page_title: Culture of Italy
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of Italy / Language
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Legende: &#160;&#160; Muttersprache &#160;&#160; Amtssprache &#160;&#160; Zweit- oder nicht offizielle Sprache   &#160; Italienischsprachige Minderheiten English: Legend: &#160;&#160; Native language &#160;&#160; Administrative language &#160;&#160; Secondary language or non-official.   &#160; Italophone minorities Español: Leyenda: &#160;&#160; Lengua materna &#160;&#160; Lengua administrativa &#160;&#160; Segunda lengua o lengua no oficial.   &#160; Minorías italofonas Français&#160;: Carte du monde où on parle l'italien. &#160;&#160; Langue maternelle &#160;&#160; Langue administrative &#160;&#160; Langue importante et/ou langue de culture   &#160; Minorités italophones Italiano: Legenda: &#160;&#160; Lingua madre &#160;&#160; Lingua amministrativa &#160;&#160; Seconda lingua o lingua non ufficiale   &#160; Minoranze italofone Português: Legenda: &#160;&#160; Idioma materno &#160;&#160; Idioma administrativo &#160;&#160; Idioma secundário, ou não-oficial   &#160; Minorias italófonas Polski: Legenda: &#160;&#160; Włoski jest językiem ojczystym &#160;&#160; Włoski jest językiem urzędowym &#160;&#160; Włoski jest drugim lub nieoficjalnym językiem   &#160; Mniejszości włoskojęzyczne
context_page_description: Italy is considered a cultural superpower. Italy has been the starting point of phenomena of international impact such as the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church, the Romanesque, the Renaissance, the Scientific revolution, the Baroque, the Neo-classicism, the Risorgimento, the Fascism and the European integration. During its history, the nation has given birth to an enormous number of notable people.
  Both the internal and external faces of Western culture were born on the Italian peninsula, whether one looks at the history of the Christian faith, civil institutions, philosophy, law, art, science, or social customs and culture.
  Italy was home to many well-known and influential civilizations, including the Etruscans, Samnites and the Romans, while also hosting colonies from important foreign civilizations like the Phoenicians and Greeks, whose influence and culture had a large impact through the peninsula. Etruscan and Samnite cultures flourished in Italy before the emergence of the Roman Republic, which conquered and incorporated them.
context_section_description: The great Romantic English poet, Lord Byron, described Italian as a language that sounds "as if it should be writ on satin." Byron's description is not an isolated expression of poetic fancy but, in fact, a popular view of the Italian language across the world, often called the language of "love," "poetry," and "song."
  Italian, like English, belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. Like French and Spanish, it is a Romance language, one of the modern languages that developed from Latin. In particular, among the Romance languages, Italian is considered to be the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary. It is spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, 23,000 in the Republic of San Marino, 400,000 in Switzerland, another 1,3 million in other European countries, and approximately 6 million in the Americas.
  Standard Italian evolved from a dialect spoken in Tuscany, given that it was the first region to produce great writers as Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Thanks to its cultural prestige, this dialect was adopted first in the Italian states, and then by the Kingdom of Italy after the unification in 1861. It may be considered somewhat intermediate, linguistically and geographically, between the Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and the Gallo-Italic languages of the North, becoming the center of a dialect continuum. Its development was also influenced by the other Italian dialects and by the Germanic language of post-Roman invaders.
  There are only a few communities in Italy in which Italian is not spoken as the first language, but many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardised Italian and other regional languages. These include native communities of Indo-European languages like Albanian, Croatian and Greek in southern Italy, Slovene and German varieties in Northern Italy, and dozens of various Romance languages, like Arpitan, Catalan, Friulan, Ladin, Lombard, Neapolitan, Occitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, and many others.
  Today, despite some regional variations, Italian is the most spoken language throughout the country. Many influences in Italy have helped standardize Italian. They include military service, education, and nationwide communication by means of newspapers, books, radio, and television.
caption: "Italophone" world.   Official language.   Secondary, widely spoken or understood.   Understood by some due to former colonisation.
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