Languages of Italy

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Italy is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in Europe. About 45.9% of the Italian population speak primarily Italian at home, while another 32.2% speak a local language alongside Italian. Italian is the country's national and official language, and has a standard form and regional varieties. It is the most spoken language in Italy. In addition to Italian, numerous local and regional languages are spoken; most of these, like Italian, belong to the Romance language group. In Italy, these are commonly called dialetti ("dialects"). Most of the Romance varieties of Italy often labelled as "regional" form part of a continuum, with varying degrees of transition between neighbouring varieties across different areas, regardless of administrative boundaries; speakers can typically recognize the features that distinguish their own variety from others spoken nearby.

According to Italian linguist Tullio De Mauro, at the time of the unification of Italy in 1861, 2.5% of the population spoke Italian. The language later spread widely among the general population through compulsory education, urbanization, internal migration, bureaucracy, military service, and mass media (both print and audiovisual media) from the 1950s onwards. Italian was originally based on the Tuscan spoken in Florence during the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of the local languages () evolved independently from colloquial Latin, and are therefore not derived from Italian, but "sister languages" of Italian and other Romance varieties. Some local languages do not derive from Latin, but belong to other Indo-European branches. For example, Cimbrian is Germanic, Arbëresh varieties are Albanian, Slavomolisano is Slavic, and Griko is Hellenic. Other languages are spoken by more recent immigrant communities.

The second most spoken language in Italy is a dialect continuum known outside of Italy as Neapolitan language, spoken by about 11 million people in most of Southern Italy, excluding Sicily and Sardinia. The Neapolitan language was classified with this name by UNESCO as an endangered language, and it is also the term used by Ethnologue, while Glottolog uses "Continental Southern Italian". In Italy, the term Intermediate Southern Italian (meridionale intermedio) is preferred, as the word napoletano only refers to the varieties spoken in the city of Naples and its immediate surroundings. Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian. Sardinian is considered one of the largest of these, with approximately one million speakers, even though the number of speakers is overall declining.

Ancient languages of Italy

thumb|250px|Ethnolinguistic map of Italy in the [[Iron Age, before the Roman expansion and conquest of Italy]]

Numerous languages were spoken in ancient Italy. These included Etruscan and the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages, consisting of Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages. Furthermore, Celtic languages were spoken in Cisalpine Gaul and ancient Greek was spoken in Magna Graecia. Latin emerged out of the Latino-Faliscan group and replaced the other languages spoken in Italy following the Romanization of [[Roman expansion in Italy|

the whole peninsula]]; it is the ancestor of all the Romance languages, the only living subgroup of the Italic languages.

Language or dialect

Almost all of the Romance languages spoken in Italy are native to the area in which they are spoken. Apart from Standard Italian, these languages are often referred to as dialetti "dialects", both colloquially and in scholarly usage; however, the term may coexist with other labels like "minority languages" or "vernaculars" for some of them. The label "dialect" may be understood erroneously to imply that the native languages spoken in Italy are "dialects" of Standard Italian in the prevailing English-language sense of "varieties or variations of a language". This is not the case in Italy, as the country's long-standing linguistic diversity does not actually stem from Standard Italian. Most of Italy's variety of Romance languages predate Italian and evolved locally from Vulgar Latin, independently of what would become the standard national language, long before the fairly recent spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy. Conversely, with the spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy in the 20th century, local varieties of Standard Italian have also developed throughout the peninsula, influenced to varying extents by the underlying local languages, most noticeably at the phonological level; though regional boundaries seldom correspond to isoglosses distinguishing these varieties, these variations of Standard Italian are commonly referred to as regional Italian (italiano regionale). Michele Salazar found Bonamore's explanation "new and convincing".

Legal status of Italian

Italian was first declared Italy’s official language during the Fascist period, more specifically through a Royal Decree-Law (R.D.L.) that applied to the entire Italian empire. It was adopted on 15 October 1925, under the title: "Sull'Obbligo della lingua italiana in tutti gli uffici giudiziari del Regno, salvo le eccezioni stabilite nei trattati internazionali per la città di Fiume."

The first Italian Constitution of 1948 establishes Italian as the official national language. Article 1 of Law 482/1999 states: "La lingua ufficiale della Repubblica è l’italiano" ("The official language of the Republic is Italian") Since the constitution was penned, some laws and articles have been written on the procedures of criminal cases passed that explicitly state that Italian should be used:

Statute of the Trentino-South Tyrol (constitutional law of the northern region of Italy around Trento): "... " (Statuto Speciale per il Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Art. 99, "... [the language] Italian ... is the official language of the State.")
Code for civil procedure: "" (Codice di procedura civile, Art. 122, "In all procedures, the use of the Italian language is required.")
Code for criminal procedure: "" (Codice di procedura penale, Art. 109 [169-3; 63, 201 att.], "The acts of the criminal proceedings are carried out in the Italian language.")

Historical linguistic minorities

Recognition by the Italian state

250px|thumb|Communities recognized by Italy as historical linguistic minorities

Art. 6 of the Italian Constitution was drafted by the Founding Fathers to show sympathy for the country's historical linguistic minorities, in a way for the newly founded Republic to let them become part of the national fabric and distance itself from the Italianization policies promoted earlier because of nationalism.

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 that it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects.

During Fascism, which even carried out a persecution of alloglots minorities, since especially from the 1930s onward, the regime began to view local varieties as a threat to the country’s cultural and linguistic unity and as a potential encouragement of autonomist claims. Yet, initially, the Fascist education reform enacted in 1923 by Giovanni Gentile, whose curricula were drafted by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, set aside the prevailing anti-dialectal attitude in schools, aiming instead to combat illiteracy starting from the student’s linguistic background before moving on to the national language (according to the “from dialect to language” method). It was instead with the 1934 school programs (“Ercole programs”) that “dialects” once again came to be regarded solely as sources of errors to be sanctioned, as had been the case in the 1905 programs and as would be in those of 1955.

For the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Article 6 of the Constitution represents "the overcoming of the closed notion of the 19th-century national State and a reversal of great political and cultural significance, compared to the nationalistic attitude manifested by Fascism" as well as being "one of the fundamental principles of the current constitutional system".

However, more than a half century passed before the Art. 6 was followed by any of the above-mentioned "appropriate measures". Italy applied in fact the Article for the first time in 1999, by means of the national law N.482/99.

Before said legal framework entered into force, only four linguistic minorities (the French-speaking community in the Aosta Valley; the German-speaking community and, to a limited extent, the Ladin one in the Province of Bolzano; the Slovene-speaking community in the Province of Trieste and, with less rights, the Province of Gorizia) enjoyed some kind of acknowledgment and protection, stemming from specific clauses within international treaties.

Around the 1960s, the Italian Parliament eventually resolved to apply the previously neglected article of the country's fundamental Charter. The Parliament thus appointed a "Committee of three Sages" to single out the groups that were to be recognized as linguistic minorities, and further elaborate the reason for their inclusion. The nominated people were Tullio de Mauro, Giovan Battista Pellegrini and Alessandro Pizzorusso, three notable figures who distinguished themselves with their life-long activity of research in the field of both linguistics and legal theory. Based on linguistic, historical as well as anthropological considerations, the experts eventually selected thirteen groups, corresponding to the currently recognized twelve with the further addition of the Sinti and Romani-speaking populations. The original list was approved, with the only exception of the nomadic peoples, who lacked the territoriality requisite and therefore needed a separate law. However, the draft was presented to the law-making bodies when the legislature was about to run its course, and had to be passed another time. The bill was met with resistance by all the subsequent legislatures, being reluctant to challenge the widely held myth of "Italian linguistic homogeneity",

Some interpretations of said law seem to divide the twelve minority languages into two groups, with the first including the non-Latin speaking populations (with the exception of the Catalan-speaking one) and the second including only the Romance-speaking populations. Some other interpretations state that a further distinction is implied, considering only some groups to be "national minorities". Regardless of the ambiguous phrasing, all the twelve groups are technically supposed to be allowed the same measures of protection; furthermore, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, signed and ratified by Italy in 1997, applies to all the twelve groups mentioned by the 1999 national law, therefore including the Friulians, the Sardinians, the Occitans, the Ladins etc., with the addition of the Romani.

In actual practice, not each of the twelve historical linguistic minorities is given the same consideration. In fact, the discrimination lay in the urgent need to award the highest degree of protection only to the French-speaking minority in the Aosta Valley and the German one in South Tyrol, owing to international treaties. For example, the institutional websites are only in Italian with a few exceptions, like a French version of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. A bill proposed by former prime minister Mario Monti's cabinet formally introduced a differential treatment between the twelve historical linguistic minorities, distinguishing between those with a "foreign mother tongue" (the groups protected by agreements with Austria, France and Slovenia) and those with a "peculiar dialect" (all the others). The bill was later implemented, but deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.

Recognition at the European level

Italy is a signatory of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but has not ratified the treaty, and therefore its provisions protecting regional languages do not apply in the country; however, the Charter does not establish at what point differences in expression result in a separate language, deeming it an "often controversial issue", and citing the necessity to take into account, other than purely linguistic criteria, also "psychological, sociological and political considerations".

Regional recognition of the local languages

Aosta Valley:
French is officially recognised and safeguarded in the whole region, enjoying the same dignity and standing of Italian (Le Statut spécial de la Vallée d'Aoste, Titre VIe, Article 38);
Franco-Provençal is unofficial but protected and promoted according to state and regional laws.
German is unofficial but recognised in the Lys Valley (Lystal) (Le Statut spécial de la Vallée d'Aoste, Titre VIe, Art. 40 - bis).

thumb|Map showing the areas where the [[Griko language is still spoken (Bovesia and Grecìa Salentina); the last living trace of the Greek elements that once formed Magna Graecia.]]

Basilicata:
Arbëresh is officially recognized.
Calabria:
Calabrian Greek, Arbëresh and Occitan are officially recognised and safeguarded.
Campania: Neapolitan is "promoted" but not recognised by the region (Reg. Gen. nn. 159/I 198/I, Art. 1, comma 4).
Friuli-Venezia Giulia:
Friulian, Slovene and German are "promoted", but not recognised, by the region (Legge regionale 18 dicembre 2007, n. 29, Art. 1, comma 1); (Legge regionale 16 novembre 2007, n. 26, Art. 16); (Legge regionale 20 novembre 2009, n. 20);

thumb|Comparison between the domains of the [[Duchy of Milan in the 14th century (in green) and the modern geographical borders of the Lombard language (in yellow)]]

Lombardy:
Lombard is unofficial but recognised as the regional language (Legge regionale 25/2016).
Piedmont:
Piedmontese is unofficial but recognised as the regional language (Consiglio Regionale del Piemonte, Ordine del Giorno n. 1118, Presentato il 30 November 1999);
the region "promotes", without recognising, the Occitan, Franco-Provençal, French and Walser languages (Legge regionale 7 aprile 2009, n. 11, Art. 1).
Sardinia:
The region considers the cultural identity of the Sardinian people as a primary asset (l.r. N.26/97, l.r. N.22/18), in accordance with the values of equality and linguistic pluralism enshrined in the Italian Constitution and the European treaties, with particular reference to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (l.r. N.26/97).
South Tyrol:
German and Ladin are official (enjoying the same dignity and standing of Italian, the national language) in the province of South Tyrol (Statuto speciale per il Trentino-Alto Adige, Titolo XI, Articolo 99 and Articolo 102); German being the most spoken by the population.
Trentino:
Ladin, Cimbrian, and Mòcheno are unofficial but recognised in (Statuto speciale per il Trentino-Alto Adige, Titolo XI, Articolo 102).
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol
German (in South Tyrolean dialect form) is officially recognized and safeguarded. In some municipalities Ladin, Mocheno, and Cimbrian are also recognized.
Veneto:
Venetan is unofficial but recognised and promoted (Legge regionale 13 aprile 2007, n. 8, Art. 2, comma 2).

Conservation status

thumb|300px|Frequency of use of regional languages in Italy, as the sole or principal languages at home, based on ISTAT data from 2015

According to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there are 31 endangered languages in Italy. The degree of endangerment is classified in different categories ranging from 'safe' (safe languages are not included in the atlas) to 'extinct' (when there are no speakers left). The source for the languages' distribution is the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger,

Severely endangered

Walser German: the village of Issime in the upper Lys Valley/Lystal in the Aosta Valley; an outlying dialect of Alemannic not listed separately by the SIL. It is considered by Glottolog to be a separate language.
Molise Croatian: the villages of Montemitro, San Felice del Molise, and Acquaviva Collecroce in the Province of Campobasso in southern Molise; a mixed Chakavian–Shtokavian dialect of Croatian not listed separately by the SIL. It is considered by Glottolog to be a separate language.
Griko: the Salento peninsula in the Province of Lecce in southern Apulia; an outlying dialect of Greek not listed separately by the SIL. It is considered by Glottolog to be a separate language known as Apulia-Calabrian Greek.
Gardiol Occitan: Guardia Piemontese in Calabria; an outlying dialect of Occitan Alpine Provençal. It is considered by Glottolog to be a separate language.
Griko (Calabria): a few villages near Reggio di Calabria in southern Calabria; an outlying dialect of Greek not listed separately by the SIL. It is considered by Glottolog to be a separate language known as Apulia-Calabrian Greek.

Classification

All living languages indigenous to Italy are part of the Indo-European language family. They can be divided into Romance languages and non-Romance languages. The classification of the Romance languages of Italy is controversial, and listed here are two of the generally accepted classification systems.

Romance languages

The following classification of Romance languages of Italy is based on that of Giovan Battista Pellegrini (1980), revised and updated by Touring Club Italiano in collaboration with National Research Council (1989–1992) and then by Michele Loporcaro (2009). It groups different Romance languages according to areal and identifies the following linguistic areas:

Gallo-Italic:
Emilian (spoken in Emilia);
Romagnol (spoken in Romagna);
Lombard (spoken in Lombardy);
Western Trentino (spoken in Western Trentino)
Central Trentino (spoken in Central Trentino)
Piedmontese (spoken in Piedmont);
Ligurian (spoken in Liguria);
Northern Marchigian (spoken in Northern Marches);
Lunigiano (spoken in extreme Northwest of the Province of Massa-Carrara).
Venetan:
Central and Northern Venetan;
Southern Venetan;
Ladin-Venetan (spoken in the surroundings of Agordo);
Venetian (spoken in the Venetian Lagoon);
Veronese (spoken in Verona district);
Liventino (spoken in Lower Livenza Valley);
Triestine (spoken in Trieste district);
Eastern Trentino (spoken in Eastern Trentino).
Friulian:
Western Friulian (spoken in east of Pordenone);
Central-Eastern Friulian (spoken in Southeastern Friuli);
Carnico (spoken in Northern Friuli).
Ladin:
Atesino Ladin (spoken in Fassa Valley, Badia Valley and Gardena Valley);
Cadorino Ladin (spoken in Cadore);
Fiammazzo Ladin (spoken in Fiemme Valley).
Franco-Provençal:
Valdôtain Franco-Provençal (spoken in Aosta Valley);
Piedmontese Franco-Provençal (spoken in the Arpitan Valleys of Piedmont).
Provençal:
Piedmontese Provençal (spoken in the Alpine valleys of Southwestern Piedmont)
Tuscan:
Western Toscano (spoken in Pisa and Leghorn districts)
Florentine (spoken in Florence district);
Senese (spoken in Siena district);
Aretino (spoken in Arezzo district);
Grossetano- Amiatino (spoken in Grosseto district and Monte Amiata area);
Apuano (spoken in Apuan Alps);
Elbano (spoken in Elba island).

Central:
Central Marchigian (spoken in Central Marches);
Northern Umbrian (spoken in Northern Umbria);
Western Umbrian (spoken in Western Umbria);
Southern Umbrian-Viterbese (spoken in Southern Umbria);
Northern Latian (spoken in Northern Lazio);
Southern Latian (spoken in Southern Lazio);
Romanesco (spoken in Rome);
Reatino-Aquilano (spoken in Rieti and extreme North-western Abruzzo).
Upper Southern:
Southern Marchigian (spoken in Southern Marches);
Abruzzese (spoken in Northern, Eastern and Southern Abruzzo);
Molisan (spoken in Molise);
Southern Latian (spoken in Southern Lazio);
Apulo-Barese (spoken in Central Apulia)
Dauno-Appenninico (spoken in Northern Apulia with the exception of the Northern Gargano)
Garganico (spoken in Southern Gargano)
Tarantino (spoken in Taranto district)
Campanian (spoken in Campania)
Irpinian (spoked in Avellino district);
Neapolitan (spoken in Naples district);
Cilentan (spoken in Cilento)
Lucano (spoken in Basilicata);
Northern Calabrian (spoken in Northern Calabria).
Extreme Southern:
Salentino (spoken in Salento);
Central and Southern Calabrian (spoken in Central and Southern Calabria);
Sicilian (spoken in Sicily).
Sardinian (spoken in and Southern and Central Sardinia):
Campidanese Sardinian (spoken in Southern Sardinia)
Northern Logudorese (spoken in Northern Logudoro)
Nuorese (spoken in Nuoro district)
Barbaricino (spoken in Barbagia)
Sassarese (spoken in northwestern Sardinia).
Gallurese (spoken in northeastern Sardinia).

The following classification is proposed by Maiden and Parry:

Northern varieties:
Northern Italo-Romance:
'Gallo-Italian' (Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna).
Venetan.
Ladin.
Friulian.
Central and Southern:
Tuscan (with Corsican).
Middle Italian (Marche, Umbria, Lazio).
Upper Southern (Abruzzo, northern Puglia, Molise, Campania, Basilicata).
Extreme Southern (Salento, southern Calabria and Sicily).
Sardinian.

Non-Romance languages

Albanian, Slavic, Greek and Romani languages

{| class="toccolours sortable" border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse; text-align:center"

! Language

!colspan="4" | Family

! ISO 639-3

! Dialects spoken in Italy

! Notes

! Speakers

| Arbëresh || Albanian || Tosk || |||| aae || According to Minority Rights Group International: "The ethnic Albanian (Arbëresh) dialects of Italy bear little resemblance to the standard language or dialects of Albania, as they have been cut off from the main language for around 500 years. Some dialects spoken in Italy are so dissimilar that ethnic Albanians use Italian as a lingua franca. Ethnic Albanians are bilingual."

Southern Italy and islands

Approximate distribution of the regional languages of Sardinia and Southern Italy according to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger:

One common classification divides these languages into two groups:

The Italo-Dalmatian languages, including Neapolitan and Sicilian, as well as the Sardinian-influenced Sassarese and Gallurese which are sometimes grouped with Sardinian but are actually of southern Corsican origin.
The Sardinian language, usually listed as a group of its own with two main Logudorese and Campidanese orthographic forms.

All of these languages are considered conservative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with Sardinian being the most conservative of them all.

Mother tongues of foreign citizens in Italy

{| class="wikitable"

! Language (2024)!! Population

| Romanian || 1.073,196

| Arabic|| 577,897

| Albanian|| 416,229

| Chinese || 308,984

| Ukrainian|| 273,484

| Bengali|| 192,678

| Hindi|| 170,880

| Filipino|| 156,642

| Others || 2.107,67

Standardised written forms

Although "[al]most all Italian dialects were being written in the Middle Ages, for administrative, religious, and often artistic purposes", use of local language gave way to stylized Tuscan, eventually labeled Italian. Local languages are still occasionally written, but only the following regional languages of Italy have a standardised written form. This may be widely accepted or used alongside more traditional written forms:

Piedmontese: traditional, definitely codified between the 1920s and the 1960s by Pinin Pacòt and Camillo Brero
Ligurian: "Grafîa ofiçiâ" created by the Académia Ligùstica do Brénno;
Sardinian: "Limba Sarda Comuna" was experimentally adopted in 2006;
Friulian: "Grafie uficiâl" created by the Osservatori Regjonâl de Lenghe e de Culture Furlanis;
Ladin: "Grafia Ladina" created by the Istituto Ladin de la Dolomites;
Venetian: "Grafia Veneta Unitaria", the official manual published in 1995 by the Regione Veneto local government, although written in Italian. It has been recently updated on 14 December 2017, under the name of "Grafia Veneta Ufficiale".

Gallery

File:Minoranze linguistiche it.svg|Officially recognised ethno-linguistic minorities of Italy

File:Dialetti Italia 1939.png|Regional languages of Italy according to Clemente Merlo and Carlo Tagliavini in 1939

File:Linguistic_map_of_Italy.png|Languages and language islands of Italy

File:Dialetti e lingue in Italia.png|Languages of Italy

File:Languages spoken in Italy.svg|Main dialectal groups of Italy

File:Italy - Forms of Dialect.jpg|Main linguistic groups of Italy

File:Use of regional languages.png|Percentage of people in Italy having a command of a regional language (Doxa, 1982; Coveri's data, 1984)

</gallery>

Notes and references

Bibliography

External links

NavigAIS Online version of the Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (AIS) (Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland)
An interactive map of languages and dialects in Italy
Ethnologue - Languages of Italy
Rivista Etnie, linguistica