Italian language

Italian
italiano, lingua italiana
Pronunciation[itaˈljaːno]
Native to
EthnicityItalians
SpeakersL1: 65 million (2022)[1]
L2: 3.1 million[1]
Total: 68 million[1]
Early forms
Dialects
Latin script (Italian alphabet)
Italian Braille
Italiano segnato "(Signed Italian)"[2]
italiano segnato esatto "(Signed Exact Italian)"[3]
Official status
Official language in


Recognised minority
language in
Regulated byAccademia della Crusca (de facto)
Language codes
ISO 639-1it
ISO 639-2ita
ISO 639-3ita
Glottologital1282
Linguasphere51-AAA-q
Geographical distribution of the Italian language in the world:
  Areas where it is the majority language
  Areas where it is a minority language or where it was the majority in the past
  Areas where small Italian-speaking communities are present
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Italian (italiano, pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana, pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the Colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire.[6] Italian is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian.[7] It is spoken by about 68 million people, including 64 million native speakers as of 2024.[1]

Italian is an official language in Italy, San Marino, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), and Vatican City; it has official minority status in Croatia, Slovene Istria, Romania,[5][8] Bosnia and Herzegovina,[5] and the municipalities of Santa Tereza, Encantado, and Venda Nova do Imigrante in Brazil.[9][10] Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.[1] 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.[1]

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 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 million EU citizens (3%).[11][12][13] There are also Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania, Monaco, and the United Kingdom) and on other continents.[14] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and 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.[15] Almost all native Italian words end with vowels, and the language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds).[16] Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants.

  1. ^ a b c d e f Italian at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ "Centro documentazione per l'integrazione". Cdila.it. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  3. ^ "Centro documentazione per l'integrazione". Cdila.it. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  4. ^ "Pope Francis to receive Knights of Malta grand master Thursday – English". ANSA.it. 21 June 2016. Archived from the original on 13 August 2023. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  5. ^ a b c "Languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 December 2022. Retrieved 11 June 2019. (PDF)
  6. ^ Lepschy, A. L.; Lepschy, G. (2006). "Italian". Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition): 60–64. doi:10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/02251-3. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1.
  7. ^ "Romance languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 6 January 2020. Retrieved 19 February 2017. ...if the Romance languages are compared with Latin, it is seen that by most measures Sardinian and Italian are least differentiated...
  8. ^ "MULTILINGVISM ŞI LIMBI MINORITARE ÎN ROMÂNIA" (PDF) (in Romanian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 December 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  9. ^ "Lei n. 5.048/2023 - Do Município de Encantado / RS". Archived from the original on 11 August 2024. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  10. ^ "Lei n. 2.812/2021 - Do Município de Santa Teresa / ES". Archived from the original on 11 August 2024. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  11. ^ "Europeans and their languages - Report - en". europa.eu. Eurobarometer. pp. 10 and 19. Archived from the original on 28 May 2024.
  12. ^ Keating, Dave. "Despite Brexit, English Remains The EU's Most Spoken Language By Far". Forbes. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  13. ^ Europeans and their Languages Archived 6 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Data for EU27 Archived 29 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine, published in 2012.
  14. ^ "Italian — University of Leicester". .le.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  15. ^ See List of Italian musical terms used in English
  16. ^ Paoli, Sandra (2016), A Short Guide to Italian Phonetics and Phonology for Students of Italian Paper V (PDF), Oxford University


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