If you visit Italy and don’t speak Italian, it will appear as if everyone speaks Italian but you. That is not necessarily true. There are several languages spoken in Italy other than Italian along with several dialects of Italian.
Most regions have their own dialect, accent and even their own language. The languages spoken in Italy have evolved over the centuries. The different dialects are all noticeably different from the standard Italy.
Italian is known as an Indo-European language and currently there are over 55 million speakers of Italian in Italy. Some of the individuals are bilingual in Italian and some of the regional dialects. There are an additional 6.5 million people who speak Italian in other countries. Besides Italy, Italian in spoken in several countries, which include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Romania, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, USA, and Vatican State.
There are several regional dialects spoken in Italy. The major dialects of Italian include toscano, abruzzese, pugliese, umbro, laziale, marchigiano centrale, cicolano-reatinoaquilano, and molisano.
Because of the different regions of Italy, there are also different languages spoken in Italy other than the standard Italian. Those languages include emiliano-romagnolo, friulano, ligure, Lombardo, napoletano, plemontese, sardarese, sardu, siciliano and Veneto. Some of these languages are known by different names, which are not listed here.
The Dialects of the Italian Language
When dining in Italy, there is one thing you will notice right off la cucina locale, which means the local cuisine. This is not unlike here in our own country. If you live in Texas, you will find on the menu of most restaurants an entrée called “Chicken Fried Steak”. Once you cross the Texas state border, you will not find “Chicken Fried Steak” almost anywhere else in the country. In Italy every region has their own specialty and methods of preparing the dish, which will depend on the season, the local produce and any other ingredients. So it stands to reason most regions have their own accent, dialect and sometimes their own language.
The various languages and dialects have evolved over centuries and remained distinct from the standard Italian for several reasons, such as the inability to travel, no radio or TV until the twentieth century and the attempt to maintain their cultural heritage and independence.
The dialects have many distinct qualities, which distinguish them from others. Just as an example the Neapolitan dialect is the most widely known because of its use in popular songs. The speakers of this dialect clip the articles to single vowels. In Romanesco the letter “r” replaces the letter “l”, so instead of pronouncing the word volta meaning once, they would pronounce the word as vorta.
In all the regions of Italy schoolchildren learn the standard Italian and sometimes their regional dialect also. What is now known as the standard Italian has evolved from the Tuscan dialect it started from to the common language of Italy.
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