INTRODUCTION
Italian is a Romance language principally spoken in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, the Vatican City, Malta and Eritrea.
It is the official language of Italy, and 93% of population are native Italian speakers. Around 50% of population speak a regional dialect as mother tongue.
Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardised Italian and other regional languages
It is considered as a single language with numerous dialects as during the long period of the evolution of Italian, many dialects sprang up and each region of Italy also has its own 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
Italian derives diachronically from Latin..
It is part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.
Italian is related most closely to the other two Italo-Dalmatian languages, Sicilian and the extinct Dalmatian.
Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.
Lexical similarity is 90% with French, 88% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish and Portuguese, 78% with Rhaeto-Romance, and 77% with Romanian.
Italian uses the Latin alphabet, Of all the major Romance languages, Italian retains the closest resemblance to Latin in terms of vocabulary and consonant.
Italian is one of the four official languages in Switzerland; it is studied in all the confederation schools and spoken as mother tongue in the Swiss cantons of Ticino and Grigioni and by the Italian immigrants that are present in German- and French-speaking cantons.
Few famous personalities from Italy
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