Italian Language

Italian Facts

Region: Southern Europe

Modern Italian developed in the 13th ad 14th century out of Latin and numerous local dialects.

Italian is pronounced phonetically. Every letter corresponds to a distinguishable sound; there are hardly any differences between pronunciation and spelling. However, pronunciation can vary considerably from region to region.

Italian shares an approximate 85% lexical similarity to Spanish and French.

Total speakers: 70 million

Official language of: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Slovenia, Vatican City, Istria County (Croatia)

Statistics:
- Italy - 58,057,477
- Vatican State - 1,000
- Argentina - 1,500,000
- France - 1,000,000
- United States- 906,000
- Germany 548,000
- Canada - 538,360
- Australia - 500,000
- Brazil - 500,000
- Croatia - 70,000
- Belgium - 280,000
- United Kingdom - 200,000
- Switzerland - 195,000
- Uruguay - 79,000
- Uruguay - 28,000
- Paraguay - 26,000
- San Marino - 25,000
- Luxembourg - 20,800
- Israel - 5,435
- Slovenia - 4,009
- Puerto Rico - 1,555
- Liechtenstein - 800
- Egypt (?)
- Eritrea (?)
- Libya (?)
- Monaco (?)
- Saudi Arabia (?)
- Somalia (?)
- Tunisia (?)

Many terms from art history and music theory are Italian. It is the perfect language to discover European history.