When was italian invented

Each of these poets wrote works of immense literary significance - so much that the Tuscan dialect became over time the national language. For many centuries, however, Italian remained an exclusive conduit for literary expression, used only by educated people.

The various dialects continued to be spoken, favored even during the political fragmentation of the Italian peninsula, which remained divided in numerous city-states until - the year of the unification of Italy. Soon after WWII, with the growing use of radio, television, newspapers, and the increasing level of education among the population, only a third of the citizens spoke Italian, while the other two-thirds still continued to use their respective dialects.

Today, Italy has reached linguistic unity and the overwhelming majority of its 56 million inhabitants speak Italian. However, dialects still remain alive and in some regions they are spoken at home, especially by older generations. Even those that speak the Italian language use a different accent, depending on their geographic origin. In fact, when Italians speak amongst themselves, in general they are able to understand which part of the country the other person comes from, according to the accent they use.

As you might expect, most Italian speakers around 58 million live in Italy. But as many as 64 million people in the European Union are native Italian speakers. That makes it the third most common native language in the EU. The European Union uses Italian as one of its 24 official and working languages. Additionally, Italian is the second most common language in Argentina. In certain parts of Brazil, it's a regional language and schools are required to teach it. Well, one of them, at any rate.

Italian and French seem to be constantly vying for the title. Even if you don't play an instrument now, you probably learned a few words of Italian during music class in elementary school. Words like tempo, crescendo and soprano are all Italian. But why is that? One reason is that the inventor of modern musical notation, Guido d'Arezzo, was Italian.

Another reason is simply that all of these musical terms were developed during the Renaissance or shortly thereafter. And during this time period, Italian composers dominated European music. Italian was originally a literary language, used by writers and poets. After the fall of the Roman Empire, regional languages evolved throughout what is now Italy, branching off from Latin over time.

But in the 14th century, at the height of the Renaissance, elite Italians began to adopt the Tuscan version spoken in and around Florence.

Made popular by writers like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, it was the main source for the standardized Italian used today.

Italian didn't become the official language of Italy until Standardized Italian is a rather recent invention.

Prior to unification, Italy was a collection of city-states. They had a lot in common culturally. But they spoke different, yet closely related languages. And if you've read The Divine Comedy, you might remember that the different city-states didn't always get along. Back to Main menu Virtual events Masterclasses. Languages can literally die overnight when the last of their speakers dies, but the death of Latin was very different.

After the fall of the Roman empire in the west in AD , Latin evolved into a wide variety of regional dialects now known as Romance vernaculars. In the early 14th century the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri reckoned that more than 1, such dialects were spoken in Italy.