1. Italian Word For Kitten

Italian is a Romance language. Italian, together with Sardinian, is by most measures the closest. The incorporation into Italian of learned words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is another form of lexical borrowing through the influence.

King of Italy (Latin: Rex Italiae; Italian: Re d'Italia) was the title given to the ruler of the Kingdom of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The first to take the title was Odoacer, a 'barbarian' military leader, in the late 5th century, followed by the Ostrogothic kings up to the mid-6th century. With the Frankish conquest of Italy in the 8th century, the Carolingians assumed the title, which was maintained by subsequent Holy Roman Emperors throughout the Middle Ages. The last Emperor to claim the title was Charles V in the 16th century. During this period, the holders of the title were crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.

A Kingdom of Italy was restored from 1805 to 1814 with Napoleon as its only king, centered in Northern Italy. It was not until the Italian unification in the 1860s that a Kingdom of Italy covering the entire peninsula was restored. From 1861 the House of Savoy held the title of King of Italy until the last king, Umberto II, was exiled in 1946 when Italy became a republic.

• 2List of kings
  • 2.4Kingdom of Italy (781 – 963)
  • 2.5Holy Roman Empire (962 – 1556)
  • 2.6Kingdom of Italy (1805–1814), House of Bonaparte
  • 2.7Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946), House of Savoy

History[edit]

After the deposition of the last Western Emperor in 476, Heruli leader Odoacer was appointed Dux Italiae ('Duke of Italy') by the reigning Byzantine EmperorZeno. Later, the Germanic foederati, the Scirians and the Heruli, as well as a large segment of the Italic Roman army, proclaimed Odoacer Rex Italiae ('King of Italy').^[1] In 493, the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great killed Odoacer, and set up a new dynasty of kings of Italy. Ostrogothic rule ended when Italy was reconquered by the Byzantine Empire in 552.

In 568, the Lombards entered the peninsula and ventured to recreate a barbarian kingdom in opposition to the Empire, establishing their authority over much of Italy, except the Exarchate of Ravenna and the duchies of Rome, Venetia, Naples and the southernmost portions. In the 8th century, estrangement between the Italians and the Byzantines allowed the Lombards to capture the remaining Roman enclaves in northern Italy. However, in 774, they were defeated by the Franks under Charlemagne, who deposed their king and took up the title 'king of the Lombards'. After the death of Charles the Fat in 887, Italy fell into instability and a number of kings attempted to establish themselves as independent Italian monarchs. During this period, known as the Feudal Anarchy (888–962), the title Rex Italicorum ('King of the Italians' or 'King of the Italics') was introduced. After the breakup of the Frankish empire, Otto I added Italy to the Holy Roman Empire and continued the use of the title Rex Italicorum. The last to use this title was Henry II (1004-1024). Subsequent emperors used the title 'King of Italy' until Charles V. At first they were crowned in Pavia, later Milan, and Charles was crowned in Bologna.

In 1805, Napoleon I was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy at the Milan Cathedral. The next year, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated his imperial title. From the deposition of Napoleon I (1814) until the Italian Unification (1861), there was no Italian monarch claiming the overarching title. The Risorgimento successfully established a dynasty, the House of Savoy, over the whole peninsula, uniting the kingdoms of Sardinia and the Two Sicilies to form the modern Kingdom of Italy. The monarchy was superseded by the Italian Republic, after a constitutional referendum was held on 2 June 1946, after World War II.^[2] The Italian monarchy formally ended on 12 June of that year, and Umberto II left the country.

List of kings[edit]

As 'Rex Italiae'[edit]

• Odoacer (476–493)

vassal of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Ostrogothic Kingdom (493 – 553)[edit]

• Theoderic the Great (493 – 526)
• Athalaric (526 – 534)
• Theodahad (534 – 536)
• Witiges (536 – 540)
• Ildibad (540 – 541)
• Eraric (541)
• Totila (541 – 552)
• Teia (552 – 553)

Kingdom of the Lombards (568 – 814)[edit]

• Alboin (568 – 572)
• Cleph (572 – 574)
• Rule of the dukes (ten-year interregnum)
• Authari (584 – 590)
• Agilulf (591 – c. 616)
• Adaloald (c. 616 – c. 626)
• Arioald (c. 626 – 636)
• Rothari (636 – 652)
• Rodoald (652 – 653)
• Aripert I (653 – 661)
• Perctarit and Godepert (661 – 662)
• Grimoald (662 – 671)
• Perctarit (671 – 688), restored from exile
• Alahis (688 – 689), rebel
• Cunincpert (688 – 700)
• Liutpert (700 – 701)
• Raginpert (701)
• Aripert II (701 – 712)
• Ansprand (712)
• Liutprand (712 – 744)
• Hildeprand (744)
• Ratchis (744 – 749)
• Aistulf (749 – 756)
• Desiderius (756 – 774)
• Charlemagne (774 – 814)

Kingdom of Italy (781 – 963)[edit]

Carolingian Dynasty (781 – 888)[edit]

• Pippin (781 – 810)
• Bernard (810 – 818)
• Louis I (818 – 822)
• Lothair I (822 – 855)
• Louis II (844 – 875)
• Charles II the Bald (875 – 877)
• Carloman (877 – 879)
• Charles the Fat (879 – 887)

Instability (888 – 962)[edit]

After 887, Italy fell into instability, with many rulers claiming the kingship simultaneously:

• Berengar I (888 – 896)

vassal of the German King Arnulf of Carinthia, reduced to Friuli 889-894, deposed by Arnulf in 896.

• Guy of Spoleto (889 – 894)

opponent of Berengar, ruled most of Italy but was deposed by Arnulf.

• Lambert of Spoleto (891 – 896)

subking of his father Guy before 894, reduced to Spoleto 894–895.

• Arnulf of Carinthia (894 – 899)^[3]
  • Ratold (sub-king 896)

In 896, Arnulf and Ratold lost control of Italy, which was divided between Berengar and Lambert:

• Berengar I (896 – 924)

seized Lambert's portion upon the latter's death in 898.

• Lambert of Italy (896 – 898)
• Louis III of Provence (900-905)

opposed Berengar 900-902 and 905.

• Rudolph II of Burgundy (922 – 933)

defeated Berengar but fled Italy in 926.

• Hugh of Arles (926 – 947)

elected by Berengar's partisans in 925, resigned to Provence after 945.

• Lothair II (945 – 950)
• Berengar II of Ivrea (950 – 961)

jointly with his son:

• Adalbert of Italy (950 – 963)

In 951 Otto I of Germany invaded Italy and was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. In 952, Berengar and Adalbert became his vassals but remained kings until being deposed by Otto.

Holy Roman Empire (962 – 1556)[edit]

Ottonian dynasty (962 – 1024)[edit]

Salian dynasty (1027 – 1125)[edit]

Süpplingenburg dynasty (1125 – 1137)[edit]

Hauteville dynasty (1130 – 1154)[edit]

Roger II used the title King of Sicily and Italy until at least 1135; later he used only the title King of Sicily, Apulia and Calabria. Although his realm included the southern Italian mainland, he never exerted any control over the official Kingdom of Italy, and none of his successors claimed the title King of Italy.

House of Hohenstaufen (1128 – 1197)[edit]

House of Welf (1208 – 1212)[edit]

House of Hohenstaufen (1212 – 1254)[edit]

House of Luxembourg (1311 – 1313)[edit]

House of Wittelsbach (1327 – 1347)[edit]

House of Luxembourg (1355 – 1437)[edit]

House of Habsburg (1437 – 1556)[edit]

Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned king of Italy, or to use the title.^[4] The Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, formally ended the rule of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy. However, the empire continued to include some territory in northern Italy, including Tyrol, until its dissolution in 1806.

Kingdom of Italy (1805–1814), House of Bonaparte[edit]

Full title[edit]

This title is present on Italian laws proclaimed by Napoleon I:

[Name], by the Grace of God and the Constitutions, Emperor of the French and King of Italy.

Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946), House of Savoy[edit]

Full title[edit]

Up until the dissolution of the monarchy in 1946, full title of the Kings of Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946) was:

[Name], by the Grace of God and the will of the Nation, King of Italy, King of Sardinia, Cyprus, Jerusalem, Armenia, Duke of Savoy, count of Maurienne, Marquis (of the Holy Roman Empire) in Italy; Prince of Piedmont, Carignano, Oneglia, Poirino, Trino; Prince and Perpetual Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire; Prince of Carmagnola, Montmellian with Arbin and Francin, Prince bailiff of the Duchy of Aosta, Prince of Chieri, Dronero, Crescentino, Riva di Chieri and Banna, Busca, Bene, Bra, Duke of Genoa, Monferrat, Aosta, Duke of Chablais, Genevois, Duke of Piacenza, Marquis of Saluzzo (Saluces), Ivrea, Susa, of Maro, Oristano, Cesana, Savona, Tarantasia, Borgomanero and Cureggio, Caselle, Rivoli, Pianezza, Govone, Salussola, Racconigi over Tegerone, Migliabruna and Motturone, Cavallermaggiore, Marene, Modane and Lanslebourg, Livorno Ferraris, Santhià, Agliè, Centallo and Demonte, Desana, Ghemme, Vigone, Count of Barge, Villafranca, Ginevra, Nizza, Tenda, Romont, Asti, Alessandria, of Goceano, Novara, Tortona, Bobbio, Soissons, Sant'Antioco, Pollenzo, Roccabruna, Tricerro, Bairo, Ozegna, delle Apertole, Baron of Vaud and of Faucigni, Lord of Vercelli, Pinerolo, of Lomellina, of Valle Sesia, of the Marquisate of Ceva, Overlord of Monaco, Roccabruna and eleven-twelfths of Menton, Noble Patrician of Venice, Patrician of Ferrara.

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^Bury, History, vol. 1 p. 406
2. ^Nohlen, D & Stöver, P (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1047 ISBN978-3-8329-5609-7
3. ^Bryce, James The Holy Roman Empire (1913), pg. xxxv
4. ^ ^{abcdefghijklmno}Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Giuseppe Oggeri Vincenti, Annali d'Italia, 1788, pp. 78-81.
5. ^According to Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages (pg. 29), although Otto II was crowned King of the Romans in 961 and Holy Roman Emperor in 967, he only obtained the Iron Crown at Pavia in late 980, during his descent into Italy, and prior to his celebrating Christmas at Ravenna.
6. ^Although Otto III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Rome on 21 May 996, he was crowned King of Italy at Milan prior to the death of Pope John XV in early March 996 - see Comyn, History of the Western Empire, Vol. 1, pg. 123
7. ^enumerated as successor of Henry I who was German King 919–936 but not Emperor.
8. ^enumerated as successor of Conrad I who was German King 911–918 but not Emperor
9. ^Barraclough, Geoffrey (1984). The Origins of Modern Germany. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN0-393-30153-2.
10. ^Comyn, Robert. History of the Western Empire, from its Restoration by Charlemagne to the Accession of Charles V, Vol. I. 1851, p. 191.
11. ^Kleinhenz, Christopher, Medieval Italy: an encyclopedia, Volume 1, Routledge, 2004, pg. 494
12. ^Jones, Michael, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VI: c. 1300-c. 1415, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pg. 533
13. ^Philip Pandely Argenti, Chius Vincta, 1941, p. xvii.

Italian (italiano[itaˈljaːno](listen) or lingua italiana[ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian, together with Sardinian, is by most measures the closest language to Vulgar Latin of the Romance languages.^[8] Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (where it is the first language in Canton Ticino and in the districts of Moesa and Bernina in Canton Graubünden), San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece (Ionian Islands and Dodecanese), and is generally understood in Corsica (also due to the similarities with the Corsican language) and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.^[9] Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional dialects) and other regional languages.^[10]

Italian is a major European language, 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 fourth most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 69 million native speakers (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 16 million EU citizens (3%).^[1] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 90 million.^[11] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera. Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the luxury goods market.

Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society.^[12] Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and to some minor extent, by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. The incorporation into Italian of learned words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language, scientific terminology and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Italians were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Italian. Its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian.^[13][14] As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive but, unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants.^[15] Almost all words and syllables finish with pure vowels, a factor that makes Italian words extremely easy to use in rhyming. Italian has a 7 vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds); Classical Latin had 10, 5 with short and 5 with long sounds.

• 1History
• 3Geographic distribution
• 5Phonology
• 8Words

History[edit]

Origins[edit]

During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin, though the great majority of people were illiterate, and only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian peninsula, as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense 'dialects' of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance dialects of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, pragmatics) and are classified typologically as distinct languages.^[16][17]

The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the writings of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, even though the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century,^[18] the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Apennine peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the Placiti Cassinesi from the Province of Benevento that date from 960–963, although the Veronese Riddle, probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy.^[19]

Italian Word For Kitten

The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th 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 the peninsula and his written dialect became the 'canonical standard' that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects.^[16]:22 Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.

Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (like Spain in the Kingdom of Naples, or Austria in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia), even though the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Khatrimaza full hd mkv movies. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because 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 [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); a casa 'at home' is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern.

In contrast to the Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of northern Italy, the Italo-DalmatianNeapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected 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 languages, 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 language weight, though Venetian 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 the Banco Medici, Humanism, and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.

Renaissance[edit]

The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of 'rebirth', which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian).

During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists—individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves.^[20] Humanists began forming new beliefs in various forms: social, political, and intellectual. The ideals of the Renaissance were evident throughout the Protestant Reformation, which took place simultaneously with the Renaissance. The Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther's rejection of the selling of indulgences by Johann Tetzel and other authorities within the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in Luther's eventual break-off from the Roman Catholic Church in the Diet of Worms. After Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, he founded what was then understood to be a sect of Catholicism, later referred to as Lutheranism.^[20] Luther's preaching in favor of faith and scripture rather than tradition led him to translate the Bible into many other languages, which would allow for people from all over Europe to read the Bible. Previously, the Bible was only translated into Latin, but after this development it could be understood in many other languages, including Italian. The Italian language was able to spread even more with the help of Luther and the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press facilitated the spread of Italian because it was able to rapidly produce texts, such as the Bible, and cut the costs of books which allowed for more people to have access to the translated Bible and new pieces of literature.^[21] The Roman Catholic Church was losing its control over the population, as it was not open to change, and there was an increasing number of reformers with differing beliefs.^[22]

Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian peninsula. The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i. e., the problem of the language), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving a united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main 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 was 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 that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. 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.

The continual advancements in technology plays a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This allowed to produce more pieces of literature at a lower cost and as the dominant language, Italian spread.^[24]

Modern era[edit]

An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian 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 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 by the bourgeoisie.

Contemporary times[edit]

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 the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ('slave'), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton, etc.). Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation was unified in 1861.^[25]

Classification[edit]

Italian is a Romance language, and is therefore a descendant of Vulgar Latin (the spoken form of non-classical Latin).^{[note 1]} Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, especially its Florentine dialect, and is therefore an Italo-Dalmatian language, to which Sicilian and the extinct Dalmatian also belong, among a few others.

Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. In particular, among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary.^[27]Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian^[9][28][29] and 70% with Portuguese.^{[citation needed]}

One study analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation) estimated that among the languages analyzed the distance between Italian and Latin is only higher than that between Sardinian and Latin.^[30]

Geographic distribution[edit]

Italian is an official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French), and its use has modestly declined since the 1970s.^[31] Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City.^[32]

Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period, Italian is still understood by some in former colonies.^[9] Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule, Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of the country.^[33] A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s; today Italian is the most spoken second language in the country and serves as a language of commerce and sometimes as a lingua franca between Libyans and foreigners.^[34] In Eritrea, Italian is at times used in commerce and the capital city Asmara still has one Italian-language school.^[35] Italian was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War.

Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, only a little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.^[36] Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country.^[37]

Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina^[38] after the official language of Spanish, with over 1 million (mainly of the older generation) speaking it at home, and Italian has also influenced the dialect of Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay, mostly in phonology, known as Rioplatense Spanish.

Education[edit]

Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. Italian is the fourth^[39][40] most frequently taught foreign language in the world.^[41] In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways for one to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example, the free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language.^[42]

According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in the 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture.^[43]

Influence and derived languages[edit]

From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and Venezuela, where they formed a physical and cultural presence.

In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. 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 languages 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.

Lingua franca[edit]

Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by Italian language variants (especially Tuscan and Venetian). These variants were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts.

During that period, Italy held artistic sway over the rest of Europe. It was the norm for all educated gentlemen to make the Grand Tour, visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It thus became expected to learn at least some Italian. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until the late eighteenth century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian.

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.

Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in the design and fashion industries, in some sports like football^[44] and especially, in culinary terms.

Dialects[edit]

Throughout Italy, regional variations of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian, are spoken. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular — other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities — are often imprecisely called 'Italian dialects',^[45] even though they are quite different, with some belonging to different linguistic branches. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered 'historical language minorities', which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica) is closely related to Tuscan, from which Standard Italian derives and evolved.

The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata. The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most likely simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either.^[16]:19-20

Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations the contraction annà replaces andare in the area of Rome for the infinitive 'to go'; and nare is what Venetians say for the infinitive 'to go').

There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of a single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around the 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry.^[16]:21Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had likely diverged long before the first written records appear, since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of the population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II contributed to the proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left.^[16]:35

The Italian dialects have declined in the modern era, as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media, from newspapers to radio to television.^[16]:37

Phonology[edit]

Notes:

• Between two vowels, or between a vowel and an approximant (/j, w/) or a liquid (/l, r/), consonants can be both singleton or geminated. Geminated consonants shorten the preceding vowel (or block phonetic lengthening) and the first geminated element is unreleased. For example, compare /fato/[ˈfaːto] ('fate') with /fatto/[ˈfatto] ('fact'). However, /ɲɲ/, /ʃʃ/, /ʎʎ/, are always geminated word-internally.^[46] Similarly, nasals, liquids, and sibilants are pronounced slightly longer in medial consonant clusters.^[47]
• /j/, /w/, and /z/ are the only consonants that cannot be geminated.
• /t, d/ are laminaldenti-alveolar[t̪, d̪],^[48][49][50] commonly called 'dental' for simplicity.
• /k, ɡ/ are pre-velar before /i, e, ɛ, j/.^[49]
• /t͡s, d͡z, s, z/ have two variants:
  • Dentalized laminal alveolar[t̪͡s̪, d̪͡z̪, s̪, z̪]^[48][51] (commonly called 'dental' for simplicity), pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close to the upper front teeth, with the tip of the tongue resting behind lower front teeth.^[51]
  • Non-retracted apical alveolar [t͡s̺, d͡z̺, s̺, z̺].^[51] The stop components of the 'apical' affricates is actually laminal denti-alveolar.^[51]
• /n, l, r/ are apical alveolar [n̺, l̺, r̺] in most environments.^[48][50][52] The first two are pronounced as laminal denti-alveolar [n̪, l̪] before /t, d, t͡s, d͡z, s, z/^[50][53][54] and palatalized laminal postalveolar[n̠ʲ, l̠ʲ] before /t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ ʃ/.^[55][56]/n/ has a velar allophone [ŋ] before /k, ɡ/.^[57][58]
• /m/ and /n/ do not contrast before /p, b/ and /f, v/, where they are pronounced [m] and [ɱ], respectively.^[57][59]
• /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ are alveolo-palatal.^[60] In a large number of accents, /ʎ/ is a fricative [ʎ̝].^[61]
• Some accents from central Italy and southern Italy, such as the Roman, do not have the /ʎ/ sound; instead, it is pronounced as [j], or, sometimes, [ʝ].^{[citation needed]}
• In almost all speeches from northern Italy, geminates are not realised.
• Intervocalically, single /r/ is realised as a trill with one or two contacts.^[62] Some literature treats the single-contact trill as a tap[ɾ].^[63][64] Single-contact trills can also occur elsewhere, particularly in unstressed syllables.^[65] Geminate /rr/ manifests as a trill with three to seven contacts.^[62]
• The phonetic distinction between [s] and [z] is neutralized before consonants and at the beginning of words: the former is used before voiceless consonants and before vowels at the beginning of words; the latter is used before voiced consonants (meaning [z] is an allophone of /s/ before voiced consonants). The two can contrast only between vowels within a word, e.g. [ˈfuːzo] 'melted' vs. [ˈfuːso] 'spindle'. According to Canepari,^[64] though, the traditional standard has been replaced by a modern neutral pronunciation which always prefers /z/ when intervocalic, except when the intervocalic s is the initial sound of a word, if the compound is still felt as such: for example, presento/preˈsɛnto/^[66] ('I foresee', with pre meaning 'before' and sento meaning 'I see') vs presento/preˈzɛnto/^[67] ('I present'). There are many words in which dictionaries now indicate that both pronunciations with [z] and with [s] are acceptable. Word-internally between vowels, the two phonemes have merged in many regional varieties of Italian, either as /z/ (Northern-Central) or /s/ (Southern-Central).

Italian has a seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/, as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin. Some examples:

• Italian quattordici 'fourteen' < Latin quattuordecim (cf. Romanian paisprezece/paișpe, Spanish catorce, French quatorze/kaˈtɔʁz/, Catalan and Portuguesecatorze)
• Italian settimana 'week' < Latin septimāna (cf. Romanian săptămână, Spanish and Portuguese semana, French semaine/s(ə)ˈmɛn/, Catalansetmana)
• Italian medesimo 'same' < Vulgar Latin *medi(p)simum (cf. Spanish mismo, Portuguesemesmo, French même/mɛm/, Catalanmateix; note that Italian usually uses the shorter stesso)
• Italian guadagnare 'to win, earn, gain' < Vulgar Latin *guadanyāre < Germanic/waidanjan/ (cf. Spanish ganar, Portuguese ganhar, French gagner/ɡaˈɲe/, Catalanguanyar)

The conservativeness of Italian phonology is partly explained by its origin. Italian stems from a literary language that is derived from the 13th-century speech of the city of Florence in the region of Tuscany, and has changed little in the last 700 years or so. Furthermore, the Tuscan dialect is the most conservative of all Italian dialects, radically different from the Gallo-Italian languages less than 100 miles to the north (across the La Spezia–Rimini Line).

The following are some of the conservative phonological features of Italian, as compared with the common Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan). Some of these features are also present in Romanian.

• Little or no lenition of consonants between vowels, e.g. vīta > vita 'life' (cf. Romanian viață, Spanish vida[biða], French vie), pedem > piede 'foot' (cf. Spanish pie, French pied/pje/).
• Preservation of geminate consonants, e.g. annum > /ˈan.no/anno 'year' (cf. Spanish año/aɲo/, French an/ɑ̃/, Portuguese ano/ˈã.nu/).
• Preservation of all Proto-Romance final vowels, e.g. pacem > pace 'peace' (cf. Romanian pace, Spanish paz, French paix/pɛ/), octō > otto 'eight' (cf. Romanian opt, Spanish ocho, French huit/ɥi(t)/), fēcī > feci 'I did' (cf. Spanish hice, French fis/fi/).
• Preservation of most intertonic vowels (those between the stressed syllable and either the beginning or ending syllable). This accounts for some of the most noticeable differences, as in the forms quattordici and settimana given above.
• Slower consonant development, e.g. folia > Italo-Western /fɔʎʎa/ > foglia/ˈfɔʎʎa/ 'leaf' (cf. Romanian foaie/ˈfo̯aje/, Spanish hoja/ˈoxa/, French feuille/ˈfœj/; but note Portuguese folha/ˈfoʎɐ/).

Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian has a large number of inconsistent outcomes, where the same underlying sound produces different results in different words, e.g. laxāre > lasciare and lassare, captiāre > cacciare and cazzare, (ex)dēroteolāre > sdrucciolare, druzzolare and ruzzolare, rēgīna > regina and reina, -c- > /k/ and /ɡ/, -t- > /t/ and /d/. Although in all these examples the second form has fallen out of usage, the dimorphism is thought to reflect the several-hundred-year period during which Italian developed as a literary language divorced from any native-speaking population, with an origin in 12th/13th-century Tuscan but with many words borrowed from languages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes. (The La Spezia–Rimini Line, the most important isogloss in the entire Romance-language area, passes only about 20 miles to the north of Florence.)

Some other features that distinguish Italian from the Western Romance languages:

• Latin ce-,ci- becomes /tʃe, tʃi/ rather than /(t)se, (t)si/.
• Latin -ct- becomes /tt/ rather than /jt/ or /tʃ/: octō > otto 'eight' (cf. Spanish ocho, French huit, Portuguese oito).
• Vulgar Latin -cl- becomes cchi/kkj/ rather than /ʎ/: oclum > occhio 'eye' (cf. Portuguese olho/oʎu/, French oeil/œj/ < /œʎ/); but Romanian ochi/okʲ/.
• Final /s/ is not preserved, and vowel changes rather than /s/ are used to mark the plural: amico, amici 'male friend(s)', amica, amiche 'female friend(s)' (cf. Romanian amic, amici,amică, amice, Spanish amigo(s) 'male friend(s)', amiga(s) 'female friend(s)'); trēs, sex → tre, sei 'three, six' (cf. Romanian trei, șase, Spanish tres, seis).

Standard Italian also differs in some respects from most nearby Italian languages:

• Perhaps most noticeable is the total lack of metaphony, though metaphony is a feature characterizing nearly every other Italian language.
• No simplification of original /nd/, /mb/ (which often became /nn/, /mm/ elsewhere).

Assimilation[edit]

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.

Writing system[edit]

The Italian alphabet is typically considered to consist of 21 letters. The letters j, k, w, x, y are traditionally excluded, though they appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky, taxi, xenofobo, xilofono. The letter ⟨x⟩ has become common in standard Italian with the prefix extra-, although (e)stra- is traditionally used; it is also common to use of the Latin particle ex(-) to mean 'former(ly)' as in: la mia ex ('my ex-girlfriend'), 'Ex-Jugoslavia' ('Former Yugoslavia'). The letter ⟨j⟩ appears in the first name Jacopo and in some Italian place-names, such as Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jerzu, Jesolo, Jesi, Ajaccio, among others, and in Mar Jonio, an alternative spelling of Mar Ionio (the Ionian Sea). The letter ⟨j⟩ may appear in dialectal words, but its use is discouraged in contemporary standard Italian.^[68] Letters used in foreign words can be replaced with phonetically equivalent native Italian letters and digraphs: ⟨gi⟩, ⟨ge⟩, or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨j⟩; ⟨c⟩ or ⟨ch⟩ for ⟨k⟩ (including in the standard prefix kilo-); ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or ⟨v⟩ for ⟨w⟩; ⟨s⟩, ⟨ss⟩, ⟨z⟩, ⟨zz⟩ or ⟨cs⟩ for ⟨x⟩; and ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨y⟩.

• The acute accent is used over word-final ⟨e⟩ to indicate a stressed front close-mid vowel, as in perché 'why, because'. In dictionaries, it is also used over ⟨o⟩ to indicate a stressed back close-mid vowel (azióne). The grave accent is used over word-final ⟨e⟩ to indicate a front open-mid vowel, as in tè 'tea'. The grave accent is used over any vowel to indicate word-final stress, as in gioventù 'youth'. Unlike ⟨é⟩, which is a close-mid vowel, a stressed final ⟨o⟩ is always a back open-mid vowel (andrò), making ⟨ó⟩ unnecessary outside of dictionaries. Most of the time, the penultimate syllable is stressed. But if the stressed vowel is the final letter of the word, the accent is mandatory, otherwise it is virtually always omitted. Exceptions are typically either in dictionaries, where all or most stressed vowels are commonly marked. Accents can optionally be used to disambiguate words that differ only by stress, as for prìncipi 'princes' and princìpi 'principles', or àncora 'anchor' and ancóra 'still/yet'. For monosyllabic words, the rule is different: when two orthographically identical monosyllabic words with different meanings exist, one is accented and the other is not (example: è 'is', e 'and').
• The letter ⟨h⟩ distinguishes ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere 'to have') from o ('or'), ai ('to the'), a ('to'), anno ('year'). In the spoken language, the letter is always silent. The ⟨h⟩ in ho additionally marks the contrasting open pronunciation of the ⟨o⟩. The letter ⟨h⟩ is also used in combinations with other letters. No phoneme/h/ exists in Italian. In nativized foreign words, the ⟨h⟩ is silent. For example, hotel and hovercraft are pronounced /oˈtɛl/ and /ˈɔverkraft/ respectively. (Where ⟨h⟩ existed in Latin, it either disappeared or, in a few cases before a back vowel, changed to [ɡ]: traggo 'I pull' ← Lat. trahō.)
• The letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ can symbolize voiced or voiceless consonants. ⟨z⟩ symbolizes /dz/ or /ts/ depending on context, with few minimal pairs. For example: zanzara/dzanˈdzaːra/ 'mosquito' and nazione/natˈtsjoːne/ 'nation'. ⟨s⟩ symbolizes /s/ word-initially before a vowel, when clustered with a voiceless consonant (⟨p, f, c, ch⟩), and when doubled; it symbolizes /z/ when between vowels and when clustered with voiced consonants. Intervocalic ⟨s⟩ varies regionally between /s/ and /z/, with /z/ being more dominant in northern Italy and /s/ in the south.
• The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ vary in pronunciation between plosives and affricates depending on following vowels. The letter ⟨c⟩ symbolizes /k/ when word-final and before the back vowels ⟨a, o, u⟩. It symbolizes /tʃ/ as in chair before the front vowels ⟨e, i⟩. The letter ⟨g⟩ symbolizes /ɡ/ when word-final and before the back vowels ⟨a, o, u⟩. It symbolizes /dʒ/ as in gem before the front vowels ⟨e, i⟩. Other Romance languages and, to an extent, English have similar variations for ⟨c, g⟩. Compare hard and soft C, hard and soft G. (See also palatalization.)
• The digraphs ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ indicate (/k/ and /ɡ/) before ⟨i, e⟩. The digraphs ⟨ci⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ indicate softness (/tʃ/ and /dʒ/) before ⟨a, o, u⟩. For example:

Note: ⟨h⟩ is silent in the digraphs ⟨ch⟩, ⟨gh⟩; and ⟨i⟩ is silent in the digraphs ⟨ci⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ before ⟨a, o, u⟩ unless the ⟨i⟩ is stressed. For example, it is silent in ciao/ˈtʃaː.o/ and cielo /ˈtʃɛː.lo/, but it is pronounced in farmacia/ˌfar.maˈtʃiː.a/ and farmacie/ˌfar.maˈtʃiː.e/.

Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length and intensity. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /ʃ/, /dz/, /ts/, /ʎ/, /ɲ/, which are always geminate when between vowels, and /z/, which is always single.Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. There is only one vibrant phoneme /r/ but the actual pronunciation depends on context and regional accent. Generally one can find a flap consonant [ɾ] in unstressed position whereas [r] is more common in stressed syllables, but there may be exceptions. Especially people from the Northern part of Italy (Parma, Aosta Valley, South Tyrol) may pronounce /r/ as [ʀ], [ʁ], or [ʋ].^[69]

Of special interest to the linguistic study of Regional Italian is the gorgia toscana, or 'Tuscan Throat', the weakening or lenition of intervocalic/p/, /t/, and /k/ in the Tuscan language.

The voiced postalveolar fricative/ʒ/ is present as a phoneme only in loanwords: for example, garage[ɡaˈraːʒ]. Phonetic [ʒ] is common in Central and Southern Italy as an intervocalic allophone of /dʒ/: gente[ˈdʒɛnte] 'people' but la gente[laˈʒɛnte] 'the people', ragione[raˈʒoːne] 'reason'.

Grammar[edit]

Italian grammar is typical of the grammar of Romance languages in general. Cases exist for personal pronouns (nominative, oblique, accusative, dative), but not for nouns.

There are two basic classes of nouns in Italian, referred to as genders, masculine and feminine. Gender may be natural (ragazzo 'boy', ragazza 'girl') or simply grammatical with no possible reference to biological gender (masculine costo 'cost', feminine costa 'coast'). Masculine nouns typically end in -o (ragazzo 'boy'), with plural marked by -i (ragazzi 'boys'), and feminine nouns typically end in -a, with plural marked by -e (ragazza 'girl', ragazze 'girls). For a group composed of boys and girls, ragazzi is the plural, suggesting that -i is a general plural. A third category of nouns is umarked for gender, ending in -e in the singular and -i in the plural: legge 'law, f. sg.', leggi 'laws, f. pl.'; fiume 'river, m. sg.', fiumi 'rivers, m. pl.', thus assignment of gender is arbitrary in terms of form, enough so that terms may be identical but of distinct genders: fine meaning 'aim, purpose' is masculine, while fine meaning 'end, ending' (e.g. of a movie) is feminine, and both are fini in the plural, a clear instance of -i as a non-gendered default plural marker. These nouns often, but not always, denote inanimates. There are a number of nouns that have a masculine singular and a feminine plural, most commonly of the pattern m. sg. -o, f. pl. -a (miglio 'mile, m. sg.', miglia 'miles, f. pl.'; paio 'pair, m. sg., paia 'pairs, f. pl.'), and thus are sometimes considered neuter (these are usually derived from neuter Latin nouns). An instance of neuter gender also exists in pronouns of the third person singular.

Examples:^[70]

Nouns, adjectives, and articles inflect for gender and number (singular and plural).

Like in English, common nouns are capitalized when occurring at the beginning of a sentence. Unlike English, nouns referring to languages (e.g. Italian), speakers of languages, or inhabitants of an area (e.g. Italians) are not capitalized.^[71]

There are three types of adjectives: descriptive, invariable and form-changing. Descriptive adjectives are the most common, and their endings change to match the number and gender of the noun they modify. Invariable adjectives are adjectives whose endings do not change. The form changing adjectives 'buono (good), bello (beautiful), grande (big), and santo (saint)' change in form when placed before different types of nouns. Italian has three degrees for comparison of adjectives: positive, comparative, and superlative.^[71]

The order of words in the phrase is relatively free compared to most European languages.^[68] The position of the verb in the phrase is highly mobile. Word order often has a lesser grammatical function in Italian than in English. Adjectives are sometimes placed before their noun and sometimes after. Subject nouns generally come before the verb. Italian is a null-subject language, so that nominative pronouns are usually absent, with subject indicated by verbal inflections (e.g. amo 'I love', ama 's/he loves', amano 'they love'). Noun objects normally come after the verb, as do pronoun objects after imperative verbs, infinitives and gerunds, but otherwise pronoun objects come before the verb.

There are both indefinite and definite articles in Italian. There are four indefinite articles, selected by the gender of the noun they modify and by the phonological structure of the word that immediately follows the article. Uno is masculine singular, used before z (ts/ or /dz/), s+consonant, gn (/ɲ/), or ps, while masculine singular un is used before a word beginning with any other sound. The noun zio 'uncle' selects masculine singular, thus uno zio 'an uncle' or uno zio anziano 'an old uncle,' but un mio zio 'an uncle of mine'. The feminine singular indefinite articles are una, used before any consonant sound, and its abbreviated form, written un', used before vowels: una camicia 'a shirt', una camicia bianca 'a white shirt', un'altra camicia 'a different shirt'. There are seven forms for definite articles, both singular and plural. In the singular: lo, which corresponds to the uses of uno; il, which corresponds to the uses with consonant of un; la, which corresponds to the uses of una; l', used for both masculine and feminine singular before vowels. In the plural: gli is the masculine plural of lo and l'; i is the plural of il; and le is the plural of feminine la and l'.^[71]

There are numerous contractions of prepositions with subsequent articles. There are numerous productive suffixes for diminutive, augmentative, pejorative, attenuating etc., which are also used to create neologisms.

There are 27 pronouns, grouped in clitic and tonic pronouns. Personal pronouns are separated into three groups: subject, object (which take the place of both direct and indirect objects), and reflexive. Second person subject pronouns have both a polite and a familiar form. These two different types of address are very important in Italian social distinctions. All object pronouns have two forms: stressed and unstressed (clitics). Unstressed object pronouns are much more frequently used, and come before the verb (Lo vedo. 'I see him.'). Stressed object pronouns come after the verb, and are used when emphasis is required, for contrast, or to avoid ambiguity (Vedo lui, ma non lei. 'I see him, but not her'). Aside from personal pronouns, Italian also has demonstrative, interrogative, possessive, and relative pronouns. There are two types of demonstrative pronouns: relatively near (this) and relatively far (that). Demonstratives in Italian are repeated before each noun, unlike in English.^[71]

There are three regular sets of verbal conjugations, and various verbs are irregularly conjugated. Within each of these sets of conjugations, there are four simple (one-word) verbal conjugations by person/number in the indicative mood (present tense; past tense with imperfective aspect, past tense with perfective aspect, and future tense), two simple conjugations in the subjunctive mood (present tense and past tense), one simple conjugation in the conditional mood, and one simple conjugation in the imperative mood. Corresponding to each of the simple conjugations, there is a compound conjugation involving a simple conjugation of 'to be' or 'to have' followed by a past participle. 'To have' is used to form compound conjugation when the verb is transitive ('Ha detto', 'ha fatto': he/she has said, he/she has made/done), while 'to be' is used in the case of verbs of motion and some other intransitive verbs ('È andato', 'è stato': he/she has gone, he/she has been). 'To be' may be used with transitive verbs, but in such a case it makes the verb passive ('Ê detto', 'è fatto': it is said, it is made/done). This rule is not absolute, and some exceptions do exist.

Words[edit]

Conversation[edit]

Note: the plural form of verbs could also be used as an extremely formal (for example to noble people in monarchies) singular form.

Question words[edit]

Time[edit]

Numbers[edit]

Days of the week[edit]

Months of the year[edit]

See also[edit]

• The Italian Language Foundation (in the United States)

Notes[edit]

1. ^It is debated, that the Sicilian language is the oldest and direct descendant of Vulgar Latin.^[26]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^ab'Eurobarometer – Europeans and their languages'(PDF).(485 KB), February 2006
2. ^Italian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
3. ^'Centro documentazione per l'integrazione'. Cdila.it. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
4. ^'Centro documentazione per l'integrazione'. Cdila.it. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
5. ^http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf
6. ^Monaco IQ (English language), referencing Chapter One of Files and Reports&InfoSujet=General Population Census 2008&6Gb 2008 census (gouv.mc not an English source)Archived 27 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
7. ^Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). 'Italian'. Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
8. ^'Romance languages'. Encyclopædia Britannica. 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 and French most
9. ^ ^abcEthnologue report for language code:ita (Italy) – Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version
10. ^'Italy'. Ethnologue. 19 February 1999. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
11. ^'Italian — University of Leicester'. .le.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
12. ^[1]Archived 3 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine
13. ^See Italica 1950: 46 (cf. [2] and [3]): 'Pei, Mario A. 'A New Methodology for Romance Classification.' Word, v, 2 (Aug. 1949), 135–146. Demonstrates a comparative statistical method for determining the extent of change from the Latin for the free and checked stressed vowels of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian, Old Provençal, and Logudorese Sardinian. By assigning 3½ change points per vowel (with 2 points for diphthongization, 1 point for modification in vowel quantity, ½ point for changes due to nasalization, palatalization or umlaut, and −½ point for failure to effect a normal change), there is a maximum of 77 change points for free and checked stressed vowel sounds (11×2×3½=77). According to this system (illustrated by seven charts at the end of the article), the percentage of change is greatest in French (44%) and least in Italian (12%) and Sardinian (8%). Prof. Pei suggests that this statistical method be extended not only to all other phonological but also to all morphological and syntactical, phenomena.'.
14. ^See Koutna et al. (1990: 294): 'In the late forties and in the fifties some new proposals for classification of the Romance languages appeared. A statistical method attempting to evaluate the evidence quantitatively was developed in order to provide not only a classification but at the same time a measure of the divergence among the languages. The earliest attempt was made in 1949 by Mario Pei (1901–1978), who measured the divergence of seven modern Romance languages from Classical Latin, taking as his criterion the evolution of stressed vowels. Pei's results do not show the degree of contemporary divergence among the languages from each other but only the divergence of each one from Classical Latin. The closest language turned out to be Sardinian with 8% of change. Then followed Italian — 12%; Spanish — 20%; Romanian — 23,5%; Provençal — 25%; Portuguese — 31%; French — 44%.'
15. ^'Portland State Multicultural Topics in Communications Sciences & Disorders Italian'. www.pdx.edu. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
16. ^ ^abcdefLepschy, Anna Laura; Lepschy, Giulio C. (1988). The Italian language today (2nd ed.). New York: New Amsterdam. pp. 13, 22, 19–20, 21, 35, 37. ISBN978-0-941533-22-5. OCLC17650220.
17. ^Andreose, Alvise; Renzi, Lorenzo (2013), 'Geography and distribution of the Romance Languages in Europe', in Maiden, Martin; Smith, John Charles; Ledgeway, Adam (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, Vol. 2, Contexts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 302–308
18. ^Vittorio Coletti (2011). Storia della lingua. Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. ISBN9788812000487. Retrieved 10 October 2015. L’italiano di oggi ha ancora in gran parte la stessa grammatica e usa ancora lo stesso lessico del fiorentino letterario del Trecento.
19. ^'History of the Italian language'. Italian-language.biz. Retrieved 24 September 2006.
20. ^ ^abP., McKay, John (2006). A history of Western society. Hill, Bennett D., Buckler, John. (8th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN978-0-618-52273-6. OCLC58837884.
21. ^Zucker, Steven; Harris, Beth. 'An Introduction to the Protestant Reformation'. khanacademy. khanacademy. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
22. ^The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. 'Renaissance'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Retrieved 16 July 2017.
23. ^I Promessi sposi or The BetrothedArchived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
24. ^Dittmar, Jeremiah (2011). 'Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press'. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 126 (3): 1133–1172. doi:10.1093/qje/qjr035.
25. ^'Lewis, M. Paul (ed.) (2009). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition'. Ethnologue.com. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
26. ^Ghetti, Noemi, ed. (14 June 2013). 'Dante perde la paternità: la lingua italiana è nata in Sicilia'. Babylon Post. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
27. ^Grimes, Barbara F. (October 1996). Barbara F. Grimes (ed.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Consulting Editors: Richard S. Pittman & Joseph E. Grimes (thirteenth ed.). Dallas, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Academic Pub. ISBN978-1-55671-026-1.
28. ^Brincat (2005)
29. ^'Most similar languages to Italian'.
30. ^Pei, Mario (1949). Story of Language. ISBN978-0-397-00400-3.
31. ^Lüdi, Georges; Werlen, Iwar (April 2005). 'Recensement Fédéral de la Population 2000 — Le Paysage Linguistique en Suisse'(PDF) (in French, German, and Italian). Neuchâtel: Office fédéral de la statistique. Archived from the original(PDF) on 29 November 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2006.
32. ^The Vatican City State appendix to the Acta Apostolicae Sedis is entirely in Italian.
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34. ^L'Aménagement Linguistique dans le Monde - Libye (in French)
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41. ^'9'. Iic-colonia.de. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
42. ^'duolingo'. duolingo. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
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46. ^Hall (1944), pp. 77–78.
47. ^Hall (1944), p. 78.
48. ^ ^abcBertinetto & Loporcaro (2005), p. 132.
49. ^ ^abCanepari (1992), p. 62.
50. ^ ^abcRogers & d'Arcangeli (2004), p. 117.
51. ^ ^abcdCanepari (1992), pp. 68 and 75–76.
52. ^Canepari (1992), pp. 57, 84 and 88–89.
53. ^Bertinetto & Loporcaro (2005), p. 133.
54. ^Canepari (1992), pp. 58 and 88–89.
55. ^Bertinetto & Loporcaro (2005), p. 134.
56. ^Canepari (1992), pp. 57–59 and 88–89.
57. ^ ^abBertinetto & Loporcaro (2005), pp. 134–135.
58. ^Canepari (1992), p. 59.
59. ^Canepari (1992), p. 58.
60. ^Recasens (2013), p. 222.
61. ^'(..) in a large number of Italian accents, there is considerable friction involved in the pronunciation of [ʎ], creating a voiced palatal lateral fricative (for which there is no established IPA symbol)' Ashby (2011:64).
62. ^ ^abLadefoged & Maddieson (1996), p. 221.
63. ^Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004), p. 118.
64. ^ ^abLuciano Canepari, A Handbook of Pronunciation, chapter 3: «Italian».
65. ^Romano, Antonio. 'A preliminary contribution to the study of phonetic variation of /r/ in Italian and Italo-Romance.'Rhotics. New data and perspectives (Proc. of’r-atics-3, Libera Università di Bolzano (2011): 209-226, pp. 213-214.
66. ^'Dizionario d'ortografia e di pronunzia'.
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68. ^ ^abClivio, Gianrenzo; Danesi, Marcel (2000). The Sounds, Forms, and Uses of Italian: An Introduction to Italian Linguistics. University of Toronto Press. pp. 21, 66.
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Bibliography[edit]

• Ashby, Patricia (2011), Understanding Phonetics, Understanding Language series, Routledge, ISBN978-0340928271
• Bertinetto, Pier Marco; Loporcaro, Michele (2005). 'The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome'(PDF). Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 35 (2): 131–151. doi:10.1017/S0025100305002148.
• Canepari, Luciano (1992), Il MªPi – Manuale di pronuncia italiana [Handbook of Italian Pronunciation] (in Italian), Bologna: Zanichelli, ISBN978-88-08-24624-0
• Hall, Robert A. Jr. (1944). 'Italian phonemes and orthography'. Italica. American Association of Teachers of Italian. 21 (2): 72–82. doi:10.2307/475860. JSTOR475860.
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004). 'Italian'. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 34 (1): 117–121. doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628.
• M. Vitale, Studi di Storia della Lingua Italiana, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 1992, ISBN88-7916-015-X
• S. Morgana, Capitoli di Storia Linguistica Italiana, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2003, ISBN88-7916-211-X
• J. Kinder, CLIC: Cultura e Lingua d'Italia in CD-ROM / Culture and Language of Italy on CD-ROM, Interlinea, Novara, 2008, ISBN978-88-8212-637-7
• Treccani Italian Dictionary(iso). archive.org (in Italian). it. Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. (with a similar list of other Italian-modern languages dictionaries)

External links[edit]

• Il Nuovo De Mauro(in Italian)
• Italian language at Curlie
• 'Learn Italian,' BBC
• Portal of the Italian Language(in Italian)
• Translation of Italian expressions(in Italian)