Italian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people, most of whom live in Italy. Standard Italian is based on Tuscan dialects and is somewhat intermediate between the languages of Southern Italy and the Gallo-Romance languages of the North. The long-established Tuscan standard has, over the last few decades, been slightly eroded by the variety of Italian spoken in Milan, the economic capital of Italy. Italian has double (or long) consonants, like Latin (but unlike most modern Romance languages, e.g. French and Spanish). As in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of French), stress is distinctive.
HistoryThe origins of the Italian language are very complex and mostly formalized by Dante Alighieri mixing southern Italian dialects, especially from Sicilian, with his native Tuscan (supposedly derived from Etruscan and Oscan). Those older Italian dialects were hardly influenced by the Occitan bring by the Bard escaping from France centuries before under the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Of the major Romance languages, which were derived from Latin language, Italian is the closest to Latin, although there are other languages spoken in Italy which are even closer to Latin, for example Sardo logudorese language. Italians say that the best spoken Italian is lingua toscana in bocca romana - 'the Tuscan tongue, in a Roman mouth.' The formative influence on establishing the Tuscan as the elite speech is generally agreed to have been Dante's Commedia, to which Boccaccio affixed the title Divina in the 14th century. The economic power that Tuscany had at the time, specially considering Pisa's influence, gave its dialect weight, though Venetian remained widespread in the markets and streets of the Terra Firma. Also, the increasing cultural relevance of Florence in the period of Umanesimo (before Rinascimento) made its vulgare become a standard in art, quickly imported to Rome. ClassificationItalian is a member of the Italo-Dalmatian group of languages, which is part of the Italo-Western grouping of the Romance languages, which are a subgroup of the Italic branch of Indo-European. Geographic distributionItalian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and is an official language in the Ticino and Grigioni cantons or regions of Switzerland. It is also the second official language in Vatican City and in some areas of Istria in Slovenia and Croatia with an Italian minority. It is widely used by immigrant groups in Luxembourg, the United States, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Australia, and is also spoken in neighbouring Malta and Albania. It is spoken, to a much lesser extent, in parts of Africa formerly under Italian rule such as Somalia, Libya and Eritrea. Official statusItalian is an official language of Italy, San Marino, Switzerland and Vatican City. It is also an official language in the Istria county (Croatia) and municipalities of Koper, Piran and Izola (Slovenia). DialectsThe dialects of Italian identified by the Ethnologue are Tuscan, Piemontese, Sardinian, Abruzzese, Pugliese (Apulian), Umbrian, Laziale, Central Marchigiano, Cicolano-Reatino-Aquilano, and Molisan. Other dialects are Milanese, Brescian, Bergamasc, Venetian, Modenese, Bolognese, Sicilian and so on, essentially one per city. Many of the so-called dialects of Italian spoken around the country are different enough from standard Italian to be considered separate languages by most linguists and some speakers themselves. Thus a distinction can be made between "dialects of (standard) Italian" and "dialects (or languages) of Italy". A link to an Italian site with translation features between Italian dialects and Italian: [1] (http://www.dialettando.com)
SoundsDescription of the sound set of the language. Can include phoneme charts and example words for each phoneme like in French language. If there is significant discussion here, it is probably best to divide the section into vowels and consonants subsections. VowelsItalian has seven vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/. The words /'peska/ (fishing) and /'pɛska/ (peach), both spelled as "pesca", show that /e/ and /ɛ/ are in fact two different phonemes. Similarly, the words /'bot:e/ (barrel) and /'bɔt:e/ (beatings), both spelled as "botte", discriminate /o/ and /ɔ/. ConsonantsTwo symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively.
Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /z/, /ʃ/, /ʦ/, /ʣ/, /ʎ/ /ɲ/ . Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. Geminate /ɾ/ is realized as the trill [r:].
Grammarsee Italian grammar. Writing systemItalian is written using the Latin alphabet. Italian uses both acute accent and grave accent for marking words with irregular stress. Examples
External links
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Categories: Languages of Italy | Languages of Switzerland | Romance languages |
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