This article is about the languages originating or spoken in Italy. For the regional varieties of the Italian language specifically, see Regional Italian.
See also: Ancient languages of the Italian peninsula
Languages of Italy
Regional and minority languages of Italy[1][2][3][4]
Official
Italian
Regional
see "classification"
Minority
see "historical linguistic minorities"
Immigrant
Romanian
Albanian
Arabic
Chinese
Ukrainian
Romani[5]
Foreign
English (35%)
French (16%)
Spanish (11%)
Other regional language (6%)
Signed
Italian Sign Language
Keyboard layout
Italian QWERTY
Source
Special Eurobarometer, Europeans and their Languages, 2006
Part of a series on the
Culture of Italy
History
Citizenship
Currency and coinage
Economy
Fashion
Flags
Genetic
Historic states
Judaism
LGBT
Military
Music
Name
Postage
Railway
People
Languages
Italian
Arbëresh
Algherese
Slavomolisano
Aostan French
Friulian
Gallo-Italic of Sicily
Italian Germanic
Griko
Ladin
Occitan
Romani
Sardinian
Slovene
Wenzhounese
Traditions
Mythology and Folklore
Folk dance
Folk music
Cuisine
Abruzzese
Apulian
Arbëreshë
Corsican
Ligurian
Lombard
Mantuan
Lucanian
Neapolitan
Piedmontese
Roman
Sardinian
Sicilian
Venetian
Festivals
Tricolour Day (7 January)
National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe (10 February)
Anniversary of the Unification of Italy (17 March)
Liberation Day (25 April)
Republic Day (2 June)
National Unity and Armed Forces Day (4 November)
Religion
Roman Catholicism
Eastern Orthodoxy
Oriental Orthodoxy
Protestantism
Islam
Judaism
Baháʼí Faith
Buddhism
Hinduism
Sikhism
Irreligiosity
Art
Architecture
Sculpture
Literature
Comics
Music and Performing arts
Theatre
Media
Television
Cinema
Books
Internet
Magazines
Newspapers
Radio
Sport
Association football
Athletics
Baseball
Rugby union
Tennis
Monuments
World Heritage Sites
More
Symbols
Flag
Coat of arms
National anthem
National day
National monument
National personification
Organisations
Italian Cultural Institute
Dante Alighieri Society
Libraries
Museums
Italy portal
v
t
e
This article is part of the series on the
Italian language
Italo-Dalmatian languages
Judeo-Italian languages
Tuscan (Florentine)
Regional Italian
Accademia della Crusca
Enciclopedia Treccani
History
Veronese Riddle
Placiti Cassinesi
Sicilian School
Dolce Stil Novo
The Divine Comedy
Pontifical Academy of Arcadia
Italian Purism
The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis
The Betrothed
Literature and other
Culture
Literature
Music
Philosophy
Poetry
Comics
Italophilia
Grammar
Verb conjugation
Alphabet
Orthography
Braille
Phonology
Syntactic gemination
Tuscan gorgia
v
t
e
The languages of Italy include Italian, which serves as the country's national language, in its standard and regional forms, as well as numerous local and regional languages, most of which, like Italian, belong to the broader Romance group. The majority of languages often labeled as regional are distributed in a continuum across the regions' administrative boundaries, with speakers from one locale within a single region being typically aware of the features distinguishing their own variety from one of the other places nearby.[6]
The official and most widely spoken language across the country is Italian, which started off based on the medieval Tuscan of Florence. In parallel, many Italians also communicate in one of the local languages, most of which, like Tuscan, are indigenous evolutions of Vulgar Latin. Some local languages do not stem from Latin, however, but belong to other Indo-European branches, such as Cimbrian (Germanic), Arbëresh (Albanian), Slavomolisano (Slavic) and Griko (Greek). Other non-indigenous languages are spoken by a substantial percentage of the population due to immigration.
Of the indigenous languages, twelve are officially recognized as spoken by linguistic minorities: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian;[7] at the present moment, Sardinian is regarded as the largest of such groups, with approximately one million speakers, even though the Sardophone community is overall declining.[8][9][10][11][12][13] However, full bilingualism (bilinguismo perfetto) is legally granted only to the three national minorities whose mother tongue is German, Slovene or French, and enacted in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and the Aosta Valley, respectively.
^Tagliavini, Carlo (1962). Le origini delle lingue neolatine: introduzione alla filologia romanza. R. Patròn. Archived from the original on 26 February 2018. Retrieved 8 January 2008.
^"La variazione diatopica". Archived from the original on 16 February 2012.
^[1] Archived 7 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine
^AIS, Sprach-und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz, Zofingen 1928-1940
^"Cittadini Stranieri in Italia - 2018".
^"Italy". Ethnologue. Retrieved 22 July 2017.
^Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche, Italian parliament, retrieved 17 October 2015
^"Letture e linguaggio. Indagine Multiscopo sulle famiglie "I cittadini e il tempo libero"" (PDF). ISTAT. 2000. pp. 106–107.
^«With some 1,6 million speakers, Sardinia is the largest minority language in Italy. Sardinians form an ethnic minority since they show a strong awareness of being an indigenous group with a language and a culture of their own. Although Sardinian appears to be recessive in use, it is still spoken and understood by a majority of the population on the island.» Kurt Braunmüller, Gisella Ferraresi (2003). Aspects of multilingualism in European language history. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: University of Hamburg: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 238.
^«Nel 1948 la Sardegna diventa, anche per le sue peculiarità linguistiche, Regione Autonoma a statuto speciale. Tuttavia a livello politico, ufficiale, non cambia molto per la minoranza linguistica sarda, che, con circa 1,2 milioni di parlanti, è la più numerosa tra tutte le comunità alloglotte esistenti sul territorio italiano.» Wolftraud De Concini (2003). Gli altri d'Italia : minoranze linguistiche allo specchio. Pergine Valsugana: Comune. p. 196.
^«Sebbene in continua diminuzione, i sardi costituiscono tuttora la più grossa minoranza linguistica dello stato italiano con ca. 1.000.000 di parlanti stimati (erano 1.269.000 secondo le stime basate sul censimento del 2001)». Sergio Lubello (2016). Manuale Di Linguistica Italiana. Manuals of Romance linguistics. De Gruyter. p. 499.
^"Lingue di Minoranza e Scuola, Sardo". Archived from the original on 16 October 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2019.
^"What Languages are Spoken in Italy?". 29 July 2019.
and 23 Related for: Languages of Italy information
The languagesofItaly include Italian, which serves as the country's national language, in its standard and regional forms, as well as numerous local...
under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither...
transcription delimiters. The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar...
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first...
national languagesof Switzerland are German, French, Italian, and Romansh. German, French, and Italian maintain equal status as official languages at the...
The Italianlanguage in Brazil has been widespread since the second half of the 19th century, particularly due to Italian emigration to Brazil. Today...
Romance languages are closely related. Although Neapolitan shares a high degree of its vocabulary with Italian, the official languageofItaly, differences...
and the neighbouring languagesof Northern Italy is self-evident and so the Lombard language is classified as a Gallo-Italic language (from the ancient Roman...
several dialects and languagesofItaly, such as the Tuscan dialect, which had a very strong influence in modern standard Italian, and is widely known...
Italian, regional variants of the ItalianlanguageLanguagesofItaly, languages and dialects spoken in ItalyItalian culture, cultural features of Italy...
August 17, 2022. Villata, p. 49) Regional languages in Italy and Italian abroad - two different languages with the same problems. According to the author...
of culture, history, ancestry, and often the usage ofItalianlanguage or regional Italianlanguages. It is important to note that Standard Italian was...
languages as working languages). Irish previously had the lower status of "treaty language" before being upgraded to an official and working language...
Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, "regional or minority languages" means languages that are: traditionally...
Italian peoples (such as the Rhaetians, Camuni, Etruscans) likely spoke non- or pre-Indo-European languages. In addition, peoples speaking languages of...
one of the commonly spoken languages in the country after Greek. Albanian is the third most common mother tongue among foreign residents in Italy. This...
Italo-Dalmatian languages and the Gallo-Romance languages. Its development was also influenced by the Germanic languagesof the post-Roman invaders. When Italy unified...
varieties and standard Italian exist along a sociolect continuum, and are not to be confused with the local non-immigrant languagesofItaly that predate the...
250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018...
with the grammar of spoken Italian: this is not Italian Sign Language, however. Some features of LIS are typical of sign languages in general, e.g. agreement...
Largest Languages in 2007 Italianlanguage Archived 2 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine University of Leicester "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger"...
and Italian (1.0%, 640,000). People who spoke other languages natively made up the remaining 5.2% of the population. French The regional languagesof Metropolitan...
Italo-Dalmatian languages spoken in the rest ofItaly. The Venetian language is sometimes considered to be part of the Italo-Dalmatian languages, but some major...