Languages of Italy Totally Explained

Everything about Languages Of Italy totally explained

Italy currently has one national language: Standard Italian. Alongside Italian and its inevitable regional varieties are innumerable local Romance languages, many of which pre-date the establishment of Italian. Many of these languages are different enough from Standard Italian to be considered separate languages by most linguists and many speakers. Quite naturally, they're generally not standardized. Thus a distinction can be made between "dialects -- better termed varieties -- of (Standard) Italian" and "dialects and languages of Italy", the latter essentially a geopolitical term, rather than linguistic.
There are generally three groups of Italian languages: Gallo-Italian (or Northern Italian); Italo-Dalmatian (which includes Standard Italian); and Southern Romance. Sicilian belongs to the extreme southern portion of the Italo-Dalmatian group, but is sometimes classified as Southern Romance with Sardinian. The linguistic frontier between Northern Italian and Italian proper is sometimes called the La Spezia-Rimini line. Other languages spoken in Italy are not closely related to Standard Italian at all.

Languages spoken in Italy

Romance languages

Gallo-Italian

Emiliano-Romagnolo
- Emiliano
- Romagnolo
Ligurian
- Tabarchino
Lombard
- Western Lombard (sometimes also called Insubric or Cisabduano: Lombardo prealpino occidentale, basso Lombardo occidentale, Macromilanese)
- Eastern Lombard (sometimes also called Orobic or Transabduano: Lombardo prealpino orientale, basso Lombardo orientale)
- Intermediate Western-Eastern dialects (Lombardo alpino)
Piedmontese
Venetian

Gallo-Rhaetian

Standard French

Franco-Provençal

Faeto
Valdôtain (Valdoten)

Ibero-Romance

Catalan

Alguerese

Occitan

Provençal

Italo-Dalmatian

Central Italian

Neapolitan (Inner Southern Italian)

Sicilian (Extreme Southern Italian, possibly Southern Romance)

Judeo-Italian

Italkian (Jewish language form; term coined in the mid-20th C. Spoken by a small minority of Jews in Italy.)

Rhaeto-Romance

Friulian

Ladin

Nones

Solandro

Southern Romance

Corsican (considered to be related to and mutually intelligible with Standard Italian)

Gallurese (considered by some authors as a variety of Sardinian, by some others an independent language)

Sardinian

Sassarese (considered by some authors as a variety of Corsican, by some others a variety of Sardinian)

Indo-Aryan languages

Rom

Sinti

Slavic languages

Molise Croatian dialect

Slovene

Status

Since Italian unification, and especially since the Second World War, the Italian language has become the primary language of most Italians and it has undergone a process of homogenisation. Education and mass media, especially television, have rendered the Italian language accessible to all Italian people. Some argue that the same phenomenon has brought about a simplification and banalisation of the language.
A law passed in 1999 recognises the existence of twelve linguistic minorities which are thus officially protected. These are Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, Franco-Provencal, French, Friulian, German, Greek, Ladin, Occitan, Sardinian, and Slovene. Some of these minority languages had already been given recognition prior to 1999, notably German, Ladin, Slovene and French through national laws, while Friulian and Sardinian were given recognition through regional deliberations.
The remaining minority languages don't enjoy official recognition, nor are they regarded as genuine languages by the Italian governement, who insist on categorising them as dialects of Italian, contrary to accepted linguistic classification. Of these languages, many have been recognised by international bodies, most notably by UNESCO as reported in the Red Book of Endangered Languages

. These are: Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, Neapolitan, Piedmontese, Sicilian, and Venetian. These are also omitted from the minority languages list compiled by the European Union, although the list has been declared flexible and thus likely to be subject to future amendments.

Further Information

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