Italian
Italian is a member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
The official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages
of Switzerland, Italian is spoken by about 58 million people throughout the
world. Historically, Italian is a daughter language of Latin, although it is
not known exactly when Italian could be distinguished from its parent tongue.
However, no text in Italian is recorded before the 10th century. A.D. The idiom
of Florence, one of the Tuscan dialects of Italian, became dominant from the
end of the 13th century to the middle of the 14th century, largely owing to
the growing prestige of the city of Florence and the literary works written
in the Florentine dialect during that period. Thus, although Italian had-and
still has-a great many dialects, it was the culturally important idiom of Florence
that in time gave rise to modern standard Italian. The dialect of the Italian
capital, Rome, also has influenced modern standard Italian. The Roman alphabet
is used for Italian and the pronunciation of the language follows the spelling
very closely. Italian is often described both as the language of art and music
and as the language best suited to singing. Since the Renaissance, its general
cultural importance has been considerable.
Sources:
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UCSD Italian Language Program