation of the empire, which allowed distinct local Latin dialects to develop, dialects which eventually transformed into the modern Romance languages.
Why did they stop speaking Latin? ›Latin essentially “died out” with the fall of the Roman Empire, but in reality, it transformed — first into a simplified version of itself called Vulgar Latin, and then gradually into the Romance languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. Thus, Classical Latin fell out of use.
What culture is most similar to Italian? ›Spaniards and Italians are culturally similar people because of their geographical proximity. They share similar weather and traditions. They both have Latin roots. Both cultures are warm, communicative, and spontaneous.
Can a Spanish person understand an Italian person? ›Fun Fact: Italian and Spanish have a lexical similarity of over 80%! This means that 4 out of 5 words are similar in both languages. If you take this into account, Italian and Spanish speakers should be able to understand each other perfectly, and they actually can!
Can an Italian understand a Spaniard? ›So do Italians understand spoken Spanish? Italian and Spanish are not the same language, but they're close enough that mutual intelligibility is possible. Both languages have over 80% lexical overlap, with pronunciation and grammatical differences.