Origins ( 8th or early 9th century), a riddle reflecting either a form of Medieval Latin or the earliest extant example of Romance vernacular in Italy The Italian language has developed through a long and slow process, which began after the
Western Roman Empire's fall and the onset of the
Middle Ages in the 5th century. Latin, the predominant language of the western Roman Empire, remained the established written language in Europe during the Middle Ages, although most people were illiterate. Over centuries, the
Vulgar Latin popularly spoken in various areas of Europe—including the
Italian peninsula—evolved into local varieties, or dialects, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. These varieties are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but
sister languages of Italian. The Latin-speaking class referred to the collective Romance vernaculars of Europe as
Romanz,
Romance, or, in Italy,
Romanzo or
Volgare. The linguistic and historical demarcations between late Vulgar Latin and early Romance varieties in Italy are imprecise. The earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the
Placiti Cassinesi from the
province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the
Veronese Riddle, probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The
Commodilla catacomb inscription likewise probably dates to the early 9th century and appears to reflect a language somewhere between late Vulgar Latin and early vernacular. , whose works helped establish modern Italian language, is considered one of the greatest poets of the
Middle Ages. His epic poem
Divine Comedy ranks among the finest works of
world literature. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer
Dante Alighieri, written in his native
Florentine. Dante's
epic poems, known collectively as the
Commedia, to which another Tuscan poet
Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title
Divina, were read throughout the Italian peninsula. His written vernacular became the touchstone for elaborating a "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. The poetry of
Petrarch was also widely admired and influential in the development of the literary language, and would be identified as a model for vernacular writing by
Pietro Bembo in the 16th century. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, Florentine also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically a middle way between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the
Kingdom of Naples, or Austria in the
Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy has always had a distinctive vernacular for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as
city-states. Those local languages have considerable
variety, and as Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of
Regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between
Roman Italian and
Milanese Italian are
syntactic gemination of initial
consonants in some contexts and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g.
va bene 'all right' is pronounced by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the
La Spezia–Rimini Line);
a casa 'at home' is for Roman, or for standard, for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to the
Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of northern Italy, the
Italo-Dalmatian,
Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-
Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by
bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the
Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (
Late Middle Ages) gave its language weight, although
Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and
Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the
Medici Bank,
humanism, and the
Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.
Renaissance The
Renaissance era, known as in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both (from French) and (Italian). Among its many manifestations, the Renaissance saw a reinvigorated interest in both classical antiquity and vernacular literature. Advancements in technology played a crucial role in the diffusion of the Italian language. The
printing press was invented in the 15th century, and spread rapidly. By the year 1500, there were 56 printing presses in Italy, more than anywhere else in Europe. The printing press enabled the production of literature and documents in higher volumes and at lower cost, further accelerating the spread of Italian. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the
Italian peninsula, and the
prestige variety used on the island of
Corsica (but not in the neighbouring
Sardinia, which on the contrary underwent
Italianization well into the late 18th century, under
Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the
Sardinians, would therein make for a rather slow process of
assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere). The rediscovery of Dante's , and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as
questione della lingua (i.e., the
problem of the language), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving a united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: • The
purists, headed by Venetian
Pietro Bembo (who, in his , claimed the language might be based only on the great literary classics, such as
Petrarch and some part of Boccaccio). The purists thought the
Divine Comedy was not dignified enough because it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language. •
Niccolò Machiavelli and other
Florentines preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times. • The
courtiers, such as
Baldassare Castiglione and
Gian Giorgio Trissino, insisted that each local vernacular contribute to the new standard. A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the
Tuscan and
Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to the publication of
Agnolo Monosini's Latin tome in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612.
Modern era An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by
Napoleon (himself of Italian-Corsican descent) in the early 19th century. This conquest propelled the
unification of Italy some decades after and pushed the Italian language into the status of a
lingua franca, used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts, but also by the
bourgeoisie. Today Italy has reached linguistic unity and an overwhelming majority of its 56 million citizens speak Italian. Many dialects are still alive, especially by the older generations. Today, Italian is one of the most studied foreign languages in the world.
Contemporary times is famous for the novel
The Betrothed (1827), ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. He contributed to the nationwide use of the Italian language. The publication of Italian literature's first modern novel, (
The Betrothed) by
Alessandro Manzoni, both reflected and furthered the growing trend towards Italian as a national standard language. Manzoni, a Milanesian, chose to write the book in the Florentine dialect, describing this choice, in the preface to his 1840 edition, as "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the
Arno" (
Florence's river). The novel is commonly described as "the most widely read work in the Italian language". It became a model for subsequent Italian literary fiction, while Arrigo Castellani estimated the same value as 10%. == Classification ==