Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent Romance language from Latin, together with Sardinian. Spoken by about 85 million people including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy, San Marino, and Switzerland, and is the primary language of Vatican City. It has official minority status in Croatia and in some areas of Slovenian Istria.
Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native speakers of any language tend to transfer the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules of their first language into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations not found in the speaker's native language.
Friulian or Friulan is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian. It is sometimes called Eastern Ladin since it shares the same roots as Ladin, but over the centuries, it has diverged under the influence of surrounding languages, including German, Italian, Venetian, and Slovene. Documents in Friulian are attested from the 11th century and poetry and literature date as far back as 1300. By the 20th century, there was a revival of interest in the language.
Italian orthography uses 21 letters of the 26-letter Latin alphabet to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect, and not the other Italian dialects.
Regional Italian is any regional variety of the Italian language.
The phonology of Italian describes the sound system—the phonology and phonetics—of Standard Italian and its geographical variants.
Tuscan is a set of Italo-Dalmatian varieties of Romance spoken in Tuscany, Corsica, and Sardinia.
This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of English which concern consonants.
The Tuscan gorgia is a phonetic phenomenon governed by a complex of allophonic rules characteristic of the Tuscan dialects, in Tuscany, Italy, especially the central ones, with Florence traditionally viewed as the center.
The phonology of Bengali, like that of its neighbouring Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, is characterised by a wide variety of diphthongs and inherent back vowels.
Eastern Lombard is a group of closely related variants of Lombard, a Gallo-Italic language spoken in Lombardy, mainly in the provinces of Bergamo, Brescia and Mantua, in the area around Cremona and in parts of Trentino. Its main variants are Bergamasque and Brescian.
Romagnol is a Romance language spoken in the historical region of Romagna, consisting mainly of the southeastern part of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The name is derived from the Lombard name for the region, Romagna. Romagnol is also spoken outside the region, particularly in the independent Republic of San Marino. Romagnol is classified as endangered because older generations have "neglected to pass on the dialect as a native tongue to the next generation".
Central Asmat is a Papuan language of West New Guinea, spoken by the Asmat people.
Gwari is a Nupoid language spoken by the Gbagyi people, which make up over a million people in Nigeria. There are two principal varieties, Gbari and Gbagyi, which have some difficulty in communication; sociolinguistically they are distinct languages.
The Natisone Valley dialect, or Nadiža dialect, is a Slovene dialect spoken mainly in Venetian Slovenia, but also in a small part of Slovenia. It is one of the two dialects in the Littoral dialect group to have its own written form, along with Resian. It is closely related to the Torre Valley dialect, which has a higher degree of vowel reduction but shares practically the same accented vowel system. It borders the Torre Valley dialect to the northwest, the Soča dialect to the northeast, the Karst dialect to the southeast, the Brda dialect to the south, and Friulian to the west. The dialect belongs to the Littoral dialect group, and it evolved from Venetian–Karst dialect base.
Aion a.k.a. Ambakich is a Keram language of Papua New Guinea. It is only spoken by adults; children grow up speaking Tok Pisin.
PalatalizationPA-lə-tə-leye-ZAY-shən is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation of a consonant or, in certain cases, a front vowel. Palatalization involves change in the place or manner of articulation of consonants, or the fronting or raising of vowels. In some cases, palatalization involves assimilation or lenition.
Sardinian is conventionally divided, mainly on phonological criteria, into three main varieties: Campidanese, Logudorese, and Nuorese. The last of these has a notably conservative phonology, compared not only to the other two varieties, but also to other Romance languages as well.
Palatalization in the Romance languages encompasses various historical sound changes which caused consonants to develop a palatal articulation or secondary articulation, as well as certain further developments such as affrication. It resulted in the creation of several consonants that had not existed in Classical Latin, such as the Italian.
