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| History | |
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The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin starting in the twelfth century, and the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Italian as a language used in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the Province of Benevento that date from 960–963.[9] What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early fourteenth century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia, to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina, 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 Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.
Italian often was an official language of the various Italian states predating 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, until recently, were thought of as city-states. Those dialects now have considerable variety. 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 [va ˈbːɛne] by a Roman (and by any standard-speaker, like a Florentine), [va ˈbene] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of La Spezia-Rimini Line); a casa "at home" is [a ˈkːasa] for Roman and standard, [a ˈkaza] for Milanese and generally northern.
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.
The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages) gave its dialect weight, though the Venetian language remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. 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.
[edit] Tags:Latin,Italy,France,Tuscan,Italian Dialects,Stress,Spanish,Italian Peninsula,Vulgar Latin,Province Of Benevento,Dante Alighieri,Florentine,Commedia,Giovanni Boccaccio,Italians,Florence,Kingdom Of Naples,Kingdom Of Lombardy-venetia,Austro-hungarian Empire,City-states,Variety,Roman,Milanese,Gemination,La Spezia-rimini Line,Southern Italian,Occitan,Bards,Middle Ages,Norman Conquest Of Southern Italy,Tuscany,Late Middle Ages,Venetian Language,Ligurian (or Genoese),Humanism,Renaissance,Venetian,Lombard, | |
| Renaissance | |
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Starting with the Renaissance Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the peninsula. The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the sixteenth century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. Scholars divided into three factions:
The purists, headed by Venetian Pietro Bembo (who, in his Gli Asolani, claimed the language might be based only on the great literary classics, such as Petrarch and some part of Boccaccio). The purists thought the Divine Comedy not dignified enough, because it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language.
Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times.
The courtiers, like Baldassare Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino, insisted that each local vernacular contribute to the new standard.
A fourth faction claimed the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mix of Florentine and the dialect of Rome. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language led to publication of Agnolo Monosini's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612.
[edit] Tags:Italic,De Vulgari Eloquentia,Purists,Pietro Bembo,Gli Asolani,Petrarch,Niccolò Machiavelli,Florentines,Courtiers,Baldassare Castiglione,Gian Giorgio Trissino,Accademia Della Crusca,Agnolo Monosini,Floris Italicae Linguae Libri Novem, | |
| Modern era | |
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An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early nineteenth century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after, and pushed the Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility and functionaries in the Italian courts but also in the bourgeoisie.
[edit] Tags:Unification Of Italy,Napoleon,Lingua Franca,Bourgeoisie,Corsica, | |
| Contemporary times | |
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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 derived from Venetian word "s-cia[v]o" (slave), "panettone" comes from Lombard word "panatton" etc.). Only 2.5% of Italy’s population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation unified in 1861.[10]
[edit] Tags:Alessandro Manzoni,Arno,Ciao,Panettone, | |
| Classification | |
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Italian is related most closely to the other two Italo-Dalmatian languages, Sicilian and the extinct Dalmatian. The three are part of the Romance languages, which are a group of the Italic branch of Indo-European.
[edit] Tags:Indo-european,Romance,Italo-dalmatian,Romance Language,Romance Languages,Sicilian,Dalmatian,Dalmatia, | |
| Geographic distribution | |
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Knowledge of Italian in Europe
The geographic distribution of the Italian language in the world: large Italian-speaking communities are shown in green; light blue indicates areas where the Italian language was used officially during the Italian colonial period.
Use of the Italian language in Europe and Africa
The list below shows the geographical distribution of the Italian language around the world. The total number of native speakers of Italian is 62 million people according to Encarta[11] and Ethnologue.[3] But in the statistics of the European Union, Italian is spoken as a mother tongue by 13% of the EU population or 65 million people, mainly in Italy. Also in the EU, it is spoken as a second language by 3% of the population or by 14 million people.[2] Including the Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents (especially in Argentina, Brazil, the US, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, as is shown below), the total number of speakers is more than 85 million.
[edit] Tags:Switzerland,Australia,European Union, | |
| Official | |
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European Union
Italy
San Marino
Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Switzerland
Vatican City
Slovenia (only in Slovenian Istria)
Croatia (only in Istria County)
[edit] Tags:Croatia,Slovenia,Slovenian Istria,San Marino,Vatican City,Malta,Istria County,Istria, | |
| Secondary | |
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Somalia (Transitional Federal Parliament)
Eritrea Although Eritrea has no official language, Italian is still well-diffused among older people and in administrative, commercial and teaching-related areas.
Libya Although not official, Italian is still widely known among older populations and is used in the commercial and education sectors.
Malta
Kosovo
Montenegro
[edit] Tags:Libya,Eritrea,Somalia,Montenegro, | |
| Historically significant | |
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France (in Corsica, Savoy, Nice and some valleys)
Albania
Croatia (Istria, Rijeka, Kvarner, Dalmatia)
Slovenia (Slovenian Littoral)
Malta
Monaco
Montenegro
Greece (in Dodecanese 1912–1943)
Ukraine (in Crimea[12])
[edit] Tags:Monaco,Savoy,Rijeka,Kvarner,Greece,Ukraine, | |
| Historically official | |
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Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946 and until 1861 in all the former Italian states before the unification; also in Italian Social Republic 1943–1945 and in Free Territory of Trieste 1947–1954)
Croatia (in Istria X century-1797, Dalmatia XII century-1797, Rijeka, Zadar, Lastovo and Palagruža 1919–1947, and in the Governorship of Dalmatia 1941–1943)
Trieste (Free Territory of Trieste 1947-1954)
Fiume (Free State of Fiume 1920–1924)
Eritrea (1890–1941)
Somalia (Italian Somaliland 1895–1960, British Somaliland 1940–1941)
Ethiopia (Abissinia 1936–1941)
Cyprus (1489–1571)
China (in Tientsin 1901–1944)
Libya (1911–1943)
Egypt (in Western part 1940–1942)
Montenegro (Kingdom of Montenegro (1941–1944))
Slovenia (in the Slovenian Littoral, western Inner Carniola 1919–1947, and in the Province of Ljubljana 1941–1943)
Greece (in Crete XIII century-1699; in the Venetian Ionian Islands 1204-1797 and 1941–1943; in Chios 1261-1566; in the Dodecanese 1912–1943 and in many other islands and cities under the Venetian and Genoese domination between the XII and XVI centuries)
Albania (in Venetian Albania 1420-1797; in Sazan Island 1920–1947 and in all the country 1938–1945)
Malta (until 1934)
France (in Tende, La Brigue and other small valleys until 1947, in Corsica until 1895 and between 1942–1943 and in the territory of Nice X century-1860 and 1942–1943)
Tunisia (in Tabarka 1540-1742 and in all the country 1942–1943)
Ukraine (in Crimea under the Genoese domination between the XIII and XV centuries)
Austria-Hungary (in the Austrian Littoral, Fiume, Dalmatia and Trentino until 1918)
Turkey (in the district of Pera 1204-1453 and in Territory of Antalya 1919–1922)
[edit] Tags:Egypt, | |
| Used by some immigrant communities | |
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Brazil 1,500,000[13]
Argentina 1,500,000[14]
Uruguay 1,500,000[15]
United States 1,008,370[16]
France 500,000–1,000,000
Canada 661,000[17]
Germany 548,000[18]
Switzerland over 500,000 (mentioned here because related to the German and French speaking areas)
Venezuela 400,000[19]
Australia 353,605[20]
Belgium 250,000
Mexico 220,000
United Kingdom 200,000[21]
Egypt 72,400[22]
Colombia 2,250[23]
Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken 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 the official language with Croatian and Slovenian in some areas of Istria, where an Italian minority exists. In the Brazilian cities of Santa Teresa and Vila Velha it enjoys official status alongside Portuguese, being "knighted" as an ethnic language. 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 [24] (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, coastal Montenegro and western Slovenia, reached by many Italian television channels.
Italian is also spoken by some in former Italian colonies in Africa (Libya and Eritrea). However, its use has dropped sharply since the colonial period. In Eritrea, Italian is widely understood.[25] In fact, for fifty years, during the colonial period, Italian was the language of education, but as of 1997[update], there is only one Italian-language school remaining, with four hundred seventy pupils yearly. The name of the only Italian-language school in Eritrea is Scuola Italiana di Asmara,[26] which was also the only Italian-language school in Ethiopia, when Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia.[27] 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,[28] and Eritrea will be the only African nation where Italian is widely spoken and understood. In Libya, since 1969, Italian has been wiped out by the Libyan Revolution’s Arabization programmes in education and media. In Egypt and Tunisia, it is spoken mostly by Italian Egyptians, 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, especially Italy, and returned to Africa.
Italian and Italian dialects are widely used by Italian immigrants and many of their descendants 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, the largest Italian-speaking populations are found in five cities: Boston (7,000),[29] Chicago (12,000),[30] the Miami region (27,000),[31] New York City (140,000),[32] and Philadelphia (15,000).[33] According to the United States Census in 2000, over 1 million Italian Americans spoke Italian at home, with the largest concentrations—and nearly half of the total—found in the states of New York (294,271) and New Jersey (116,365).[34] 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).[17] Italian is also strongly visible in the Hamilton area. 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.[35] In 2001 there were 130,000 Italian speakers in Melbourne,[36] and 90,000 in Sydney.[37]
[edit] Tags:Official Languages,Ticino,Grigioni,French,Portuguese, | |
| Education | |
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Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language; in fact, Italian is considered the fourth- or fifth - most taught foreign language in the world.[38]
According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year more than 200,000 foreign students study Italian in 90 Institutes of Italian Culture in the world, 179 Italian schools abroad and 111 Italian sections in foreign schools.[39][clarification needed]
In the United States, Italian is the fourth most taught foreign language after Spanish, French and German, in that order (the fifth, considering also the American Sign Language).[40] In the anglophone Canada Italian is second after French but in the United Kingdom it is the fourth after French, Spanish and German.[41] In central-east Europe Italian is first in Albania and Montenegro, second in Austria, Slovenia, and Ukraine after English, and third in Hungary, Romania and Russia after English and German.[39] But throughout the world, Italian is the fifth most taught foreign language, after English, Spanish, French, and German.[42]
In the European Union statistics, Italian is spoken as a mother tongue by 13% of the population or 65 million people,[2] mainly in Italy. In the EU, it is spoken as a second language by 3% of the population or by 14 million people. In addition, among EU states, the Italian language is most likely to be learned as a second language in Malta by 61% of the population, as well as in Slovenia by 15% of the population, in Croatia by 14% of the population, Austria by 11% of the population, Romania by 8% of the population, and by France and Greece by 6% of the population.[2] Italian is also one of the national languages of Switzerland, which is not a part of the European Union.[43] The Italian language is well known and studied in Albania, another non-EU member, due to its historical and geographical proximity with Italy.
[edit] Tags: | |
| Influence and derived languages | |
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See also: Italian diaspora
From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and Venezuela, where they formed a strong physical and cultural presence.
In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional (i.e. non-central) Italian languages were used, and some continue to use a derived dialect. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the nineteenth 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, because Argentina has had a continuous large influx of Italian settlers since the second half of the nineteenth century: initially primarily from northern Italy; then, since the beginning of the twentieth century, mostly from southern Italy.
[edit] Tags: | |
| Lingua franca | |
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See also: Mediterranean 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). These variants were 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 should 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 eighteenth 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.[ Tags: | |
zote monety |