... the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one

1

2
The Italian language is a member the Romance
group of the Italic subfamily of the
Indo-European family of languages. It is the
official language of Italy and San Marino, and
one of the official languages of Switzerland.
3
Italian is spoken by approximately 60 million
people in Italy, 20,000 in San Marino, 400,000
people in Switzerland and roughly 6 million
people in other European countries, North and
South America, and Australia.
4
It is an official language in Italy, Switzerland
, Ethiopia, Somalia, Libya, and Slovenia
There are large Italian communities in Canada, t
he United States, Germany, Australia, Argentina,
Brazil and Venezuela
5
Italian is considered to be a daughter language
of Latin. It is not known exactly when Italian
could be distinguished from its parent tongue.
6
While there is no text in Italian recorded before
the 10th century, the idiom of Florence, one of
the Tuscan dialects of Italian, became dominant
towards the end of the 13th century to the middle
of the 14th century.
7
This was due largely to the growing prestige of
the city of Florence and the literary works
written in the Florentine dialect during that
period (i.e. Dante's Divina Commedia, Petrarchs
Canzoniere and Boccaccios Decameron.
8
Italian had and still has a great many dialects.
It was the culturally important idiom of Florence
that in time gave rise to modern standard
Italian. The dialect of Rome, the Italian
capital, has influenced modern standard Italian.
The Roman alphabet is used for Italian.
9
The Italian language has not changed much since
the 14th century. Modern educated Italians are
still able to read Dante with comparatively
little difficulty. For example, here are the
first three lines from the Inferno which is the
first book of Dante Alighieri's Commedia
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Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi
ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta
via era smarrita (Canto 1, Inferno)
(Having, on our life's journey, reached
midway/I found myself again within a dark
forest/where from the straight path I had gone
astray)
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Almost all the words in this small example are
still used in modern standard Italian. More
widespread education and the mass media have
greatly aided the spread of standard Italian
throughout Italy.
12
The Italian people are not ethnically homogenous,
reflecting a long history of foreign invasion and
migration. Most speak Italian or dialects or
languages related to Italian.
13

• These dialects vary considerably from region to
  region and are considered separate languages in
  the case of
  
• Sardinian, spoken by about 1.2 million people in
  Sardinia
  
• Friulian, a Rhaeto-Romanic language spoken by
  about 500,000 people in the northeastern district
  of Friuli
  
• Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romanic language spoken in the
  mountains of the Alto Adige

14

• Dialects arent wrong they are variations of the
  standard Italian that we will be learning in
  class.
  
• For example, my grandparents say, Vini ca.
• What do you think this means in standard
  Italian??
  
• Vini ca (barese) Vieni qui (standard
  Italian)
  

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• Most Italians speak 2 languages Italian and
  their regional dialect
  
• They often speak a MIXTURE of both
• For example, my Roman friends say Maria. Sei pronta? Annammo a magna
  
• Which words are dialect words? Which words are
  standard Italian?
  
• Ciao Maria. Sei pronta? (standard Italian)
• Annammo a magna (romano)

16
In this class, we will talk about dialect
variations from time to time but we will be
focusing exclusively on the standard national
Italian.It was finally taught in schools and
declared the official language of Italy in the
middle of this century.
17
DOMANDE???