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Italian Language Profile ITALIANO |
A Romance Language like French, Romanian, Portuguese and Spanish, Italian
is spoken by the more than 70,000,000 inhabitants of Italy and is one
of the official languages of Switzerland and Ethiopia. While Italy presents
a complex mosaic of dialects and regional vernaculars that evolved from
Latin over 1000 years ago, modern Italian, based on the Florentine dialect,
is spoken by almost all Italians throughout the peninsula. The pre-eminence
of the Florentine dialect dates to the late Middle Ages, when such literary
giants as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch used the speech of Florence
as the basis for a literary language. But it was only with the upsurge
in nationalism in the nineteenth century and the country's subsequent
unification that large numbers of Italians began to feel a practical
need for a shared language. Over the next century, with the help of
print media, public schooling, radio and television, the dialect of
Florence would emerge as the national language of Italy. 
In part because of Italy's remarkable contributions in the fields of
art, architecture, literature, music and science, Italian remains one
of the world's most intensively studied languages both inside and outside
the university. As home of the Catholic church and birthplace of some
of Europe's oldest cities, Italy has been a mecca for travelers for
centuries. Religious pilgrimages to Rome were commonplace throughout
the Middle Ages - some of the world's oldest guide books date to this
period. After Italy lost its cultural dominance, European - and later,
American - travelers flooded across its borders to admire the art of
Venice, Florence, Milan and Rome as well as the Greek and Roman ruins
scattered throughout the south. The study and popularity of the Italian
language has always been inseparable from a reverence for the literary
and artistic output of the Italians. With more than sixty million tourists
a year, the pilgrimages, now under different banners - artistic, culinary,
archaeological, personal - continue unabated. |