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Italian (, or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in Italy. Standard Italian was strongly influenced by the Tuscan dialect and is somewhat intermediate between Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and Gallo-Italian languages of the North. Like many languages written using the Latin alphabet, Italian has double consonants. However, contrary to, for example, French and Spanish, double consonants are pronounced as long (geminated) in Italian. As in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of French), stress is distinctive. Out of the Romance languages, Italian is generally considered to be the one most closely resembling Latin in terms of vocabulary, though Romanian most closely preserves the declension system of Classical Latin while Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.
History The history of the Italian language is quite complex but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called Italian (as opposed to its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the region of Benevento dating from 960-963•. Italian was first formalised in the first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that others could all understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. Italian has always had a distinctive dialect for each city, since the cities were up until recently city-states. A very controversial Italian dictum has it that the best spoken Italian is lingua toscana in bocca romana - "the Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth" (Tuscan dialects spoken with Roman accent), based on a myth that Romans are known for speaking clearly and distinctly. The Tuscan dialect (supposedly influenced by Etruscan and Oscan) is the closest existing dialect to Dante's now-standard Italian. In contrast to the dialects of northern Italy, the older southern Italian dialects were largely untouched by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy, mainly by bards from France, during the Middle Ages. (See La Spezia-Rimini Line.) The economic might and relative advanced development of Tuscany at the time (late Middle Ages), gave its dialect weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life. Also, the increasing cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of 'Umanesimo' and Rinascimento (Renaissance) made its volgare (dialect), or rather a refined version of it a standard in the arts. The re-discovery of Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia and a renowned interest in linguistics in te 16th century sparked a debate which raged throughout Italy concerning which criteria should be chosen to establish a modern Italian standard to be used as much a literary as a spoken language. Scholars were divided in three factions: the purists, headed by Pietro Bembo who in his Asolani claimed that the language might only be based on the great literary classics (notably Dante, petrarch, and Boccaccio), Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines who preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times, and the Courtisans like Baldassarre Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino who insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new standard. Eventually Bembo's ideas prevailed, the result being the publication of the first Italian dictionary in 1612 and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca. Classification Italian is most closely related to the other two Italo-Dalmatian languages, Sicilian and the extinct Dalmatian. The three are part of the Italo-Western grouping of the Romance languages, which are a subgroup of the Italic branch of Indo-European. Geographic distribution
Dialects and regional languages of Italy See Italian dialects Cultural acceptance of dialects The dialect of Tuscany became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy, by way of the famous Tuscan author Dante Alighieri. Dante and other Tuscan poets were inspired by the Sicilian koine, promoted by the Sicilian School under the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. His project (in which Giacomo da Lentini invented the sonnet) was accomplished by enriching the Sicilian language with new words adapted from French, Latin, and Apulian. The Sicilians produced a collection of love-poems which can be considered the first standard Italian ever produced, though it was only used for literary purposes until Guittone d'Arezzo. When the Swabian dynasty ended the Tuscans and Dante re-discovered the standard (see De Vulgari Eloquentia and Vita Nova) and integrated the Sicilians into Florence's linguistic heritage. The dolce stil novo, the platonic school of courtly love, can be considered the link between the old southern school and modern Tuscan poetry which aimed to express the new intellectual sensibility and fervor of the newly-born city-states, as Florence. Dante's work, Divina Commedia was the first of its kind to be written in a dialect (though sensibly enriched compared with its spoken counterpart), as opposed to the traditional Latin. The success of his work spread the Florentine dialect, and gave it prestige and acceptance. For this he is referred to as the father of the Italian language and Il Sommo Poeta, although it should be noted that the language normally referred to as Italian is, nor has ever been not the same as Florentine. By the time Italy was unified 1861, the Italian standard had further been influenced by Florentine through the work of the Accademia della Crusca (Cardinal Pietro Bembo and followers). Bembo laid the foundation for what is today's modern standard. But Bembo was a purist and had accepted no other influence than that from Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio. As time went on, the language was losing touch with linguistic change, and could not put up with technology and science. The much-needed update would have to wait a little longer until, in what is commonly regarded as the first modern novel of the Italian literature, ''I Promessi Sposi'' (The Betrothed), Alessandro Manzoni further refined his widely read novel by "rinsing" it in the waters of the Arno (Florence's river), as he states in his 1840 edition Preface. However, Manzoni refused the Crusca's purist, written Florentine-only attitude and admitted a certain influence from other dialects, though he reduced it as compared to the first edition of 1821. After unification the huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home dialects ("ciao" is Venetian, "panettone" is Milanese etc.), in fact confirming Manzoni's linguistic views. Tuscan has thus become one of the twenty official dialects of Italy. Though technically speaking the division between dialect and language is purely conventional, it has been used by scholars (e.g., by Francesco Bruni) to distinguish between the languages that made up the Italian koine, and those which had very little or no part in it, as Albanian, Greek, Südtirolean, Ladin, Friulian and Occitan, which are still spoken by small minorities. Dialects are generally not used for general communication (e.g., on TV), but are limited to native speakers in informal contexts. Dialect is often deprecated as a sign of poor education. Younger generations, especially those under 35 (though it may vary in different areas), speak almost exclusively standard Italian in all situations, usually with local accents. Different accents can be recognised from various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local dialect (for example, annà replaces andare in the area of Rome for the infinitive "to go"). Dialects have their share of enthusiasts, but in most areas of Italy this is a small niche of the population. The promotion of dialects by political forces such as the Lega Nord has possibly damaged rather than promoted their status. Throughout Italy, some singers and actors use dialects as their language, but the language they use is, in most cases, strongly influenced by Italian. Dialects and accents are often used in movies to provide comic relief or to produce stereotypes: northern dialects can be connected to self-made entrepreneurs; a Roman accent is associated with arrogant, simple-minded bullies; Neapolitan reminds of dishonest slackers, or of people living from hand to mouth; and, even in Italy, Sicilian is often associated with the Mafia. Derived languages There is a presence of different varieties of Italian language most of all in South America. From the early 19th to the 20th century, thousands of Italians, specially from the North of Italy, settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil, both in urban areas and in the vast countryside, where they created many rural colonies. A proof is the presence of Talian in Brazil. Talian is a distinctive variety of Italian derived and strongly influenced by Venetian. In any case, there is a brave discussion on considering Talian as a creole language or a variety of dialect with external influences (i.e. from Portuguese). Other examples are Cocoliche, once spoken in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires, and Venetian in the Mexican states of Puebla and Veracruz. Sounds Vowels Italian has seven vowel phonemes: , , , , , , . The pairs - and - are seldom distinguished in writing and often confused, even though each variety of Italian employs both phonemes consistently. Compare, for example: (because) and (you listen), employed by some northern speakers, with and , as pronounced by most central and southern speakers. As a result, the usage is strongly indicative of a person's origin. The standard (Tuscan) usage of these vowels is listed in vocabularies, and employed outside Tuscany mainly by the more educated people, especially actors and (television) journalists. These are truly different phonemes, however: compare (fishing) and (peach), both spelled "pesca" (). Similarly (barrel) and (beatings), both spelled as "botte", discriminate and (). In general, vowel combinations usually pronounce each vowel separately. Diphthongs exist (e.g. "uo", "iu", "ie", "ai"), but are limited to an unstressed "u" or "i" before or after a stressed vowel. The unstressed "u" in a diphthong approximates the English semivowel "w", the unstressed "i" approximates the semivowel "y". E.g.: buono, ieri. As a semivowel, "j" is an alternate spelling of i, currently obsolete but common until early 20th century and preserved in specific words like "Jesi" (a town) or "Jacopo" (a first name). Triphthongs are limited to a diphthong plus an unstressed "i". (e.g. miei, tuoi.) Other sequences of three vowels exist (e.g. noia, febbraio), but they are not triphthongs; they consist of a vowel followed by a diphthong. Telugu, an Indian Language is the only language which sounds similar to Italian by ending with vowel sound. This language is also known as Italian of the east. Consonants Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively. The phoneme undergoes assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g., when followed by a velar ( or ) it's pronounced , etc. Italian plosives are not aspirated (unlike in English). Italian speakers hear the difference as a foreign accent. Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for , , , , which are always geminate, and which is always single. Geminate plosives and affricates are realised as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and are realised as lengthened continuants. Geminate is realised as the trill . Assimilation Italian has few diphthongs, and so most unfamiliar diphthongs heard in foreign words (in particular, those with a first vowel that is not "i" or "u", or a first vowel that is stressed), will be assimilated as the corresponding dieresis (i.e., the vowel sounds will be pronounced separately). Italian phonotactics do not usually permit words to end on consonants, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds. See also IPA chart for Italian Grammar Writing system Italian is written using the Latin alphabet. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not considered part of the standard Italian alphabet, but appear in loanwords (such as jeans, whiskey, taxi). J in Italian is an old-fashioned orthographic variant of I, appearing in the first name "Jacopo" as well as in some Italian place names, e.g., the towns of Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, among numerous others, and in the alternate spelling Mar Jonio (also spelled Mar Ionio) for the Ionian Sea. J may also appear in many words from different dialects, but its use is discouraged in contemporary Italian, and it is not part of the standard 21-letter contemporary Italian alphabet. Each of these foreign letters had an Italian equivalent spelling: gi for j, ch for k, u or v for w (depending on what sound it makes), cs or s for x, and i for y, but these are now obsolete from the formal alphabet, though still used in spelling to create the sounds they represent. Note that the H is "silent" in the digraphs CH and GH, as also the I in cia, cio, ciu and even cie is not pronounced as a separate vowel, unless it carries the primary stress. For example, it is silent in ciao and cielo , but it is pronounced in farmacia and farmacie . 1(Front/back vowel rules for C and G are similar in French, Romanian, and to some extent English (including Old English). Swedish and Norwegian have similar rules for K and G. See also palatalization.) Usage among younger generations Some variations in the usage of the writing system may be present in practical use. These are scorned by educated people, but they are so common in certain contexts that knowledge of them may be useful. Examples Come stai (informal); Come sta (formal) Counting to ten: Sample texts You can hear a recording of Dante's Divine Comedy read by Lino Pertile at http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/. From the Holy Bible, -7 You can to a rendition of this text as recorded by an Italian native speaker from Milan. 2:1 In quei giorni, un decreto di Cesare Augusto ordinava che si facesse un censimento di tutta la terra. 2 Questo primo censimento fu fatto quando Quirino era governatore della Siria. 3 Tutti andavano a farsi registrare, ciascuno nella propria città. 4 Anche Giuseppe, che era della casa e della famiglia di Davide, dalla città di Nazaret e dalla Galilea si recò in Giudea nella città di Davide, chiamata Betlemme, 5 per farsi registrare insieme a Maria, sua sposa, che era incinta. 6 Proprio mentre si trovavano lì, venne il tempo per lei di partorire. 7 Mise al mondo il suo primogenito, lo avvolse in fasce e lo depose in una mangiatoia, poiché non c'era posto per loro nella locanda. For a full text of the Bible and other works of the Roman Catholic Church in Italian, see the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/archive/index_it.htm Vatican Radio (la Radio Vaticana) also hosts daily morning news broadcasts in Italian (http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/ram-us/rg_italiano_08_00_0800_b_1.ram). See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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