Italian is part of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Italian, like the other Romance languages, is the direct offspring of the Latin language. Of all the major Romance languages, Italian retains the closest resemblance to Latin.
During the long evolution of the development of the Italian language many dialects sprang up as each city had a distinctive dialect. During the 14th century the Tuscan dialect began to predominate, because of the central position of Tuscany in Italy, and because of the aggressive commerce of its most important city, Florence. Moreover, of all the Italian dialects, Tuscan departs least in morphology and phonology from classical Latin, and it therefore harmonizes best with the Italian traditions of Latin culture. Finally, Florentine culture produced the three literary artists who best summarized Italian thought and feeling of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio. The Italian language was first formalized in the early years of the 14th century.
Modern Italian came into being only in the 19th century as the language spoken by the educated Tuscans spread to become the language of a new nation. The unification of Italy in the late 19th century also played an important role not only in political sphere but also had significance in social, economical, and cultural revivals.
Historically, too, Italy has always been of great importance. In the Middle Ages cities such as Florence and Venice were among the richest and most powerful of Europe. It was Italy that produced the Renaissance, whose culture and values have provided the foundations of much of western life in the last five hundred years.
Italian is considered to be the world’s most musical language and the lingua franca of music, and is spoken by around 58 million people in Italy, 24,000 in San Marino, 840,000 in Switzerland, and approximately 5 million in North and South America. It is mainly spoken in the Italian peninsula, southern Switzerland, San Marino, Sicily, Corsica, northern Sardinia, and on the north-eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea.
Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and it is also one of the official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in certain areas which are referred to as Italian Switzerland. Italian is the second official language of the Vatican City some parts of Slovenia and Croatia. It is also spoken in some Italian colonies in Africa. Also, Italian and Italian dialects are widely used by Italian immigrants throughout Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and Latin America. In the United States there are about 395,000 Italian speakers. In Canada there is a high concentration of Italian speakers in Montreal and Toronto, the Italian-speaking population in these two cities is about 315,000. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken language.
Italian is also one of the languages that are taught in educational institutions widely around the world. Throughout the world, Italian is the fifth most taught non-native language, after English, French, Spanish and German.
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