Note that the
H is
silent in the digraphs
CH and
GH, as also the
I in
cia,
cio,
ciu and even
cie is not pronounced as a separate vowel, unless it carries the primary stress. For example, it is silent in
ciao and cielo , but it is pronounced in
farmacia and
farmacie .
History
The history of the Italian language is long, but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as distinct from its predecessor
Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the region of
Benevento dating from 960-963. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the first years of the 14th century through the works of
Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially
Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the
Commedia, to which
Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title
Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language and, thus, the dialect of
Tuscany became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.
Italian was often an official language of the various Italian states pre-dating unification, slowly usurping Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as the Spanish in the
Kingdom of Naples, or the Austrians in the
Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia), even though the masses spoke primarily vernacular languages and dialects. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city since the cities were, until recently, thought of as
city-states. Those dialects now have considerable
variety, however. 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 the
gemination of initial consonants and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in some cases (e.g.
va bene "all right": is pronounced by a Roman (and by any standard-speaker, like a Florentine), by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of
La Spezia-Rimini Line);
a casa "at home": Roman and standard , Milanese and generally northern ). (See
Raddoppiamento fonosintattico).
In contrast to the
Northern Italian language,
southern Italian dialects and languages were largely untouched 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 the case of Northern Italian language, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. (See
La Spezia-Rimini Line).
The economic might and relatively advanced development of
Tuscany at the time (
Late Middle Ages), gave its dialect weight, though
Venetian language remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life. Also, the increasing political and cultural relevance of
Florence during the periods of the rise of Medici's bank,
Humanism and the
Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.
Middle Ages
The re-discovery of Dante's
De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century sparked a debate which raged throughout Italy concerning which criteria should be chosen to establish a modern Italian standard to be used as much as a literary as a spoken language. Scholars were divided into three factions: the
purists, headed by
Pietro Bembo who in his
Gli Asolani claimed that the language might only be based on the great literary classics (notably,
Petrarch and Boccaccio, but not Dante as Bembo believed that the Divine Comedy was not dignified enough as it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language),
Niccolò Machiavelli and other
Florentines who preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times, and the
courtiers like
Baldassarre Castiglione and
Gian Giorgio Trissino who insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new standard. A fourth faction claimed that the best variety of Italian was the one that the papal court adopted. Eventually Bembo's ideas prevailed, the result being the publication of the first Italian dictionary in 1612 and the foundation of the
Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582-3), the official legislative body of the Italian language.
Modern era
Two notable defining moments in the history of the Italian language came between 1500 and 1850. Both events were invasions. The rulers of Spain invaded and occupied Italy down to Rome and the Vatican in the mid-16th century (see the aftermath of the
Italian Wars). This occupation left a lasting influence upon the formerly irregular Italian grammar, simplifying it to conform more with the dominant Spanish language. The second was the conquest and occupation of Italy by
Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy and pushed the Italian language to a
lingua franca, further reducing regional languages in order to compensate for the increased united nature of the people.
Contemporary times
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 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 Venetian, "
panettone" is in the
Milanese dialect of the
Lombard language etc.). Only 2.5% of Italy’s population could speak standard Italian when the nation unified in 1861.
Classification
Italian is most closely related to the other two Italo-Dalmatian languages,
Sicilian and the extinct
Dalmatian. The three are part of the
Italo-Western grouping of the
Romance languages, which are a subgroup of the
Italic branch of
Indo-European.
Geographic distribution
thumb|300px|The geographic distribution of the Italian language in the world: large Italian-speaking communities are shown in green; light blue indicates areas where it was understood for a while during the Italian military campaigns in Africa in the first half of the 20th century .The total speakers of Italian as a maternal language are between 70 and 80 million. The speakers who use Italian as a second or cultural language are estimated at around 150 million.
Speakers: Maternal language: 65
- 75 million
Cultural language: c. 120-150 million
Italian is the official language of
Italy and
San Marino, and one of the official languages of
Switzerland, spoken mainly in the cantons of
Ticino and part of
Graubünden (Grigioni in Italian), which together are a region referred to as
Italian Switzerland. It is also official language with Croatian and Slovenian in some areas of
Istria, where an Italian minority exists. It is the primary language of the
Vatican City and is widely used and taught in
Monaco and
Malta. It served as Malta's official language until the
Maltese language was enshrined in the 1934 Constitution. It is also spoken to a significant extent in France, with over 1,000,000 speakers (especially in
Corsica and the
County of Nice, areas that historically spoke
Italian dialects before annexation to
France), and it is understood by large parts of the populations of
Albania and coastal
Montenegro, reached by many Italian TV channels.
Italian is also spoken by some in former Italian colonies in
Africa (
Libya and
Eritrea). However, its use has sharply dropped off since the colonial period. In
Eritrea, Italian is widely understood . In fact, for 50 years, during the colonial period, Italian was the language of education, but , there is only one Italian-language school remaining, with 470 pupils. The name of the only Italian-language school in Eritrea is Scuola Italiana di Asmara, which was also the only Italian-language school in Ethiopia, when Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia. The number of Italian speakers may increase a little when the number of students at that school increases and because it is still spoken in commerce , and Eritrea will be the only African nation where Italian is widely spoken and understood. In Libya, Italian has been wiped out by the Libyan Revolution's Arabization programs in education and media. In Egypt and Tunisia, it is mostly spoken by
Italian Egyptians and
Italian Tunisians and some professionals of non-Italian descent. In all of the above former Italian African colonies, most of the fluent Italian speakers are people who grew up in officially Italian-speaking nations, most especially Italy, and returned to Africa.
Italian and
Italian dialects are widely used by Italian immigrants and many of their descendants (see
Italians) living throughout
Western Europe (especially
France,
Germany,
Belgium,
Switzerland, the
United Kingdom and
Luxembourg), the
United States,
Canada,
Australia, and
Latin America (especially
Uruguay,
Brazil,
Argentina, and
Venezuela).
In the
United States, Italian speakers are most commonly found in five cities:
Boston (7,000),
Chicago (12,000), the
Miami region (27,000),
New York City (140,000), and
Philadelphia (15,000). According to the United States Census in 2000, over 1 million
Italian Americans spoke Italian at home, with the largest concentrations (nearly half) found in the states of
New York (294,271) and
New Jersey (116,365).
In
Canada, Italian is the fourth most commonly spoken language, with 661,000 speakers (or about 2.1% of the population) according to the 2006 Census. Particularly large Italian-speaking communities are found in
Montreal (c. 179,000) and
Toronto (c. 262,000).
Italian is the second most commonly spoken language in Australia, where 353,605
Italian Australians, or 1.9% of the population, reported speaking Italian at home in the 2001
Census. In 2001 there were 130,000 Italian speakers in
Melbourne, and 90,000 in
Sydney.
Italian language education
Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language; in fact, Italian generally is the fourth or fifth most taught foreign language in the world.
In
anglophone parts of
Canada, Italian is, after
French, the third most taught language. In
francophone Canada it is third after
English. In the
United States and the
United Kingdom, Italian ranks fourth (after
Spanish-French-
German and French-German-Spanish respectively). Throughout the world, Italian is the fifth most taught foreign language, after
English, French, German, and Spanish.
In the
European Union, Italian is spoken as a mother tongue by 13% of the population (65 million, mainly in Italy itself) and as a second language by 3% (14 million); among EU member states, it is most likely to be desired (and therefore learned) as a second language in
Malta (61%),
Croatia (14%),
Slovenia (12%),
Austria (11%),
Romania (8%),
France (6%), and
Greece (6%). It is also an important second language in
Albania and
Switzerland, which are not EU members or candidates.
Influence and derived languages
From the late 19th to the mid 20th century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and Venezuela, where they formed a very strong physical and cultural presence (see the
Italian diaspora).
In some cases, colonies were established where variants of
Italian dialects were used, and some continue to use a derived dialect. An example is
Rio Grande do Sul,
Brazil, where
Talian is used, and in the town of
Chipilo near Puebla,
Mexico; each continuing to use a derived form of
Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Another example is
Cocoliche, an Italian-Spanish
pidgin once spoken in
Argentina and especially in
Buenos Aires, and
Lunfardo.
Rioplatense Spanish, and particularly the speech of the city of Buenos Aires, has intonation patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects, due to the fact that Argentina has had a continuous large influx of Italian settlers since the second half of the 19th century; initially primarily from Northern Italy; then, since the beginning of the twentieth century, mostly from Southern Italy.
Italian as a lingua franca
Starting in late
medieval times, Italian language variants replaced Latin to become the primary commercial language in much of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea (especially the Tuscan and Venetian variants). This was consolidated during the
Renaissance with the strength of Italian and the rise of
humanism in the arts.
During the Renaissance, Italy held artistic sway over the rest of Europe. All educated European gentlemen were expected to make the
Grand Tour, visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It thus became expected that educated Europeans would learn at least some Italian; the English poet
John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. In England, Italian became the second most common modern language to be learned, after
French (though the classical languages,
Latin and
Greek, came first). However, by the late 18th century, Italian tended to be replaced by
German as the second modern language in the curriculum. Yet Italian
loanwords continue to be used in most other
European languages in matters of art and music. 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. The presence of Italian as the primary language in the
Vatican City indicates use, not only within the
Holy See, but also throughout the world where an episcopal seat is present. It continues to be used in
music and
opera. Other examples where Italian is sometimes used as a means of communication is in some sports (sometimes in
football and
motorsports) and in the
design and
fashion industries.
Dialects
In Italy, all
Romance languages spoken as the vernacular, other than standard Italian and other unrelated, non-Italian languages, are termed "Italian dialects".
Italian dialects
Many Italian dialects may be considered as historical languages in their own right. These include recognized language groups such as
Friulian,
Neapolitan,
Sardinian,
Sicilian,
Venetian, and others, and regional variants of these languages such as
Calabrian. The distinction between dialect and language has been made by scholars (such as
Francesco Bruni): on the one hand are the languages that made up the Italian
koine; and on the other, those which had very little or no part in it, such as
Albanian,
Greek,
German,
Ladin, and
Occitan, which are still spoken by minorities.
Non-standard dialects are not generally used for mass communication and are usually limited to native speakers in informal contexts. In the past, speaking in dialect was often deprecated as a sign of poor education. In parts of Italy, the younger generations tend to speak standard Italian, rather than dialects, in all situations, albeit usually with local accents and idioms. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local dialect (for example the contraction
annà replaces
andare in the area of Rome for the infinitive "to go").
Sounds
Vowels
Italian has seven
vowel phonemes: , , , , , , , represented by five letters: "a, e, i, o, u". The pairs -, and - are seldom distinguished in writing and often confused, even though most varieties of Italian employ both phonemes consistently. Compare, for example standard "perché" (why, because) and "senti" (you hear), as pronounced by most central and southern speakers, with and , employed by most northern speakers. As a result, the usage is strongly indicative of a person's origin. The standard (Tuscan) usage of these vowels is listed in vocabularies, and employed outside Tuscany mainly by specialists, especially actors and very few (television) journalists.
These are truly different
phonemes, however: compare (fishing) and (peach), both spelled
pesca (). Similarly ('barrel') and ('beatings'), both spelled
botte, discriminate and ().
In general, vowel combinations usually pronounce each vowel separately.
Diphthongs exist (e.g.
uo,
iu,
ie,
ai), but are limited to an unstressed
u or
i before or after a stressed vowel.
The unstressed
u in a diphthong approximates the English semivowel
w, and the unstressed
i approximates the semivowel
y. E.g.:
buono ,
ieri .
Triphthongs exist in Italian as well, like "contin
uiamo" ("we continue"). Three vowel combinations exist only in the form semiconsonant ( or ), followed by a vowel, followed by a
desinence vowel (usually ), as in
miei,
suoi, or two semiconsonants followed by a vowel, as the group
-uia- exemplified above, or
-iuo- in the word
aiuola.
Mobile diphthongs
Many Latin words with a short
e or
o have Italian counterparts with a mobile diphthong (
ie and
uo respectively). When the vowel sound is stressed, it is pronounced and written as a diphthong; when not stressed, it is pronounced and written as a single vowel.
So Latin
focus gave rise to Italian
fuoco (meaning both "fire" and "optical focus"): when unstressed, as in
focale ("focal") the "o" remains alone. Latin
pes (more precisely its accusative form
pedem) is the source of Italian
piede (foot): but unstressed "e" was left unchanged in
pedone (pedestrian) and
pedale (pedal). From Latin
iocus comes Italian
giuoco ("play", "game"), though in this case
gioco is more common:
giocare means "to play (a game)". From Latin
homo comes Italian
uomo (man), but also
umano (human) and
ominide (hominid). From Latin
ovum comes Italian
uovo (egg) and
ovaie (ovaries). (The same phenomenon occurs in
Spanish:
juego (play, game) and
jugar (to play),
nieve (snow) and
nevar (to snow)).
Consonants
Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively.
Nasals undergo assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g., when preceding a velar ( or ) only appears, etc.
Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by
length. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for , , , , which are always geminate, and which is always single.
Geminate plosives and affricates are realised as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and are realized as lengthened
continuants. The flap consonant is typically dialectal. The correct standard pronunciation is .
Of special interest to the linguistic study of Italian is the
Gorgia Toscana, or "Tuscan Throat", the weakening or
lenition of certain
intervocalic consonants in
Tuscan dialects. See also
Syntactic doubling.
The
voiced postalveolar fricative is only present in loanwords. For example,
garage .
Assimilation
Italian has few diphthongs, so most unfamiliar diphthongs that are heard in foreign words (in particular, those beginning with vowel "a", "e", or "o") will be assimilated as the corresponding
diaeresis (i.e., the vowel sounds will be pronounced separately). Italian
phonotactics do not usually permit verbs and polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, excepting poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.
Grammar
Common variations in the writing systems
Some variations in the usage of the writing system may be present in practical use. These are scorned by educated people, but they are so common in certain contexts that knowledge of them may be useful.
- Usage of x instead of per: this is very common among teenagers and in SMS abbreviations. The multiplication operator is pronounced "per" in Italian, and so it is sometimes used to replace the word "per", which means "for"; thus, for example, "per te" ("for you") is shortened to "x te" (compare with English "4 U"). Words containing per can also have it replaced with x: for example, perché (both "why" and "because") is often shortened as xché or xké or x' (see below). This usage might be useful to jot down quick notes or to fit more text into the low character limit of an SMS, but it is unacceptable in formal writing.
- Usage of foreign letters such as k, j and y, especially in nicknames and SMS language: ke instead of che, Giusy instead of Giuseppina (or sometimes Giuseppe). This is curiously mirrored in the usage of i in English names such as Staci instead of Stacey, or in the usage of c in Northern Europe (Jacob instead of Jakob). The use of "k" instead of "ch" or "c" to represent a plosive sound is documented in some historical texts from before the standardization of the Italian language; however, that usage is no longer standard in Italian. Possibly because it is associated with the German language, the letter "k" has sometimes also been used in satire to suggest that a political figure is an authoritarian or even a "pseudo-nazi": Francesco Cossiga was famously nicknamed Kossiga by rioting students during his tenure as minister of internal affairs. [Cf. the politicized spelling Amerika in the USA.]
- Use of the following abbreviations is limited to the electronic communications media and is deprecated in all other cases: nn instead of non (not), cmq instead of comunque (anyway, however), cm instead of come (how, like, as), d instead of di (of), (io/loro) sn instead of (io/loro) sono (I am/they are), (io) dv instead of (io) devo (I must/I have to) or instead of dove (where), (tu) 6 instead of (tu) sei (you are).
- Whenever ASCII characters are not available, or when they cannot be relied on, for example in emails, sometimes accents are replaced by apostrophes for convenience, such as in perche' instead of perché (this was standard in the days of manual typewriters that had no accents, and is still common for upper case letters). Uppercase È is particularly rare, as it is absent from the Italian keyboard layout, and is very often written as E' (even though there are several ways of producing the uppercase È on a computer). This never happens in books or other professionally typeset material. On the other hand, many people confuse the grave and the acute accent, and write perchè instead of perché or caffé instead of caffè, since these two accents are usually written in the same way in handwriting.
Examples
Conversation
Numbers
Days of the week
Sample texts
There is a recording of
Dante's
Divine Comedy read by
Lino Pertile available at http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/
See also
References and notes
Bibliography
- M. Vitale, Studi di Storia della Lingua Italiana, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 1992, ISBN 88-7916-015-X
- S. Morgana, Capitoli di Storia Linguistica Italiana, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2003, ISBN 88-7916-211-X
