Languages of Italy | |
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Official | Italian |
Regional | see "classification" |
Minority | see "historical linguistic minorities" |
Immigrant | |
Foreign | |
Signed | Italian Sign Language |
Keyboard layout | |
Source | Special Eurobarometer, Europeans and their Languages, 2006 |
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The languages of Italy include Italian, which serves as the country's national language, in its standard and regional forms, as well as numerous local and regional languages, most of which, like Italian, belong to the broader Romance group. The majority of languages often labeled as regional are distributed in a continuum across the regions' administrative boundaries, with speakers from one locale within a single region being typically aware of the features distinguishing their own variety from others spoken nearby. [6]
The official and most widely spoken language across the country is Italian, which started off based on the medieval Tuscan of Florence. In parallel, many Italians also communicate in one of the local languages, most of which, like Tuscan, are indigenous evolutions of Vulgar Latin. Some local languages do not stem from Latin, however, but belong to other Indo-European branches, such as Cimbrian (Germanic), Arbëresh (Albanian), Slavomolisano (Slavic) and Griko (Greek). Other non-indigenous languages are spoken by a substantial percentage of the population due to immigration.
Of the indigenous languages, twelve are officially recognized as spoken by linguistic minorities: [7] Albanian, [8] [9] Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian; [7] at the present moment, Sardinian is regarded as the largest of such groups, with approximately one million speakers, even though the Sardophone community is overall declining. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] However, full bilingualism (bilinguismo perfetto) is legally granted only to the three national minorities whose mother tongue is German, Slovene or French, and enacted in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and the Aosta Valley, respectively.
Numerous languages were spoken in ancient Italy. These included Etruscan and the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages, consisting of Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages. Furthermore, Celtic languages were spoken in Cisalpine Gaul and ancient Greek was spoken in Magna Graecia. Latin emerged out of the Latino-Faliscan group and replaced the other languages spoken in Italy following the Romanization of the whole peninsula; it is the ancestor of all the Romance languages, the only living subgroup of the Italic languages.
Almost all of the Romance languages spoken in Italy are native to the area in which they are spoken. Apart from Standard Italian, these languages are often referred to as dialetti "dialects", both colloquially and in scholarly usage; however, the term may coexist with other labels like "minority languages" or "vernaculars" for some of them. [16] The label "dialect" may be understood erroneously to imply that the native languages spoken in Italy are "dialects" of Standard Italian in the prevailing English-language sense of "varieties or variations of a language". [17] [18] This is not the case in Italy, as the country's long-standing linguistic diversity does not actually stem from Standard Italian. Most of Italy's variety of Romance languages predate Italian and evolved locally from Vulgar Latin, independently of what would become the standard national language, long before the fairly recent spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy. [19] [18] In fact, Standard Italian itself can be thought of as either a continuation of, or a dialect heavily based on, the Florentine dialect of Tuscan.
The indigenous Romance languages of Italy are therefore classified as separate languages that evolved from Latin just like Standard Italian, rather than "dialects" or variations of the latter. [20] [21] [22] Conversely, with the spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy in the 20th century, local varieties of Standard Italian have also developed throughout the peninsula, influenced to varying extents by the underlying local languages, most noticeably at the phonological level; though regional boundaries seldom correspond to isoglosses distinguishing these varieties, these variations of Standard Italian are commonly referred to as Regional Italian (italiano regionale). [18]
Twelve languages have been legally granted official recognition as of 1999, but their selection to the exclusion of others is a matter of some controversy. [17] Daniele Bonamore argues that many regional languages were not recognized in light of their communities' historical participation in the construction of the Standard Italian language: Giacomo da Lentini's and Cielo d'Alcamo's Sicilian, Guido Guinizelli's Bolognese, Jacopone da Todi's Umbrian, Neapolitan, Carlo Goldoni's Venetian and Dante's Tuscan are considered to be historical founders of the Standard Italian linguistic majority; outside of such epicenters are, on the other hand, Friulian, Ladin, Sardinian, Franco-Provençal and Occitan, which are recognized as distinct languages. [23] Michele Salazar found Bonamore's explanation "new and convincing". [24]
Italian was first declared to be Italy's official language during the Fascist period, more specifically through the R.D.l., adopted on 15 October 1925, with the name of Sull'Obbligo della lingua italiana in tutti gli uffici giudiziari del Regno, salvo le eccezioni stabilite nei trattati internazionali per la città di Fiume. [25]
The original Italian constitution does not explicitly express that Italian is the official national language. Since the constitution was penned, there have been some laws and articles written on the procedures of criminal cases passed that explicitly state that Italian should be used:
The Republic safeguards linguistic minorities by means of appropriate measures.
— Italian Constitution, Art. 6
Art. 6 of the Italian Constitution was drafted by the Founding Fathers to show sympathy for the country's historical linguistic minorities, in a way for the newly founded Republic to let them become part of the national fabric and distance itself from the Italianization policies promoted earlier because of nationalism, especially during Fascism. [29] [30] [31] Since 1934, Minister Francesco Ercole had excluded in fact from the school curriculum any language other than Italian, in accordance with the policy of linguistic nationalism. [32]
For the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Article 6 of the Constitution represents "the overcoming of the closed notion of the 19th-century national State and a reversal of great political and cultural significance, compared to the nationalistic attitude manifested by Fascism" as well as being "one of the fundamental principles of the current constitutional system". [33]
However, more than a half century passed before the Art. 6 was followed by any of the above-mentioned "appropriate measures". [34] Italy applied in fact the Article for the first time in 1999, by means of the national law N.482/99. [7] According to the linguist Tullio De Mauro, the Italian delay of over 50 years in implementing Article 6 was caused by "decades of hostility to multilingualism" and "opaque ignorance". [35]
Before said legal framework entered into force, only four linguistic minorities (the French-speaking community in the Aosta Valley; the German-speaking community and, to a limited extent, the Ladin one in the Province of Bolzano; the Slovene-speaking community in the Province of Trieste and, with less rights, the Province of Gorizia) enjoyed some kind of acknowledgment and protection, stemming from specific clauses within international treaties. [29] The other eight linguistic minorities were to be recognized only in 1999, including the Slovene-speaking minority in the Province of Udine and the Germanic populations (Walser, Mocheni and Cimbri) residing in provinces different from Bolzano. Some now-recognized minority groups, namely in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Sardinia, already provided themselves with regional laws of their own. It has been estimated that less than 400.000 people, out of the two million people belonging to the twelve historical minorities (with Sardinian being the numerically biggest one [14] [10] [15] ), enjoyed state-wide protection. [36]
Around the 1960s, the Italian Parliament eventually resolved to apply the previously neglected article of the country's fundamental Charter. The Parliament thus appointed a "Committee of three Sages" to single out the groups that were to be recognized as linguistic minorities, and further elaborate the reason for their inclusion. The nominated people were Tullio de Mauro, Giovan Battista Pellegrini and Alessandro Pizzorusso, three notable figures who distinguished themselves with their life-long activity of research in the field of both linguistics and legal theory. Based on linguistic, historical as well as anthropological considerations, the experts eventually selected thirteen groups, corresponding to the currently recognized twelve with the further addition of the Sinti and Romani-speaking populations. [37] The original list was approved, with the only exception of the nomadic peoples, who lacked the territoriality requisite and therefore needed a separate law. However, the draft was presented to the law-making bodies when the legislature was about to run its course, and had to be passed another time. The bill was met with resistance by all the subsequent legislatures, being reluctant to challenge the widely-held myth of "Italian linguistic homogeneity", [34] and only in 1999 did it eventually pass, becoming a law. In the end, the historical linguistic minorities have been recognized by the Law no. 482/1999 (Legge 15 Dicembre 1999, n. 482, Art. 2, comma 1). [7] [38]
Some interpretations of said law seem to divide the twelve minority languages into two groups, with the first including the non-Latin speaking populations (with the exception of the Catalan-speaking one) and the second including only the Romance-speaking populations. Some other interpretations state that a further distinction is implied, considering only some groups to be "national minorities". [34] [39] Regardless of the ambiguous phrasing, all the twelve groups are technically supposed to be allowed the same measures of protection; [40] furthermore, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, signed and ratified by Italy in 1997, applies to all the twelve groups mentioned by the 1999 national law, therefore including the Friulians, the Sardinians, [41] [42] [43] the Occitans, the Ladins etc., with the addition of the Romani.
In actual practice, not each of the twelve historical linguistic minorities is given the same consideration. [34] All of them still bear strong social pressure to assimilate to Italian, and some of them do not even have a widely acknowledged standard to be used for official purposes. [44] In fact, the discrimination lay in the urgent need to award the highest degree of protection only to the French-speaking minority in the Aosta Valley and the German one in South Tyrol, owing to international treaties. [45] For example, the institutional websites are only in Italian with a few exceptions, like a French version of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. [46] A bill proposed by former prime minister Mario Monti's cabinet formally introduced a differential treatment between the twelve historical linguistic minorities, distinguishing between those with a "foreign mother tongue" (the groups protected by agreements with Austria, France and Slovenia) and those with a "peculiar dialect" (all the others). The bill was later implemented, but deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. [47] [48]
Italy is a signatory of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but has not ratified the treaty, and therefore its provisions protecting regional languages do not apply in the country. [49]
The Charter does not, however, establish at what point differences in expression result in a separate language, deeming it an "often controversial issue", and citing the necessity to take into account, other than purely linguistic criteria, also "psychological, sociological and political considerations". [50]
According to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there are 31 endangered languages in Italy. [69] The degree of endangerment is classified in different categories ranging from 'safe' (safe languages are not included in the atlas) to 'extinct' (when there are no speakers left). [70]
The source for the languages' distribution is the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger [69] unless otherwise stated, and refers to Italy exclusively.
All living languages indigenous to Italy are part of the Indo-European language family.
They can be divided into Romance languages and non-Romance languages. The classification of the Romance languages of Italy is controversial, and listed here are two of the generally accepted classification systems.
Loporcaro [73] proposes a classification of Romance languages of Italy based on Pellegrini, [74] who groups different Romance languages according to areal and some typological features. The following five linguistic areas can be identified: [75]
The following classification is proposed by Maiden: [77]
Language | Family | ISO 639-3 | Dialects spoken in Italy | Notes | Speakers | |||
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Arbëresh | Albanian | Tosk | aae | According to Minority Rights Group International: "The ethnic Albanian (Arbëresh) dialects of Italy bear little resemblance to the standard language or dialects of Albania, as they have been cut off from the main language for around 500 years. Some dialects spoken in Italy are so dissimilar that ethnic Albanians use Italian as a lingua franca. Ethnic Albanians are bilingual." [78] | recognized as a variant of the Albanian strain by UNESCO [69] | 100,000 | ||
Croatian | Slavic | South | Western | hr | Molise Croatian | 1,000 | ||
Slovene (slovenščina) | Slavic | South | Western | slv | Gai Valley dialect; Resian; Torre Valley dialect; Natisone Valley dialect; Brda dialect; Karst dialect; Inner Carniolan dialect; Istrian dialect | 100,000 | ||
Italiot Greek | Hellenic (Greek) | Attic | ell | Griko (Salento); Calabrian Greek | 20,000 | |||
Romani | Indo-Iranian | Indo-Aryan | Central Zone | Romani | rom | By ISO 639-3 classification, Sinte Romani is the individual language most present in Italy in the Romany macrolanguage |
Language | Family | ISO 639-3 | Dialects spoken in Italy | Notes | Speakers | |
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German | Middle German | East Middle German | deu | Tyrolean dialects | Austrian German is the usual standard variety | 315,000 |
Cimbrian | Upper German | Bavarian-Austrian | cim | sometimes considered a dialect of Bavarian, also considered an outlying dialect of Bavarian by the UNESCO [69] | 2,200 | |
Mocheno | Upper German | Bavarian-Austrian | mhn | considered an outlying dialect of Bavarian by the UNESCO [69] | 1,000 | |
Walser | Upper German | Alemannic | wae | 3,400 |
The Northern Italian languages are conventionally defined as those Romance languages spoken north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line, which runs through the northern Apennine Mountains just to the north of Tuscany; however, the dialects of Occitan and Franco-Provençal spoken in the extreme northwest of Italy (e.g. the Valdôtain in the Aosta Valley) are generally excluded. The classification of these languages is difficult and not agreed-upon, due both to the variations among the languages and to the fact that they share isoglosses of various sorts with both the Italo-Romance languages to the south and the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest.
One common classification divides these languages into four groups:
Any such classification runs into the basic problem that there is a dialect continuum throughout northern Italy, with a continuous transition of spoken dialects between e.g. Venetian and Ladin, or Venetian and Emilio-Romagnolo (usually considered Gallo-Italian).
All of these languages are considered innovative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with some of the Gallo-Italian languages having phonological changes nearly as extreme as standard French (usually considered the most phonologically innovative of the Romance languages). This distinguishes them significantly from standard Italian, which is extremely conservative in its phonology (and notably conservative in its morphology). [79]
Approximate distribution of the regional languages of Sardinia and Southern Italy according to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger:
One common classification divides these languages into two groups:
All of these languages are considered conservative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with Sardinian being the most conservative of them all.
Language (2018) [80] [81] | Population |
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Romanian | 806,938 |
Albanian | 441,027 |
Arabic | 420,980 |
Chinese | 299,823 |
Spanish | 285,664 |
Ukrainian | 239,424 |
Filipino | 168,292 |
Italian | 162,148 |
Others | 892,283 |
Although "[al]most all Italian dialects were being written in the Middle Ages, for administrative, religious, and often artistic purposes", [82] use of local language gave way to stylized Tuscan, eventually labeled Italian. Local languages are still occasionally written, but only the following regional languages of Italy have a standardised written form. This may be widely accepted or used alongside more traditional written forms:
The Albanian language is spoken natively by approximately 6 million speakers in south- eastern Europe, particularly in Albania and Kosovo where it is an offlcial language, but also in Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Italy where it has the status of a minority language.
Corsican is a Romance language consisting of the continuum of the Tuscan Italo-Dalmatian dialects spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, a territory of France, and in the northern regions of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy.
Gallurese is a Romance dialect of the Italo-Dalmatian family spoken in the region of Gallura, northeastern Sardinia. Gallurese is variously described as a distinct southern dialect of Corsican or transitional language of the dialect continuum between Corsican and Sardinian. "Gallurese International Day" takes place each year in Palau (Sardinia) with the participation of orators from other areas, including Corsica.
Sardinian or Sard is a Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
Ladin is a Romance language of the Rhaeto-Romance subgroup, mainly spoken in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy in the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, and Belluno, by the Ladin people. It exhibits similarities to Romansh, spoken in Switzerland, as well as Friulian, spoken in north-east Italy.
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.
Sassarese is an Italo-Dalmatian language and transitional variety between Sardinian and Corsican. It is regarded as a Corso–Sardinian language because of Sassari's historic ties with Tuscany and geographical proximity to Corsica. Despite the robust Sardinian influences, it still keeps its Corsican roots, which closely relate it to Gallurese; the latter is linguistically considered a Corsican dialect despite its geographical location, although this claim is a matter of controversy. It has several similarities to the Italian language, and in particular to the old Italian dialects from Tuscany.
Rhaeto-Romance, Rheto-Romance, Rhaeto-Italian,or Rhaetian, is a purported subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of Raetia. The question of whether these languages actually form a subfamily is called the Questione Ladina. The Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, writing in 1873, found them to share a number of intricacies and believed they formed a linguistic group. The Rhaeto-Romance languages differ from Italian in their evolution from Latin by having passed through a stage with phonemic vowel length, undergone certain consonant developments, and possibly developed a pair of central rounded vowels. If the subfamily is genuine, three languages would belong to it: Romansh in Switzerland, and Ladin and Friulian in Italy. Their combined number of speakers is about 660,000; the large majority of these speak Friulian.
Piedmontese is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, a region of Northwest Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate language, in Italy it is often mistakenly regarded as an Italian dialect. It is linguistically included in the Gallo-Italic languages group of Northern Italy, which would make it part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes French, Occitan, and Catalan. It is spoken in the core of Piedmont, in northwestern Liguria, and in Lombardy.
Griko, sometimes spelled Grico, is one of the two dialects of Italiot Greek, spoken by Griko people in Salento, province of Lecce, Italy. Some Greek linguists consider it to be a Modern Greek dialect and often call it Katoitaliótika or Grekanika (Γραικάνικα). Griko and Standard Modern Greek are partially mutually intelligible.
Regional Italian is any regional variety of the Italian language.
The primary languages of Calabria are the Italian language as well as regional varieties of Extreme Southern Italian and Neapolitan languages, all collectively known as Calabrian. In addition, there are speakers of the Arbëresh variety of Albanian, as well as Calabrian Greek speakers and pockets of Occitan.
Italo-Western is, in some classifications, the largest branch of the Romance languages. It comprises two of the branches of Romance languages: Italo-Dalmatian and Western Romance. It excludes the Sardinian language and Eastern Romance.
The Occitan Valleys are the part of Occitania within the borders of Italy. It is a mountainous region in the southern Alps. Most of its valleys are oriented eastward and descend toward the plains of Piedmont.
Italianization is the spread of Italian culture, language and identity by way of integration or assimilation. It is also known for a process organized by the Kingdom of Italy to force cultural and ethnic assimilation of the native populations living, primarily, in the former Austro-Hungarian territories that were transferred to Italy after World War I in exchange for Italy having joined the Triple Entente in 1915; this process was mainly conducted during the period of Fascist rule between 1922 and 1943.
Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini Line. They include the Gallo-Romance, Occitano-Romance and Iberian Romance branches. Gallo-Italic may also be included. The subdivision is based mainly on the use of the "s" for pluralization, the weakening of some consonants and the pronunciation of "Soft C" as /t͡s/ rather than /t͡ʃ/ as in Italian and Romanian.
The Sardinians, or Sards, are a Romance language-speaking ethnic group native to Sardinia, from which the western Mediterranean island and autonomous region of Italy derives its name.
Cadorino, a dialect of Ladin, is the language of Cadore, at the feet of the Dolomites in the province of Belluno. It is distinct from neighboring dialects, and though it has received relatively little attention, it is important to an understanding of the linguistic history of northern Italy.
The Questione Ladina is a controversy over whether the Romance languages of Romansh, Ladin, and Friulian form a proper language subfamily or should rather be regarded as a part of a wider Northern Italian dialect continuum. Both the idea of a distinctive language sub-family and the denial of a Ladin unity still have strong proponents, the former especially among Swiss, German and Austrian, the latter among Italian linguists. The issue has political implications beyond the linguistic controversy, as the areas involved have been subjects of territorial disputes, especially during the first half of the 20th century.
Limba Sarda Comuna (LSC) is an orthography for the Sardinian language, created with the aim of transcribing the many variants of spoken Sardinian, with their distinctive characteristics, in the same way, and adopted experimentally in 2006 by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia for the official writing of its acts, jointly with Italian.
Italian and Romanian, although closely related Romance languages, differ in many aspects of their phonology, grammar, and lexicon. Italian belongs to a subset of the Romance languages known as Italo-Western, whereas Romanian belongs to the Eastern Romance group.