ITALIAN LANGUAGE

Italian is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in Italy.

Standard Italian was strongly influenced by the Tuscan dialect and is somewhat intermediate between Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and Gallo-Italian languages of the North.

Like many languages written using the Latin alphabet, Italian has double consonants. However, contrary to, for example, French, double consonants are pronounced as long (geminated) in Italian.

As in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of French), stress is distinctive. Out of the Romance languages, the Italian language is generally considered to be the one most closely resembling Latin in terms of vocabulary, though Romanian most closely preserves the declension system of Classical Latin while Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.

The Italian people generally indicates as Italian dialects all vernacular idioms spoken in Italy other than Italian and other recognized languages. As a rule of thumb, all Romance languages spoken in Italy are customarily termed as dialects, except Sardinian, French, Friulian and possibly the Occitan, Franco-Provençal, and Catalan varieties present in some areas.

Dialects of the Italianlanguage are regional varieties (Tuscan, Central Italian) which are closely related to Standard Italian, while the terms Dialects of Italy is suggested for those languages such as Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Gallo-Italian languages which show considerable differences in grammar, syntax and vocabulary. Yet, in Italian these two different definitions are translated with the same words "Dialetti italiani" leading to the conviction that all of them are varieties of standard italian (e.g. Venetian language has a very different grammar from Italian, still it is popularly held for a variety derived from standard italian).

All the dialects of Italy have many variety inside, especially in Northern dialects, where the fragmentation in different states was harder and where there was isolation because of the mountains. For example Venetan, though being syntactically and morphologically "one", is traditionally divided into Venetian (variety spoken in Venice), northern venetan (spoken in Feltre-Belluno), central venetan (spoken in Padua,Vicenza and with slight differences in Rovigo provinces), Veronese (spoken in Verona prov.) and Trevisan (spoken in Treviso prov.).