Though all Italians receive formal education in modern standard Italian, almost all Italians are bilingual, meaning they speak Italian and their local dialect. There are hundreds of dialects in Italy. Some differ slightly from standard Italian, while others are considered to be separate languages. Over the centuries the Italian peninsula was host to many foreign invaders, visitors, and influences — Germanic and Venetic in the north, Greek and Arab in the south — which contributed to the formation of some of the regional dialects and languages. The website www.ethnologue.com defines thirty-two separate and distinct languages spoken on the Italian peninsula. The number of regional dialects or accents is innumerable. For the student of Italian, pure Venetian or Sicilian will be almost incomprehensible. Rest assured speakers of these languages will almost always speak Italian as well.

Italian by the Numbers

How many people claim Italian as their madre lingua (mother tongue)? And where is Italian spoken? In Italy, out of a total population of 58 million people, 55 million speak Italian; some of them are bilingual in Italian and another regional dialect, and some of them use Italian as a second language. Amazingly, only 2.5 percent of Italy's population could speak standard Italian when Italy became a unified nation in 1861. Italian is also spoken by a sizable number of people in Croatia, Eritrea, France, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the Vatican State.

Foreign Words in Italian

Because of the growing influence of American culture, especially through the media, many English words have found their way into everyday conversation. So many English words have been adopted in Italian that there's a name for them: Itangliano (highly anglicized Italian). These words include “club,” “flirt,” “shopping,” “spray,” and “style.” It might seem as if you hear more English than Italian spoken in the tourist-heavy cities of Florence, Rome, and Venice!

The Ligurian Language

The Ligurian language is spoken in Liguria in northern Italy and in parts of the Mediterranean coast of France and Monaco. Genoese is the most widely spoken dialect of the Ligurian language.

Table 1-1

The Ligurian Dialect

Ligurian Proverb	Italian Translation	English Translation
Sbaglia finn-a o præve in to dî messa.	Sbaglia perfino il prete nel dire messa.	Even priests make mistakes when saying mass.
Chi l'é stæto brûxòu da l'ægua cäda, à puia da freida ascî.	Chi è stato bruciato dall'acqua calda, ha paura anche della fredda.	One who has been burned by hot water is also afraid of cold water.