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Italian Language Facts
| Italian Phrasebase Discuss Discussion |
| Italian Phrasebase Discuss Topics |
| Extinct: no |
| Family: Indo-European |
| Branch: Romance |
| Continent: Europe |
| Country: Italy |
| Region: Also spoken in 29 other countries including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, Eritrea, France, Germany, Israel, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Philippines, Puerto Rico, San Marino. |
| Countries Where Spoken: 55,000,000 mother tongue speakers, some of whom are native bilinguals of Italian and regional varieties, and some of whom may use Italian as second language. Population total all countries 62,000,000. Croatia, Eritrea, France, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland, Vatican State. |
| Countries Where Official: Italy |
| Native Speakers: 62,000,000 |
| Speakers Total: 62,000,000 |
| Phrasebase members who speak this language at a native level: 988 |
| Phrasebase members who speak this language at a conversational level: 988 |
| Phrasebase members primary language they are trying to learn: 4,207 |
| Phrasebase members secondary language they are trying to learn: 10,464 |
| Three Letter Code: ITN |
| Alternative Names: ITALIANO |
| Dialects: |
| Summary: Regional varieties coexist with the standard language; some are inherently unintelligible (Nida) to speakers of other varieties unless they have learned them. Aquilano, Molisano, and Pugliese are very different from the other Italian 'dialects'. Piemontese and Sicilian are distinct enough to be separate languages (F.B. Agard 1981, personal communication). Venetian and Lombard are also very different (Philippe Cousson 1981, personal communication). Neapolitan is reported to be unintelligible to speakers of Standard Italian. Northern varieties are closer to French and Occitan than to standard or southern varieties (Agard, N. Vincent). 89% lexical similarity with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Rheto-Romance, 77% with Rumanian. Most Italians use varieties along a continuum from standard to regional to local according to what is appropriate. Possibly nearly half the population do not use Standard Italian as mother tongue. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak standard Italian when it became a unified nation in 1861. Investigation needed: intelligibility with Pugliese with Standard Italian. National language. Grammar. SVO. Bible 1471-1985. |
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