Italian Audio & Video Translation Services

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, as a second language in Albania, Malta, Slovenia and Croatia, by minorities in Crimea, Eritrea, France, Libya, Monaco, Montenegro, Romania and Somalia, and by expatriate communities in Europe, in the Americas and in Australia. Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardised Italian and other regional languages. ​According to the Bologna statistics of the European Union, Italian is spoken as a native language by 65 million people in the EU (13% of the EU population), mainly in Italy, and as a second language by 14 million (3%). Including the Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million. Italian is the fourth most frequently taught foreign language in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is studied and learned in all the confederation schools and spoken, as a native language, in the Swiss cantons of Ticino and Graubünden (predominantly in Italian Grigioni) and by the Italian immigrants that are present in large numbers in German and French-speaking cantons. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of the Vatican City. It is co-official in Slovenian Istria and in Istria County in Croatia. The Italian language adopted by the state after the unification of Italyis based on Tuscan, which beforehand was a language spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. Italian is descended from Latin. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin’s contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary. The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the twelfth century, and the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Italian as a language used in Italy and some surrounding regions has a longer history. In fact the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the Placiti Cassinesi from the Province of Benevento that date from 960–963, although the Veronese Riddle contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early Italian dialect. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early fourteenth 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 Italy and his written dialect became the “canonical standard” that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language, and thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.