Italian (italiano,pronounced[itaˈljaːno]ⓘ, orlingua italiana,pronounced[ˈliŋɡwaitaˈljaːna]) is aRomance language of theIndo-European language family that evolved from theColloquial Latin of theRoman Empire.[6] Italian is the least divergent language fromLatin, together withSardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the mostconservative Romance languages).[7][8][9][10] Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian statistically ranks 21st as the most spoken language in the world, but depending on the year it ranks fourth or fifth as the most studied cultural language, especially in higher cultural institutes, academies, and universities.[11][12][13]
The Italian language has developed through a long and slow process, which began after theWestern Roman Empire's fall and the onset of theMiddle Ages in the 5th century.[23]
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, theVulgar Latin popularly spoken in various areas of Europe—including theItalian 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, butsister languages of Italian.[24][25]
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 thePlaciti Cassinesi from theprovince of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although theVeronese 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.[26] TheCommodilla catacomb inscription likewise probably dates to the early 9th century and appears to reflect a language somewhere between late Vulgar Latin and early vernacular.
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 writerDante Alighieri, written in his nativeFlorentine. Dante'sepic poems, known collectively as theCommedia, to which another Tuscan poetGiovanni Boccaccio later affixed the titleDivina, 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 ofPetrarch 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 theKingdom of Naples, or Austria in theKingdom of Lombardy–Venetia), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in theAustro-Hungarian Empire.
Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of ascity-states. Those dialects now have considerablevariety. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions ofRegional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, betweenRoman Italian andMilanese Italian aresyntactic gemination of initialconsonants 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[vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker),[vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of theLa Spezia–Rimini Line);a casa "at home" is[akˈkaːsa] for Roman,[akˈkaːsa] or[akˈkaːza] for standard,[aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern.[28]
In contrast to theGallo-Italic linguistic panorama of northern Italy, theItalo-Dalmatian,Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly bybards from France during the Middle Ages, but after theNorman 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, althoughVenetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, andLigurian (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 theMedici Bank,humanism, and theRenaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.
TheRenaissance era, known asil Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of bothrenaissance (from French) andrinascimento (Italian). Among its many manifestations, the Renaissance saw a reinvigorated interest in both classical antiquity and vernacular literature.[29]
Advancements in technology played a crucial role in the diffusion of the Italian language. Theprinting 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.[30]
Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in theItalian Peninsula, and theprestige variety used on the island ofCorsica[31] (but not in the neighbouringSardinia, which on the contrary underwentItalianization well into the late 18th century, underSavoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among theSardinians, would therein make for a rather slow process ofassimilation to the Italian cultural sphere[32][33]). The rediscovery of Dante'sDe vulgari eloquentia, 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 asquestione della lingua (i.e., theproblem 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:
Thepurists, headed by VenetianPietro Bembo (who, in hisGli Asolani, claimed the language might be based only on the great literary classics, such asPetrarch and some part of Boccaccio). The purists thought theDivine Comedy was not dignified enough because it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language.
A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of theTuscan andRoman dialects.[34] Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of theAccademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to the publication ofAgnolo Monosini's Latin tomeFloris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612.
An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy byNapoleon (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 alingua franca, used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts, but also by thebourgeoisie.
The publication of Italian literature's first modern novel,I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) byAlessandro 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 theArno" (Florence's river). The novel is commonly described as "the most widely read work in the Italian language".[36] It became a model for subsequent Italian literary fiction,[36] helping to galvanize national linguistic unity around the Florentine dialect.
This growth was relative; linguistic diversity continued during theunification of Italy (1848–1871). The Italian linguistTullio De Mauro estimated that only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly in 1861,[37] while Arrigo Castellani estimated the same value as 10%.[38][39]
After Unification, a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages. For example,ciao is derived from theVenetian words-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), andpanettone comes from theLombard wordpanetton.
A 1949 study by the linguistMario Pei concluded that out of seven Romance languages, Italian's stressed vowel phonology was the second-closest to that of Vulgar Latin (after Sardinian).[42] The study emphasized, however, that it represented only "a very elementary, incomplete and tentative demonstration" of how statistical methods could measure linguistic change, assigned "frankly arbitrary" point values to various types of change, and did not compare languages in the sample with respect to any characteristics or forms of divergence other than stressed vowels, among other caveats.[43][44]
Italian is the official language of Italy andSan Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language inSwitzerland (after German and French; seeSwiss Italian), although its use there has moderately declined since the 1970s.[45] It is official both on the national level and on regional level in twocantons:Ticino andGrisons. In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in theItalian Grisons.[b] Ticino, which includesLugano, the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant.[46] Italian is also used in administration and official documents inVatican City.[47]
Italian is also spoken by a minority inMonaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country.[48][1] Italian was the official language inSavoy and inNice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under theTreaty of Turin, a development that triggered the "Niçard exodus", or the emigration of a quarter of theNiçard Italians to Italy,[49] and theNiçard Vespers.Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about the referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among theItalian Savoyards) took refuge in Italy in the following years.Corsica passed from theRepublic of Genoa to France in 1769 after theTreaty of Versailles. Italian was the official language ofCorsica until 1859.[50] Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the "Corsican Italians" within Italy whenRome was annexed to theKingdom of Italy, but KingVictor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speakCorsican, which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan.[51]Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy.[52][53] In Corsica, on the other hand, almost everyone still speaks theCorsican idiom, which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language inMonaco until 1860, when it was replaced by the French.[54] This was due to the annexation of the surroundingCounty of Nice to France following theTreaty of Turin (1860).[54]
It formerly had official status inAlbania due to theannexation of the country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language.[63] The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools.[64] The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania,[65] due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to the diffusion of Italian television in the country.[66]
Due to heavy Italian influence during theItalian colonial period, Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya.[1] Although it was the primary language inLibya sincecolonial rule, Italian greatly declined under therule of Muammar Gaddafi, who expelled theItalian Libyan population and madeArabic the sole official language of the country.[67] A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s.
Italian was the official language ofEritrea duringItalian colonisation. Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea,Asmara, still has several Italian schools, established during the colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and theItalian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II.[68] In Asmara there are two Italian schools, theItalian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with aMontessori department) and theLiceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school).
Italian was also introduced toSomalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during thecolonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in theSomali Civil War.
Italian is also spoken by largeimmigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.[1] Although over 17 millionAmericans are of Italian descent, only a little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.[69] Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country.[70] In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language whenvarieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as theirmother tongue in 2016.[71]
Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language inArgentina[72] after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the southeast of Brazil and in the south.[1] InVenezuela, Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers.[73] InUruguay, people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of the total population of the country.[74] In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language.[75]
Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example, the free website and applicationDuolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language.[79]
According to theItalian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in the 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture.[80]
As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia.[81]
From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and Venezuela, and in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence.
In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regionallanguages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples areRio Grande do Sul, Brazil, whereTalian is used, and the town ofChipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form ofVenetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples areCocoliche, an Italian–Spanishpidgin once spoken inArgentina and especially inBuenos Aires, andLunfardo. TheRioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as a result.
Starting in latemedieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during theRenaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise ofhumanism andthe arts.
Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of the educated gentlemen was to make theGrand Tour, visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languagesLatin andGreek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until the late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German.John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian.
Within theCatholic Church, Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents.
Italianloanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in the design and fashion industries, in some sports such asfootball[82] and especially in culinary terms.
Linguistic map of Italy according to Clemente Merlo and Carlo Tagliavini (1937)Italy's ethno-linguistic minorities[83]
In Italy, almost all theother languages spoken as the vernacular—other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called "Italian dialects", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date the establishment of Italian, and as such aresister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered "historical language minorities", which are officially recognized as distinctminority languages by the law. On the other hand,Corsican (a language spoken on the French island ofCorsica) is closely related to medievalTuscan, from which standard Italian derives and evolved.
The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the naturalchanges that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages:substrata, superstrata, and adstrata. The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either.[24]: 19–20
Throughout Italy, regional varieties of standard Italian, calledRegional Italian, are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situationsandà,annà andnare replace the standard Italianandare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go").
There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of a single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longermutually intelligible; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing (particularly Spanish-Portuguese) can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language, without slang/jargon.
Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the 9th and 10th centuries CE. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy.
Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around the 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry.[24]: 21 Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of standard Italian became increasingly widespread and was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951.Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861, only 2.5% of the population of Italy could speak standard Italian. He reports that in 1951, that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean that it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations afterWorld War II, contributed to the proliferation of standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during theItalian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of standard Italian back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left.[24]: 35
Although use of the Italian dialects has declined in themodern era, as Italy unified under standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television,diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy andtriglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree ofcode-switching andcode-mixing.[84]
Between two vowels, or between a vowel and an approximant (/j,w/) or a liquid (/l,r/), consonants can be both singleton orgeminate. Geminate consonants shorten the preceding vowel (or block phonetic lengthening) and the first element of the geminate isunreleased. For example, compare/fato/[ˈfaːto] ('fate') with/fatto/[ˈfat̚to] ('fact' or 'did'/'done').[85] However,/ɲ/,/ʃ/,/ʎ/,/d͡z/,/t͡s/ are always geminate intervocalically, including across word boundaries.[86] Similarly, nasals, liquids, and sibilants are pronounced slightly longer in medial consonant clusters.[87]
/j/,/w/, and/z/ are the only consonants that cannot be geminated.
Dentalized laminalalveolar[t̪͡s̪,d̪͡z̪,s̪,z̪][88][90] (commonly called "dental" for simplicity), pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close to the upper front teeth, with the tip of the tongue resting behind lower front teeth.[90]
Non-retractedapical alveolar[t͡s̺,d͡z̺,s̺,z̺].[90] The stop component of the "apical" affricates is actually laminal denti-alveolar.[90]
Intervocalically, single/r/ is realised as a trill with one or two contacts.[101] Some literature treats the single-contact trill as atap[ɾ].[102][103] Single-contact trills can also occur elsewhere, particularly in unstressed syllables.[104] Geminate/rr/ manifests as a trill with three to seven contacts.[101]
The phonemic distinction between/s/ and/z/ is neutralized before consonants and at the beginning of words: the former is used before voiceless consonants and before vowels at the beginning of words; the latter is used before voiced consonants. The two can contrast only between vowels within a word, e.g.fuso/ˈfuzo/ 'melted' versusfuso/ˈfuso/ 'spindle'. According to Canepari,[103] although, thetraditional standard has been replaced by a modernneutral pronunciation which always prefers/z/ when intervocalic, except when the intervocalics is the initial sound of a word, if the compound is still felt as such: for example,presento/preˈsɛnto/[105] ('I foresee', withpre- meaning 'before' andsento meaning 'I perceive') vspresento/preˈzɛnto/[106] ('I present'). There are many words for which dictionaries now indicate that both pronunciations, either[z] or[s], are acceptable. Word-internally between vowels, the two phonemes have merged in many regional varieties of Italian, as either/z/ (northern-central) or/s/ (southern-central).
Italian has a seven-vowel system, consisting of/a,ɛ,e,i,ɔ,o,u/, and 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged fromVulgar Latin. Some examples:
Italiansettimana "week" < Latinseptimāna (cf. Romaniansăptămână, Spanish and Portuguesesemana, Frenchsemaine/səmɛn/,Catalansetmana)
Italianmedesimo "same" < Vulgar Latin *medi(p)simum (cf. Spanishmismo,Portuguesemesmo, Frenchmême/mɛm/,Catalanmateix; Italian usually prefers the shorterstesso)
The conservative nature of Italian phonology is partly explained by its origin. Italian stems from a literary language that is derived from the 13th-century speech of the city ofFlorence in the region ofTuscany, and has changed little in the last 700 years or so. Furthermore, the Tuscan dialect is the most conservative of allItalian dialects, radically different from theGallo-Italian languages less than 160 kilometres (100 mi) to the north (across theLa Spezia–Rimini Line).
The following are some of the conservative phonological features of Italian, as compared with the commonWestern Romance languages (French, Spanish,Portuguese,Galician,Catalan). Some of these features are also present inRomanian.
Little or nophonemiclenition of consonants between vowels, e.g.vīta >vita "life" (cf. Romanianviață, Spanishvida[ˈbiða], Frenchvie),pedem >piede "foot" (cf. Spanishpie, Frenchpied/pje/).
Words that are an exception to this rule exist, such as:scvtella >scodella "bowl",recipere >ricevere "receive",lacvs >lago "lake",acvs >ago "needle", (only in theTuscan accent and historical standard Italian)vīsus >viso/vizo/ "face".[107]
Preservation of allProto-Romance final vowels, e.g.pacem >pace "peace" (cf. Romanianpace, Spanishpaz, Frenchpaix/pɛ/),octō >otto "eight" (cf. Romanianopt, Spanishocho, Frenchhuit/ɥi(t)/),fēcī >feci "I did" (cf. Romanian dialectalfeci, Spanishhice, Frenchfis/fi/).
Preservation of most intertonic vowels (those between the stressed syllable and either the beginning or ending syllable). This accounts for some of the most noticeable differences, as in the formsquattordici andsettimana given above.
Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian has many inconsistent outcomes, where the same underlying sound produces different results in different words, e.g.laxāre >lasciare andlassare,captiāre >cacciare andcazzare,(ex)dēroteolāre >sdrucciolare,druzzolare andruzzolare,rēgīna >regina andreina. Although in all these examples the second form has fallen out of usage, the dimorphism is thought to reflect the several-hundred-year period during which Italian developed as a literary language divorced from any native-speaking population, with an origin in 12th/13th-century Tuscan but with many words borrowed fromlanguages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes. (TheLa Spezia–Rimini Line, the most importantisogloss in the entire Romance-language area, passes only about 30 kilometres or 20 miles north of Florence.) Dual outcomes of Latin/ptk/ between vowels, such aslŏcvm >luogo butfŏcvm >fuoco, was once thought to be due to borrowing of northern voiced forms, but is now generally viewed as the result of early phonetic variation within Tuscany.
Some other features that distinguish Italian from the Western Romance languages:
Latince-,ci- becomes/tʃe,tʃi/ rather than/(t)se,(t)si/.
Vulgar Latin-cl- becomescchi/kkj/ rather than/ʎ/:oclum >occhio "eye" (cf. Portugueseolho/ˈoʎu/, Frenchœil/œj/ </œʎ/); but Romanianochi/okʲ/.
Final/s/ is not preserved, and vowel changes rather than/s/ are used to mark the plural:amico,amici "male friend(s)",amica,amiche "female friend(s)" (cf. Romanianamic,amici andamică,amice; Spanishamigo(s) "male friend(s)",amiga(s) "female friend(s)");trēs, sex →tre, sei "three, six" (cf. Romaniantrei,șase; Spanishtres,seis).
Standard Italian also differs in some respects from most nearby Italian languages:
Perhaps most noticeable is the total lack ofmetaphony, although metaphony is a feature characterizing nearly every otherItalian language.
No simplification of original/nd/,/mb/ (which often became/nn/,/mm/ elsewhere).
Italianphonotactics do not usually permit verbs and polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, except in poetry and song, so foreign words may receiveextra terminal vowel sounds.
An Italian handwriting script, taught in primary school
Italian has ashallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being aphonemic orthography.[108] The most important of the few exceptions are the following (see below for more details):
The letter c represents the sound/k/ at the end of words and before the letters a, o, and u but represents the sound/tʃ/ (as the first sound in the English wordchair) before the letters e and i.
The letter g represents the sound/ɡ/ at the end of words and before the letters a, o, and u but represents the sound/dʒ/ (as the first sound in the English wordgem) before the letters e and i.
The letter n represents the phoneme/n/, which is pronounced[ŋ] (as in the English wordsing) before the letters c and g when these represent velar plosives/k/ or/ɡ/, as inbanco[ˈbaŋko],fungo[ˈfuŋɡo]. The letter q represents/k/ pronounced [k], thus n also represents[ŋ] in the position preceding it:cinque[ˈt͡ʃiŋkwe]. Elsewhere the letter n represents/n/ pronounced[n], including before theaffricates/tʃ/ or/dʒ/ spelt with c or g before the letters i and e :mancia[ˈmant͡ʃa],mangia[ˈmand͡ʒa].
The letterh is always silent:hotel/oˈtɛl/;hanno 'they have' andanno 'year' both represent/ˈanno/. It is used to form adigraph withc org to represent/k/ or/ɡ/ beforei ore:chi/ki/ 'who',che/ke/ 'what';aghi/ˈaɡi/ 'needles',ghetto/ˈɡetto/.
The spellingsci andgi before another vowel represent only/tʃ/ or/dʒ/ with no /i/ sound (ciuccio/ˈtʃuttʃo/ 'pacifier',Giorgio/ˈdʒordʒo/) unlessc org precede stressed/i/ (farmacia/farmaˈtʃi.a/ 'pharmacy',biologia/bioloˈdʒi.a/ 'biology'). Elsewhereci andgi represent/tʃ/ and/dʒ/ followed by/i/:cibo/ˈtʃibo/ 'food',baci/ˈbatʃi/ 'kisses';gita/ˈdʒita/ 'trip',Tamigi/taˈmidʒi/ 'Thames'.*
The Italian alphabet is typically considered to consist of 21 letters. The letters j, k, w, x, y are traditionally excluded, although they appear in loanwords such asjeans,whisky,taxi,xenofobo,xilofono. The letter⟨x⟩ has become common in standard Italian with the prefixextra-, although(e)stra- is traditionally used; it is also common to use the Latin particleex(-) to mean "former(ly)" as in:la mia ex ("my ex-girlfriend"), "Ex-Jugoslavia" ("Former Yugoslavia"). The letter⟨j⟩ appears in the first nameJacopo and in some Italian place-names, such asBajardo,Bojano,Joppolo,Jerzu,Jesolo,Jesi,Ajaccio, among others, and inMar Jonio, an alternative spelling ofMar Ionio (theIonian Sea). The letter⟨j⟩ may appear in dialectal words, but its use is discouraged in contemporary standard Italian.[109] Letters used in foreign words can be replaced withphonetically equivalent native Italian letters anddigraphs:⟨gi⟩,⟨ge⟩, or⟨i⟩ for⟨j⟩;⟨c⟩ or⟨ch⟩ for⟨k⟩ (including in the standard prefixkilo-);⟨o⟩,⟨u⟩ or⟨v⟩ for⟨w⟩;⟨s⟩,⟨ss⟩,⟨z⟩,⟨zz⟩ or⟨cs⟩ for⟨x⟩; and⟨e⟩ or⟨i⟩ for⟨y⟩.
Theacute accent is used over word-final⟨e⟩ to indicate a stressedfront close-mid vowel, as inperché "why, because". In dictionaries, it is also used over⟨o⟩ to indicate a stressedback close-mid vowel (azióne). Thegrave accent is used over word-final⟨e⟩ and⟨o⟩ to indicate afront open-mid vowel and aback open-mid vowel respectively, as intè "tea", andpuò "(he) can". The grave accent is used over any vowel to indicate word-final stress, as ingioventù "youth". Unlike⟨é⟩, which is aclose-mid vowel, a stressed final⟨o⟩ is almost always aback open-mid vowel (andrò), with a few exceptions, such asmetró, with a stressed finalback close-mid vowel, making⟨ó⟩ for the most part unnecessary outside of dictionaries. Most of the time, the penultimate syllable is stressed. But if the stressed vowel is the final letter of the word, the accent is mandatory, otherwise, it is virtually always omitted. Exceptions are typically either in dictionaries, where all or most stressed vowels are commonly marked. Accents can optionally be used to disambiguate words that differ only by stress, as forprìncipi "princes" andprincìpi "principles", oràncora "anchor" andancóra "still/yet". For monosyllabic words, the rule is different: when two orthographically identical monosyllabic words with different meanings exist, one is accented and the other is not (example:è "is",e "and").
The letter⟨h⟩ distinguishesho,hai,ha,hanno (present indicative ofavere "to have") fromo ("or"),ai ("to the"),a ("to"),anno ("year"). In the spoken language, the letter is always silent. The⟨h⟩ inho additionally marks the contrasting open pronunciation of the⟨o⟩. The letter⟨h⟩ is also used in combinations with other letters. Nophoneme/h/ exists in Italian. In nativized foreign words, the⟨h⟩ is silent. For example,hotel andhovercraft are pronounced/oˈtɛl/ and/ˈɔverkraft/ respectively. (Where⟨h⟩ existed in Latin, it either disappeared or, in a few cases before a back vowel, changed to[ɡ]:traggo "I pull" ← Lat.trahō.)
The letters⟨s⟩ and⟨z⟩ can symbolizevoiced orvoiceless consonants.⟨z⟩ symbolizes/dz/ or/ts/ depending on context, with few minimal pairs. For example:zanzara/dzanˈdzara/ "mosquito" andnazione/natˈtsjone/ "nation".⟨s⟩ symbolizes/s/ word-initially before a vowel, when clustered with a voiceless consonant (⟨p, f, c, ch⟩), and when doubled; it symbolizes/z/ when between vowels and when clustered with voiced consonants. Intervocalic⟨s⟩ varies regionally between/s/ and/z/, with/z/ being more dominant in northern Italy and/s/ in the south.
The letters⟨c⟩ and⟨g⟩ vary in pronunciation betweenplosives andaffricates depending on following vowels. The letter⟨c⟩ symbolizes/k/ when word-final and before the back vowels⟨a, o, u⟩. It symbolizes/tʃ/ as inchair before the front vowels⟨e, i⟩. The letter⟨g⟩ symbolizes/ɡ/ when word-final and before the back vowels⟨a, o, u⟩. It symbolizes/dʒ/ as ingem before the front vowels⟨e, i⟩. Other Romance languages and, to an extent, English have similar variations for⟨c, g⟩. Comparehard and soft C,hard and soft G. (See alsopalatalization.)
Thedigraphs⟨ch⟩ and⟨gh⟩ indicate (/k/ and/ɡ/) before⟨i, e⟩. The digraphs⟨ci⟩ and⟨gi⟩ indicate "softness" (/tʃ/ and/dʒ/, theaffricate consonants of Englishchurch andjudge) before⟨a, o, u⟩. For example:
Note:⟨h⟩ issilent in the digraphs⟨ch⟩,⟨gh⟩; and⟨i⟩ is silent in the digraphs⟨ci⟩ and⟨gi⟩ before⟨a, o, u⟩ unless the⟨i⟩ is stressed. For example, it is silent inciao/ˈtʃa.o/ and cielo/ˈtʃɛ.lo/, but it is pronounced infarmacia/ˌfar.maˈtʃi.a/ andfarmacie/ˌfar.maˈtʃi.e/.[28]
Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished bylength and intensity. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for/ʃ/,/dz/,/ts/,/ʎ/,/ɲ/, which are always geminate when between vowels, and/z/, which is always single.Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and/l/ are realized as lengthenedcontinuants. There is only one vibrant phoneme/r/ but the actual pronunciation depends on the context and regional accent. Generally one can find a flap consonant[ɾ] in an unstressed position whereas[r] is more common in stressed syllables, but there may be exceptions. Especially people from the northern part of Italy (Parma, Aosta Valley,South Tyrol) may pronounce/r/ as[ʀ],[ʁ], or[ʋ].[110]
Thevoiced postalveolar fricative/ʒ/ is present as a phoneme only in loanwords: for example,garage[ɡaˈraːʒ]. Phonetic[ʒ] is common in central and southern Italy as an intervocalic allophone of/dʒ/:gente[ˈdʒɛnte] 'people' butla gente[laˈʒɛnte] "the people",ragione[raˈʒoːne] "reason".
There are two basic classes of nouns in Italian, referred to asgenders, masculine and feminine. Gender may benatural (ragazzo 'boy',ragazza 'girl') or simply grammatical with no possible reference to biological gender (masculinecosto 'cost', femininecosta 'coast'). Masculine nouns typically end in-o (ragazzo 'boy'), with plural marked by-i (ragazzi 'boys'), and feminine nouns typically end in-a, with plural marked by-e (ragazza 'girl',ragazze 'girls'). For a group composed of boys and girls,ragazzi is the plural, suggesting that-i is a general neutral plural. A third category of nouns isunmarked for gender, ending in-e in the singular and-i in the plural:legge 'law, f. sg.',leggi 'laws, f. pl.';fiume 'river, m. sg.',fiumi 'rivers, m. pl.', thus assignment of gender is arbitrary in terms of form, enough so that terms may be identical but of distinct genders:fine meaning 'aim', 'purpose' is masculine, whilefine meaning 'end, ending' (e.g. of a movie) is feminine, and both arefini in the plural, a clear instance of-i as a non-gendered default plural marker. These nouns often, but not always, denoteinanimates. There are a number of nouns that have a masculine singular and a feminine plural, most commonly of the pattern m. sg.-o, f. pl.-a (miglio 'mile, m. sg.',miglia 'miles, f. pl.';paio 'pair, m. sg.',paia 'pairs, f. pl.'), and thus are sometimes considered neuter (these are usually derived fromneuter Latin nouns). An instance of neuter gender also exists in pronouns of the third person singular.[111]
Nouns, adjectives, and articlesinflect for gender and number (singular and plural).
Like in English, common nouns are capitalized when occurring at the beginning of a sentence. Unlike English, nouns referring to languages (e.g. Italian), speakers of languages, or inhabitants of an area (e.g. Italians) are not capitalized.[113]
There are three types ofadjectives: descriptive, invariable and form-changing. Descriptive adjectives are the most common, and their endings change to match the number and gender of the noun they modify. Invariable adjectives are adjectives whose endings do not change. The form-changing adjectives "buono (good), bello (beautiful), grande (big), and santo (saint)" change in form when placed before different types of nouns. Italian has three degrees for comparison of adjectives: positive, comparative, and superlative.[113]
The order of words in the phrase is relatively free compared to most European languages.[109] The position of the verb in the phrase is highly mobile. Word order often has a lesser grammatical function in Italian than in English. Adjectives are sometimes placed before their noun and sometimes after. Subject nouns generally come before the verb. Italian is anull-subject language, so nominative pronouns are usually absent, with subject indicated by verbalinflections (e.g.amo 'I love',ama '(s)he loves',amano 'they love'). Noun objects normally come after the verb, as do pronoun objects after imperative verbs, infinitives and gerunds, but otherwise, pronoun objects come before the verb.
There are both indefinite and definitearticles in Italian. There are four indefinite articles, selected by the gender of the noun they modify and by the phonological structure of the word that immediately follows the article.Uno is masculine singular, used beforez (/ts/ or/dz/),s+consonant,gn (/ɲ/),pn orps, while masculine singularun is used before a word beginning with any other sound. The nounzio 'uncle' selects masculine singular, thusuno zio 'an uncle' oruno zio anziano 'an old uncle,' butun mio zio 'an uncle of mine'. The feminine singular indefinite articles areuna, used before any consonant sound, and its abbreviated form, writtenun', used before vowels:una camicia 'a shirt',una camicia bianca 'a white shirt',un'altra camicia 'a different shirt'. There are seven forms for definite articles, both singular and plural. In the singular:lo, which corresponds to the uses ofuno;il, which corresponds to the uses with the consonant ofun;la, which corresponds to the uses ofuna;l', used for both masculine and feminine singular before vowels. In the plural:gli is the masculine plural oflo and l';i is the plural ofil; andle is the plural of femininela andl'.[113]
There are 27 pronouns, grouped inclitic and tonic pronouns. Personal pronouns are separated into three groups: subject, object (which takes the place of both direct and indirect objects), and reflexive. Second-person subject pronouns have both a polite and a familiar form. These two different types of addresses are very important in Italian social distinctions. All object pronouns have two forms: stressed and unstressed (clitics). Unstressed object pronouns are much more frequently used, and come before a verb conjugated for subject-verb (La vedi. 'You see her.'), after (in writing, attached to) non-conjugated verbs (vedendola 'seeing her'). Stressed object pronouns come after the verb, and are used when the emphasis is required, for contrast, or to avoid ambiguity (Vedo lui, ma non lei. 'I see him, but not her'). Aside from personal pronouns, Italian also has demonstrative, interrogative, possessive, and relative pronouns. There are two types of demonstrative pronouns: relatively near (this) and relatively far (that); there exists a third type of demonstrative denoting vicinity only to the listener, but it has fallen out of use. Demonstratives in Italian are repeated before each noun, unlike in English.[113]
There are three regular sets of verbalconjugations, and various verbs are irregularly conjugated. Within each of these sets of conjugations, there are four simple (one-word) verbal conjugations by person/number in theindicative mood (present tense;past tense withimperfective aspect, past tense withperfective aspect, andfuture tense), two simple conjugations in thesubjunctive mood (present tense and past tense), one simple conjugation in theconditional mood, and one simple conjugation in theimperative mood. Corresponding to each of the simple conjugations, there is a compound conjugation involving a simple conjugation of "to be" or "to have" followed by apast participle. "To have" is used to form compound conjugation when the verb is transitive ("Ha detto", "ha fatto": he/she has said, he/she has made/done), while "to be" is used in the case of verbs of motion and some other intransitive verbs ("È andato", "è stato": he has gone, he has been). "To be" may be used with transitive verbs, but in such a case it makes the verb passive ("È detto", "è fatto": it is said, it is made/done). This rule is not absolute, and some exceptions do exist.
Mi dispiace (only "I am sorry") /Scusa(mi) (informal) /Mi scusi (formal) /Scusatemi (plural) /Sono desolato ("I am sorry", if male) /Sono desolata ("I am sorry", if female)
/ˈskuzi/;/ˈskuza/;/midisˈpjatʃe/
Who?
Chi?
/ki/
What?
Che cosa? /Cosa? /Che?
/kekˈkɔza/ or/kekˈkɔsa//ˈkɔza/ or/kɔsa//ˈke/
When?
Quando?
/ˈkwando/
Where?
Dove?
/ˈdove/
How?
Come?
/ˈkome/
Why / Because
Perché
/perˈke/
Again
Di nuovo /Ancora
/diˈnwɔvo/;/anˈkora/
How much? / How many?
Quanto? /Quanta? /Quanti? /Quante?
/ˈkwanto/
What is your name?
Come ti chiami? (informal) /Qual è il suo nome? (formal) /Come si chiama? (formal)
Tutti gli esseri umani nascono liberi ed eguali in dignità e diritti. Essi sono dotati di ragione e di coscienza e devono agire gli uni verso gli altri in spirito di fratellanza.[115]
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.[116]
"not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces."[118]
"for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."[119]
"for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions."[122]
^Italian is the main language of the valleys ofCalanca,Mesolcina,Bregaglia andval Poschiavo. In the village ofMaloja, it is spoken by about half the population. It is also spoken by a minority in the village ofBivio.
^"Romance languages".Encyclopædia Britannica.Archived from the original on 6 January 2020. Retrieved19 February 2017....if the Romance languages are compared with Latin, it is seen that by most measures Sardinian and Italian are least differentiated...
^abcdLepschy, Anna Laura; Lepschy, Giulio C. (1988).The Italian language today (2nd ed.). New York: New Amsterdam. pp. 13, 22,19–20, 21, 35, 37.ISBN978-0-941533-22-5.OCLC17650220.
^Andreose, Alvise; Renzi, Lorenzo (2013), "Geography and distribution of the Romance Languages in Europe", in Maiden, Martin; Smith, John Charles; Ledgeway, Adam (eds.),The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, vol. 2, Contexts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 302–308
^D'Antoni, Francesca Guerra. "A New Perspective on the Veronese Riddle". Romance Philology 36, no. 2 (1982): 185–200, at 186.https://www.jstor.org/stable/44943244.
^Toso, Fiorenzo.Lo spazio linguistico corso tra insularità e destino di frontiera, inLinguistica, 43, pp. 79–80, 2003.
^Cardia, Amos.S'italianu in Sardìnnia candu, cumenti e poita d'ant impostu: 1720–1848; poderi e lìngua in Sardìnnia in edadi spanniola, pp. 80–93, Iskra, 2006.
^«La dominazione sabauda in Sardegna può essere considerata come la fase iniziale di un lungo processo di italianizzazione dell'isola, con la capillare diffusione dell'italiano in quanto strumento per il superamento della frammentarietà tipica del contesto linguistico dell'isola e con il conseguente inserimento delle sue strutture economiche e culturali in un contesto internazionale più ampio e aperto ai contatti di più lato respiro. [...] Proprio la variegata composizione linguistica della Sardegna fu considerata negativamente per qualunque tentativo di assorbimento dell'isola nella sfera culturale italiana.» Loi Corvetto, Ines.I Savoia e le "vie" dell'unificazione linguistica. Quoted in Putzu, Ignazio; Mazzon, Gabriella (2012).Lingue, letterature, nazioni. Centri e periferie tra Europa e Mediterraneo, p. 488.
^Arrigo Castellani (1982). "Quanti erano gli italofoni nel 1861?".Studi linguistici italiani (8):3–26.
^Colombo, Michele, and John J. Kinder. "Italian as a Language of Communication in Nineteenth Century Italy and Abroad". Italica 89, no. 1 (2012): 109–21.http://www.jstor.org/stable/41440499. ("De Mauro started from the principle that only the inhabitants of Tuscany and Rome could easily speak the common (literary) language without a great amount of schooling, because their dialects were close to Italian. For all other Italians, it is reasonable to assume that only those who had attended at least some years of the secondary school were able to speak Italian.Given these assumptions, De Mauro (34-43) estimated that, in 1861, only 630,000 citizens, in a population of more than 25 million inhabitants, were speakers of the national language: that is, in the united Italy of the nineteenth century only 2.5% of the population was able to speak Italian. Some years later, Arrigo Castellani adjusted the percentage, arguing on the basis of new criteria that almost one-tenth of Italians spoke Italian as their everyday language in 1861.")
^Pei, Mario (1949)."A New Methodology for Romance Classification".WORD.5 (2):135–146.doi:10.1080/00437956.1949.11659494. Demonstrates a comparative statistical method for determining the extent of change from the Latin for the free and checked stressed vowels of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian, Old Provençal, and Logudorese Sardinian. By assigning 3½ change points per vowel (with 2 points for diphthongization, 1 point for modification in vowel quantity, ½ point for changes due to nasalization, palatalization or umlaut, and −½ point for failure to effect a normal change), there is a maximum of 77 change points for free and checked stressed vowel sounds (11×2×3½=77). According to this system (illustrated by seven charts at the end of the article), the percentage of change is greatest in French (44%) and least in Italian (12%) and Sardinian (8%). Prof. Pei suggests that this statistical method could be extended not only to all other phonological but also to all morphological and syntactical phenomena.
^SeeKoutnaet al. (1990: 294): "In the late forties and in the fifties some new proposals for classification of the Romance languages appeared. A statistical method attempting to evaluate the evidence quantitatively was developed in order to provide not only a classification but at the same time a measure of the divergence among the languages. The earliest attempt was made in 1949 by Mario Pei (1901–1978), who measured the divergence of seven modern Romance languages from Classical Latin, taking as his criterion the evolution of stressed vowels. Pei's results do not show the degree of contemporary divergence among the languages from each other but only the divergence of each one from Classical Latin. The closest language turned out to be Sardinian with 8% of change. Then followed Italian — 12%; Spanish — 20%; Romanian — 23,5%; Provençal — 25%; Portuguese — 31%; French — 44%."
^"Europeans and their Languages"(PDF). European Commission: Directorate General for Education and Culture and Directorate General Press and Communication. February 2006.Archived(PDF) from the original on 3 August 2008. Retrieved28 June 2013.
^Hull, Geoffrey,The Malta Language Question: A Case Study in Cultural Imperialism, Valletta: Said International, 1993.
^Longo, Maurizio (2007)."La lingua italiana in Albania"(PDF).Education et Sociétés Plurilingues (in Italian) (22):51–56.Archived(PDF) from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved28 July 2014.Today, even though for political reasons English is the most widely taught foreign language in Albanian schools, Italian is anyway the most widespread foreign language.
^Bernasconi, Giulia (2012)."L'Italiano in Venezuela".Italiano LinguaDue (in Italian).3 (2). Università degli Studi di Milano: 20.doi:10.13130/2037-3597/1921 (inactive 16 December 2024).Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved22 January 2017.L'italiano come lingua acquisita o riacquisita è largamente diffuso in Venezuela: recenti studi stimano circa 200.000 studenti di italiano nel Paese{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link)
^"(...) in a large number of Italian accents, there is considerable friction involved in the pronunciation of[ʎ], creating a voiced palatal lateral fricative (for which there is no established IPA symbol)"Ashby (2011:64).
^Cossu, Giuseppe (1999)."Chapter 2: The acquisition of Italian orthography". In Harris, Margaret; Hatano, Giyoo (eds.).Learning to Read and Write: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Cognitive and Perceptual Development, Series Number 2). Cambridge University Press. pp. 10–33.ISBN978-0521621847.Archived from the original on 27 April 2024. Retrieved17 December 2023.On a hypothetical 'transparency scale' of writing systems, Italian orthography should be placed close to one extreme
^abClivio, Gianrenzo; Danesi, Marcel (2000).The Sounds, Forms, and Uses of Italian: An Introduction to Italian Linguistics. University of Toronto Press. pp. 21, 66.
^abcdefDanesi, Marcel (2008).Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Italian Grammar, Premium Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.ISBN978-1-259-58772-6.
Canepari, Luciano (1992),Il MªPi – Manuale di pronuncia italiana [Handbook of Italian Pronunciation] (in Italian), Bologna: Zanichelli,ISBN978-88-08-24624-0
Hall, Robert A. Jr. (1944). "Italian phonemes and orthography".Italica.21 (2). American Association of Teachers of Italian:72–82.doi:10.2307/475860.JSTOR475860.
Prifti, Elton (2014). "Enèrgeia in trasformazione: elementi analitici di linguistica migrazionale".Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie.130 (1):1–22.doi:10.1515/zrp-2014-0001.S2CID142121342.
