Talk:Italian language/Archive 2

H changes pronunciation

I wrote how H changes pronunciation in word "ho" (I have) which is pretty different from "o" (or). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.147.178.233 (talk) 12:55, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Online Italian Help

I have a pretty useful resource I'd like to add to the external links. It's called Online Italian Help. It's much more than an Italian-English Dictionary because it has flash cards, games, lots of audio, and things like that. I'd appreciate it if someone would second this proposal and add it to the external links. Thanks! --Adjwilli (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Speakers in the UK

Ethnologue says there are 200,000 mother tongue speakers of Italian in the UK. This is not true, as according to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs there are only 175,796 Italian nationals resident in the UK (http://www.esteri.it/MAE/IT/Italiani_nel_Mondo/PrincipaliAttivita/Anag_Consolare/Europa.htm), many of which do not speak Italian as they are 3rd or 4th generation Italians, or because they are South Americans who have claimed Italian citizenship through ancestry and have little or no knowledge of the language. The number of mother tongue speakers is therefore considerably less. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.63.17 (talk) 12:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Cicolano-Reatino-Aquilano

Can anyone please check the new article Cicolano-Reatino-Aquilano? It is not referenced. Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Greetings

I think that "Buon pomeriggio" is not an unusual greeting. Can I correct it? --Mendelssohn (talk) 15:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm Italian and I use it. It's quite common (you can hear it in afternoon televison programs everyday). --151.51.57.32 (talk) 13:21, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

110-120 million total, source

The provided source, http://www.italia.fi/NR/rdonlyres/F057F198-FEEE-4304-BA26-D777AD7F4116/15279/Rapportotecnico1.pdf, prompts me for a username and password when I try to download it. Is there a way to get round this, or another source for this information? --Baryonic Being (talk) 10:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

That figure is obviously grossly inflated. Where do the extra 60 million speakers come from? (MJDTed (talk) 10:08, 9 January 2009 (UTC))

The source appears to be the Italian embassy to Finland. That's certainly an official source, but can hardly be considered authoritative on these matters, at least not when no one can access it. As this site appears to be nothing but a rehash of this article, it appears that there are currently no reliable sources to support the 120 million figure for second language speakers. Even if you add all the estimates for immigrant communities in the Americas and the 3% of the European population, you get nowhere near 120 million.

This has been challenged long enough to consider the statement dubious. I'm removing until someone produces a credible citation.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:28, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

China

My dear britishes, I am italian. In a point of the text, there is something about our vowels. Someone has written the word "China". What does it mean? Maybe the State whit Beijing or Pechino. In that case, we Italian write it simply as "Cina" not reading it as ciai-na (my phonetics is horrible). Goodbye. --Domyinik (talk) 19:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

China in Italian is a type of ink, and in fact the pronunciation given for that word is ['kina], not ['tʃaɪnə]. The country has nothing to do with that, there is no mistake. Lupo Azzurro (talk) 21:39, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

...or a slope (china as a noun), or a female who is bent (china as feminine form of the adjective chino). Goochelaar (talk) 23:51, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Italian co-official in Alpes-Maritimes?

If yes, is there a source?--Pascar (talk) 22:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not. I removed the claim, no idea who came up with that idea but that person cannot know much about the department of Alpes-Maritimes.JdeJ (talk) 11:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

milanese italian and roman italian

i edited the links to milanese italian leading to milanese which deals with the article about a dialect of the lombard language (spoken in milan and its province) and to roman italian leading to romanesco, a dialect of the italian language spoken in rome. milanese italian is the italian language whose lexicon is influenced in some cases and in some idioms by the local variety of the lombard language, spoken with a milan typical accent. roman italian is not romanesco (a dialect of italian), but the italian languaged (strongly) influenced by romanesco. --87.17.43.7 (talk) 12:47, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of the word "casa"

I know that under some technical discussion, one may be able to designate the "official" pronunciation of "casa" as [kasa] but I could swear on my mother that anyone speaking "standard italian" will say [kaza]. This from old films, current television, almost anything except dialectical speakers or those with regional accents.

I grew up back-and-forth between America and Italy and about everyone I know says [kaza]. This is driving me crazy! Haha. I don't see how the "standard" pronunciation could be otherwise.

Where in the article does it say anything about that at all? Anyway, most dictionaries you will find will give both pronunciations as acceptable. The pronunciation with a voiceless "s" is common in Tuscany, where so-called standard Italian originated from in the first place. LjL (talk) 14:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this, it's been driving me crazy, too. Kathleen Speight's Teach Yourself Italian says explicitly (p.213. EUP edition) that "casa" is an exception to the normal "z" sound (along with cosa, cosí, mese, risa, Pisa and inglese); but now I'm in a college course, and the teacher says "caza". Paul Magnussen (talk) 15:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe it's far from the only "exception" of this kind, although there isn't a huge number; still, most of them are pretty regional, I definitely pronounce "kaza", "kozì", "meze", "riza", "Piza" and "ingleze", although for instance i say "prèside" and not "prèzide" like I hear other people from my city say, so there is some free variation in some words, I guess. I'd say the pronunciations with "z" are overall more common than those with "s", although that's just my impression of course. --LjL (talk) 16:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

the presence of a phoneme that ends in a vowel is the exception (the pre- in preside) for the "z" sound made by the letter "s." I've heard variation in speaking but while I have heard other Italians say that Casa said with a hissing "s" is wrong I've never heard one say that the "z" sound is wrong. That's just my input.Charles F Ross (talk) 19:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Standard Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy,

This sentence is false. Italian was official in Kingdom of Sardinia (the state who anexed the others) since XVI century. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.19.87.179 (talk) 15:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Istanbul?

It is perhaps irrelevant to the point illustrated in the article, but the word Istanbul is pronounced with the stress on the penultimate syllable in Turkish, due to a stress shift regularly observed in toponyms: the stress doesn't fall on the last syllable as suggested in the text. 92.140.120.171 (talk) 12:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, the explanation in the article is malapropos: practically all Turkish toponyms have a recessive accent, and Istanbul is accentuated on the penultimate syllable by native speakers. The accent shift in Italian is perhaps best explained by want of a final vowel in the toponym or may have arisen due to contamination from English, but these should be verified before incorporating such information into the article. In any case, I deem it best to remove the present pseudo-explanation. --88.172.163.21 (talk) 11:51, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

Does anyone know why the hell beard, "la barba" is feminine in Italian!? Normally women can't grow beards... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.90.55.168 (talk) 04:27, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Likely because of its connection to 'i baffi,' which are masculine.Charles F Ross (talk) 19:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Not all words of Latin origin have maintained an obvious natural gender. Barba was a first declension Latin noun which was masculine despite its placement in a feminine declension. It's a similar case to "agricola" which was masculine but first declension as well. Barba, because of the ending, not because of the natural gender of the word, was inherited through Vulgar Latin by Italian with the increasing use of definite pronouns. W Auckland (talk) 19:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Silly classification

I just want to say it is totally silly to point out in the info box where italian is spoken. It is useless... in this case im sure pretty much every important language such as English, Spanish, Chinese or French are spoken in pretty much every country in the world!!!.... Italian is official almost only in Italia, lets point out that important fact instead !

--91.67.216.18 (talk) 00:33, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Italian in Switzerland

In the map there is a mistake: Italian is official in the whole Switzerland, not only in the Italophone part. Someone should correct the colors there, such as they corrected in the similar map for the French language. German, French and Italian are the administrative language of the whole country, Romansh is a regional language instead.--Pascar (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

By this logic French should cover all of Canada and German all of Belgium!!?? Or maybe Irish all of Ireland?? The map is fine and relax Italian is doing fine too in Switzerland just the way it is without unnecessary nationalism! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.84.185.246 (talk) 14:57, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I just want to tell you how much I miss you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.246.131.85 (talk) 20:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Modern era

It's quite a claim to say that Italian grammar was influenced by Spanish overlordship. Normally when one culture dominates another, there is borrowing of words and expressions, but for the grammar to change would be bizarre. (Examples: the Welsh and Irish have been thoroughly dominated by the English for centuries but retain their own grammar.)

However there is a lot that is strange but true in this world so if someone can come up with a reliable source for this claim then please provide it, otherwise it should be removed. Asnac (talk) 11:04, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

English grammar didn't change during the Norman reign? —Tamfang (talk) 06:53, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

""Italian is NOT regulated...

by the Accademia della Crusca nor by any other instutition. The reference should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.51.20.120 (talk) 20:27, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

yes, it's false, the Accademia della Crusca is an important institute of studies about the correct use of the italian language, the most important, but has no official role. Unfortunely I', not able to change it -.- --Sumail (talk) 10:12, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

This is not completely true... Italian is regulated by "Centro di studi di grammatica italiana" (Italian grammar study center). This institution is located physically INSIDE the Accademia della Crusca in Firenze (Florence). It was born as a department of the Accademia della Crusca in 1630, and in July 8, 1937 a royal decree law of the Kingdom of Italy recognized this specific department as the only and unique subject able to change and define grammar and syntactic rules concerning Italian language; this is the "official role". Other departments in Accademia della Crusca work on lexicon, vocabularies, pronounces and other related stuff but are only influent as you said, they haven't an official commission or mandate.84.222.56.89 (talk) 03:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Italian Language

I fully realize that it is only natural to be proud of one's language. I also realize that speakers of any language have a natural tendency to exaggerate its importance and present-day value. However, i really do feel that I have to point a few things out in relation to the Italian Wiki article. First off, one would be extremely hard pressed to find 150 million "cultural" speakers of Italian across the globe (I'm having a difficult even time grasping what this means). 60 to 70 million native speakers, yes. But then magically NINETY million more Italophones appear ? Please, enlighten me, from where ? Switzerland ? Hardly. I'm sure there are fewer than 1 million Italian speakers there, and the numbers aren't exactly soaring (I lived in Geneva for two years). Slovenia and Croatia ? Again, wishful thinking. The United States ? The language has fallen into a "Jersey Shore"-like state of disrepair. And I'd venture that there aren't too many more Italian speakers in the "Ionian Islands during the Septinsular Republic".

Now, on to the former Italian African possessions. I can't speak from personal experience concerning Libya (though the number of Italian speakers can't have faired too well under Gaddafi's European purging), but I did work in Addis and Asmara shortly after university. I met a select few (albeit very, very old) citizens in Eritrea who had a fair grasp of the language, but next to nobody in Ethiopia. And in Somalia, the government barely has control over the capital city - there aren't millions of Somalians running around poring over Aleramo and Comisso to learn a "cultural" language in the midst of civil strife.

And the only source anywhere on the Internet backing up these (unmistakably inflated) numbers is a password-protected PDF file from the Italian Consulate in Helsinki ? In short, while Italian is a beautiful language with a renowned literary tradition and culture to boot, I find it extremely hard to believe that there are so many people speak the language. Perhaps we could make a few changes to these figures (or to the misleading language distribution map) reflecting the Ethnologue entry [1] along with other more reliable sources ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.62.105 (talk) 02:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

There were 520,122 Italian citizens resident in Switzerland in 2007, then you should add all italophone Swiss citizens, so you can understand that all italophone residents in Switzerland are almost 1 million.--Pascar (talk) 15:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi - I am not "professional" wikipedia writer but I can tell you two things for sure: Italian is spoken in Albania as second language (also due to television influence; you can easily check that with every Albanian); Italian is still spoken widely in Dodecanese (almost as a first language amongs old generation - I can testimony during my last trip over there every aged people wanted to speak Italian to me; especially on smaller islands); Italian is spoken widely in Romania - some Romanians have also Italian as first language (maybe you don't know but there is also an historical Italian Minority in Romania with a presence in the Parliament granted by law - check the official site of them www.roasit.ro) Italian is spoken widely also in USA (especially Boston area than New York area - my direct experience), Australia (as my relatives born there could testify), Argentina (as my relatives born there could testify), France, East Europe. In general I always had the opportunity to speak extensively Italian in every country I have been so far - except Asia. If I can find a useful statistic link for that I will post it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.14.112.200 (talk) 16:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not spoken "widely" in the USA - only in a few select Italian-American neighborhoods in a few of the largest cities in the northeast will you ever run into it being spoken to any degree. HammerFilmFan (talk) 09:14, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Consonants

I think a further italian consonant should be added in the table "Consonants of Italian", namely a velar nasal ŋ, invariably represented by letter n. In fact, this is even used later when listing the pronunciation of some numbers: venticinque /ventiˈtʃiŋkwe/. The distinction may be subtle for some, since both dialectal and personal variants include slightly different pronunciation of n, for instance with /veŋtiˈtʃiŋkwe/. --Roberto La Ferla (talk) 22:24, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Can't it be considered an allophone? —Tamfang (talk) 06:50, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

[ŋ] IS an allophone for /n/ in Italian. (I'm Italian) 03:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.222.56.89 (talk)

When Italians recognized they do not speak Latin?

When Italians recognized they do not speak Latin?--MathFacts (talk) 08:41, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are trying to say. Please be more clear with your question/statement. Thanks. BalticPat22Patrick (talk) 19:20, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, he was only asking (or 'trying to ask', if you insist...): given that Italian had developed continuously from Latin, at what time did Italians begin to feel that their form of speech was already a different language system than is Latin? My guess would be: about AD 700. Similarly, when did English become aware that their tongue was a different language than had been that of Beowulf, say. Caxton in the 14th century complained that, confronted of with Olde Englysshe Manuscryptes (which he was supposed to type-set), he could not 'brynge them to bee vndirstonden', and that they were, in his eyes, 'more lyke Dutche than Englysshe'. And yet, Caxton's English was 'the same language' as was Beowulf's, only 'slightly' changed across generations. 193.206.225.58 (talk) 14:24, 17 December 2010 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

No. It's actually matter of convention or of national pride. Throughout the middle ages and renaissance and even later the term "latin" was used to refer to every languages of the romance world (Italian, Venetian, Occitan, French, Spanish, ......) along with many other phrases depending on the circumstances, even today there are a few languages which are called "latin" by their native speakers. So the question wants either a HUGE answer or a very deep redesign :) --130.245.203.91 (talk) 18:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

But beyond national pride: when did Italians start feeling that their form of speech, however they called it, was a different language than the language of Cicero, say? When did a common man from Campania, say, realise that 'he coulde not brynge them to bee vndirstonden' them there classical Latin texts? My guess would be some time about 700-800 AD. 89.77.89.216 (talk) 07:19, 26 May 2011 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

First of all, I'm Italian, I was born in Firenze (Florence, Tuscany) and lived there for almost 28 years before move to Australia a few months ago; my English isn't so good yet (corrections are welcome :D). Of course there isn't a specific point on the timeline, spoken Italian began to evolve into deeper dialects from IV-V century, the definitive fall of the Western Roman Empire. People of the Italian peninsula always referred to their native language as "Latin" during the following centuries. The point is that starting from fifth century there was been an harder and harder fracture between spoken latin and written latin. The first one changed gradually, year by year, century by century; the second one never changed. e.g. Around AD 1000 people of Florence were already speaking what now we call "latino volgare" (Vulgar Latin), but no-one wrote anything really important in this language essentially before Dante's "Comedìa". We had a big poetic production from several sicilian artists too. After AD 1250ca writings in "vulgar" become common, mutual influences between Tuscany and Sicily granted the new "written vulgar" a minimum threshold of coherence through the peninsula. XIV-XVI centuries meant a period of dramatical Florentine cultural hegemony over the whole peninsula due to the Renaissance, and this is when the Italian was definitively born, this is when Accademia Della Crusca has been founded and when florentine people began to refer to their native language as Italian. Today, if a Milan-born Italian hears a recitation of Comedìa can understand everything; but if a no-matter-where-born Italian hears a poem written around AD 1200 in Milan can't understand anything. This is also one of the main motivation for which in Italy there is a Latin course for students during the secondary school; Latin is very different from both Volgare and Italian, but is still the basis of the whole grammar. The principle behind this study is that the history of the Italian language is well-documented, and if you can understand HOW the transiction from Latin to Italian happened you can have a great teaching in terms of knowledge of your language, your country, your culture and your identity. LorenzoIlMagnifico (talk) 02:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Vowel quantity in Italian

Transcriptions like these: /natˈtsjoːne/ suggest that Italian knows long and short vowels. My guess would be, that it in fact does, in spite of what most grammars and such tell you, but only in the ears of those whose native tongue knows this contrast too, e. g. in those of English speakers. I'd venture to say that Italian does not really have long and short vowels (vowels being, phonemically, length-neutral in that language), except that there is a certain tendency to sometimes slightly drawl the vowel of the stressed syllable. But this tendency is restricted to and by various circumstances, such as speaking rate, emotion, logical emphasis and similar. Foreigners who always say /natˈtsjoːne/ tend to sound funny. Do they not? 193.206.225.58 (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2010 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

Long and short vowels are ONLY in the head and in the ears of people who try to speak Italian. It's not rare that people who learned Italian very well still think at Italian vowels as short ones and long ones. Short/long distinction is present in Latin, in Italian we have a form of typical/forced accent which can remind something similar, but NO, in Italian there are no short vowels as there are no long ones. (There are SEVERAL Italian grammar books for foreign students that says that we have short and long vowels.... nononono, IT'S NOT TRUE). Italian is a language with mid length terms and where single syllables are usually shorter than other languages such as English, this means that Italian is full of vowels. Typically the tonic syllable is the second last in a word, as in "nazione" /natˈtsjoːne/. There's no difference between the "a" and the "o" in terms of length, the only noticeable thing the that the "o" is the vowel of the tonic syllable of the word, its barycenter. It's quite similar to what happens in English, the only difference is that in English the tonic accent is usually focused on the first vowel of the word, and the words are made by less longer syllables. Foreigners are often funny when try to pronounce italian terms, but I'm pretty sure that English-speaking people would laugh too if they could hear how italians pronounce some of their common terms. E.g. "performance" which becomes "per formance", italians tends to move the tonic accent a little toward the end and put it on "o" or "a" (I've heard both versions). Putting the tonic accent on the first "e" is really asking to much :D LorenzoIlMagnifico (talk) 02:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I completely disagree with you. The point is that the occurence of long vowels in not by itself distinctive, but it's a countour feature of tonic accent when it falls open sillables (i.e. ending with a vowel) in the middle of a word. Do try to pronounce /nat'tsjo.ne/ with a short /o/ (you'll have to make an effort to succeed, because it's not natural italian pronunciation), it will sound odd. To an Italian speaker lengthening is just a feature of tonic accent, not something that can occur indipendently, so it's not suprising that the answer is "we don't have lenghthening, we just have tonic accent" from the point of view of an Italian speaker. In reality this co-occurence of stress and lengthening belongs to italian phonology, but length and stress can be independent from one another in other languages. That's why indicating the lengthening may be useless or even misleading for an Italian reading this article, but it's a necessary and more objective description of the language. Foreigners sounds funny only when they overdo this feature (by putting an extra-long lengthening instead of a simple one or putting it in close sillables, both a form of hypercorrection or caricature), especially when they fail to pair this with the syllable-timed prosody of Italian (in contrast with the stress-timed prosody of English), which makes closed syllables last the same as open syllables (hence the lengthening to compensate for the missing consonant). Geon79 (talk) 23:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

availability

The Italian language adopted by the state after the unification of Italy is based on the Tuscan dialect, which beforehand was only available to upper class Florentine society.

Is "available" the best word here? —Tamfang (talk) 20:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Errors

It must be made clear that the idea that Italian was unknown in Italy except by the Florentine upper classes til 1861 is a silly groundless prejudice spread by ignorant and biased people.

Italian was known and spoken also by everybody in the territories of the Stati Pontifici (Lazio, Umbria, Marche, Emilia Romagna) as it was learnt at primary school which was compulsory there.

Upper classes in all Italy were able to express themselves in Italian as it was the only language used in education besides Latin. The University of Turin adopted it officially in 1536: note the local dialect is the most removed from Tuscan by linguistic standards.Aldrasto11 (talk) 13:59, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

It would also look unbelievable to any reasonable person that most literary production since the 13th century had been done in a language that was not understandable to the literate ones.Aldrasto11 (talk) 05:29, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

In schools

While there is a subsection "Education" that addresses classes worldwide that teach Italian, there is nothing that I can find about Italian as the language of instruction in the schools in Italy. I think this article needs a (perhaps brief) section called "In education in Italy". It would answer these questions: Where in Italy is Italian, as opposed to one of the other languages of Italy, spoken by the teachers in all the classes? Do the teachers always speak in the standard language, or do they use the local dialect when teaching non-language courses such as history, etc.? Duoduoduo (talk) 14:19, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

In Italy teachers use standard Italian. Of course, the language inflection of a teacher in Milan is not the same of the teacher in Rome, but both teacher speaks always in standard Italian. It's not different from what happens with every other language, the English of Glasgow isn't the same English you can hear in London or in Brisbane... but it's still British English. Every Italian citizen speak most of time in standard Italian, people who speaks different dialects all the time are few, especially old countrymen. Don't confuse language inflection, which differs from province to province, region to region, with true dialects which sometimes have particular lexical forms, grammar rules and other similar stuff. True dialects are used only in particular situations, sometimes within the family, sometimes with some friends, traditional celebrations etc. Different dialects were a true problem about 50-60 years ago, but the country-wide radio and TV transmissions had a teaching and leveling function on the populations of different regions of Italy. In a sense, news radio bulletins and soccer running commentary on national radio channels "taught" Italians how to speak Italian correctly. Today strict dialects still exist, but everyone speak Italian.LorenzoIlMagnifico (talk) 03:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

About writing system

This is not a criticism but an annotation. This article is named italian Language, and I purposedly wrote the l of language with uppercase, so one may expet to talk about phonology, verb declination and so, of course things that are related to the Tongue and the tongue. Writing has very few to do with a language, a spoken language. In cases like chinese language, the language has nothing to do with the pictures they draw the so called "Pictograms": these are like children drawings or street signals; they have absolutely no connection with language both in oral or written form. Speaking about written language, that is the alphabets, the connection with the tongue is only that their signs represent single, or very few, sounds, it's not a direct connection it is an arbitrary one, moreover language has to do with direct talking, eye contact, hand gestures, while graphology has to do with paper, which can be lost or burned, so it would make more sense to talk about italian literature in an article intitled Italian graphology. But where will I found in the same article on Wikipedia the literature and the graphology of italian? Nowhere but if you think there is much more connection than beetween italian graphemes and italian phonology. Alphabets and spoken language are very distant but here on Wikipedia are constantly mixed erroneously, all universities treat them separatedly and there is a reason for this. This, according to me the way written language(alphabet NOT Pictograms), literature and (spoken) Tongue. About the Pictograms aka Sinograms ideograms they have so few to do with a lanuage that they don't deserve to be talked about, not only in an article that contains the word Language in its title but not even in the discussion page (they're not even far relatives!!) of an article that contains the word language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.57.96.195 (talk) 01:37, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"inconsistent outcomes" of Italian language

"Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian has a large number of inconsistent outcomes, where the same underlying sound produces different results in different words, e.g. laxāre > lasciare and lassare, captiāre > cacciare and cazzare, (ex)dēroteolāre > sdrucciolare and druzzolare, rēgīna > regina and reina, -c- > /k/ and /g/, -t- > /t/ and /d/. This 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 from languages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes. (The La Spezia–Rimini Line, the most important isogloss in the entire Romance-language area, passes only about 20 miles to the north of Florence.)"

I think this section is completely wrong. "lassare" is an ancient form for "lasciare", "cazzare" comes from the Spanish "cazar", "reina" is an ancient form for "regina" and "druzzolare" is a dialect word not used in Italian.--Antonioptg (talk) 03:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Uhhh Guys?

There isn't a section about vocabulary. Why not? Every other of the romance languages has a vocab section ('scept Romanian, but it still discusses vocab under its 'Classification'). Doesn't Italian deserve (read: need) a section about its vocabulary? Portuguese has its own article for christs sake. John Holmes II (talk) 14:18, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The article has its own definition of Italian

This article does not distinguish between "Italian" and "regional idioms" as the Italian grammarians call them. A regional idiom is not necessarily even the same language. Italian is the official language of Italy but that is a development of after 2000. The census of 1861, the year after Garibaldi's unification of Italy (which did not unify all of it) reveals that only 2.5% of the population spoke Italian. Italian is a specific language, one of several Romance languages spoken in Italy. The name reflects the original ideal, which was to create a a common Italian language. The movement did not really gain much momentum until the cinquecento. The core of the language comes from the Tuscan idiom of Florence in the ducento, where Dante devised his dolce stilo nuovo. Our Italian is at core Tuscan and dates to the 12 century at very earliest. The scholars don't use Italian to mean the first evidence of an idiom deriving from Vulgar Latin. There were over 15 of those. I would suggest an article rewrite; otherwise, you have original conceptualization here. Italian is not any language of Italy or any idiom coming from the Vulgar Latin. I further recommend you use Ethnologue as a guide. Thanks.Branigan 10:19, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

This fatuous passage should not be here. It should be on Botteville's own web-site, if anywhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.54.66 (talk) 17:27, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Education

I removed the following sentence.

In anglophone Canada, Italian is the second-most taught language after French, while in the United Kingdom it is the fourth after French, Spanish and German.( http://www.repubblica.it/2007/04/sezioni/esteri/italiano-rivincita/italiano-rivincita/italiano-rivincita.html?ref=search)

The sentence claimed to have teaching stats about Canada and the UK. But when I read the source provided, the source had nothing to do with those facts, doesn't mention them in the slightest, and therefore doesn't back up the teaching stats at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Randal Oulton (talk • contribs) 07:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

map wrong

the second map was wrong because only south tyrol and aosta valley were coloured as non native speaking. this is wrong. in other places in Italy, such as Occitan valleys, Friuli, greek communities etc Italian is spoken , by part of the population, as second language because some of the local inhabitants belong to linguistic minorities as they speak other languages rather than Italian as native language.--151.95.63.70 (talk) 21:07, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Massive WP:OR violations

This article is in very poor shape, suffering from massive WP:OR violations, made worse by extensive vandalism by anonymous users. For those who do not know how Wikipedia works, well, Wikipedia build on reliable sources (WP:RS). If you believe that something is right, then frankly nobody cares. If your opinion is not supported by a reliable source, Wikipedia is not the place for it. Violations of this rule has been taken to bizarre lengths in this article as anonumous IPs have inserted loads of unsourced claims. Worse, when those claims are tagged for sources, they resort to remove the tags instead of providing sources. That is vandalism, pure and simple. I have removed a large chunk of unsubstantiated claims that had been tagged but loads of OR remains in the article. It should probably be semi-protected as a first step, and it's in dire need of the attention of responsible users.Jeppiz (talk) 22:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

As the IP-vandal in Rome continues to remove tags, insert OR-violations and refuses to discuss the edits, I've requested semi-protection for the page. As I don't want to appear to edit war, even if only to undo policy-violations, it would be appreciated if some other user could remove the latest edit by the dynamic IP-vandal that once again inserted the same OR-violations and deleted the fact tags that had been added to these claims.Jeppiz (talk) 11:50, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Infobox

The infobox was a complete mess. Someone seems to have thought that "recognized minority language" refers to any country where even one Italian speaker lives. No, it does not. Recognized minority language means that the legislation of the country recognizes Italian as a minority language. Furthermore, "native to" is another heading that does not cover every country where the language may be spoken by someone.Jeppiz (talk) 16:53, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Protection

I've fully protected this page in accordance with the protection policy for edit warring. Please take this opportunity to discuss the disputed changes, rather than edit war. If a consensus is reached prior to the expiry of the page protection (10 days), I or another administrator may unprotect the article. I the protection lapses and/or there is no agreement if any discussion happens here, the protection could be extended and/or users may be blocked. The same is true if edit warring continues at any time once the protection is no longer in effect. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Rjd0060 (talk) 18:15, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a bit over the top, as there is no content dispute, only silly vandalism. An IP with next to no prior edits kept inserting bizarre claims, such as Italian being native to Ireland and Japan, or Italian being a recognized official language in countries like Bulgaria, Mexico or the US. The IP never discussed or gave any reason for the edits, so I don't really see it as a content dispute. Surely Rjd0060 does not mean we should discuss if Italian is native to Japan or if it's an officially recognized language in Mexico?Jeppiz (talk) 19:43, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

There is no protection template, please tag the page with a protection template. Thanks! Thewikiguru1 (talk) 00:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

If there were an edit war afoot, it would seem to be about infobox content, specifically what qualifies as a "recognized minority language." I'd be grateful for a link to the Wikipedia instructions for deciding what qualifies in that regard. In any case, limiting this to language status codified in nationwide legislation on the part of the state that perhaps grudgingly contains the minority would not be the right thing to do. The nameless IP contributor seems to have aligned the content with what I find elsewhere in the encyclopedia. The claim for Japan seemed especially absurd to me, as well, but there does appear to be some internal evidence for such a fanciful statement, alongside other lists of where Italian is spoken. Then again, perhaps Japan was vengefully added just to piss Jeppiz off. Putting the list into the native category on a later edit might possibly have been a slip of the mouse. From my perspective, the only thing that proves the reverted edits were indeed vandalism is the contributor's refusal to discuss what s/he was doing. As the infobox stands, worldwide recognition for Italian does seem excessively downplayed, with only Slovenia and Croatia. If that truly matches our strict definition of the category, something must be wrong with the category. Regardless, let's quickly achieve consensus on this because Wikipedia surely deserves a better article on Italian than the one we have now, so the page needs to be welcoming improvement, any attempted improvement it can garner. - phi (talk) 12:18, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Florida and Canada

The U.S. state name Florida nowadays is always pronounced ("de facto") as Flòrida:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvPqx6apUcw
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPubUAzAS0o
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bhh8gWudg0
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bedwv-6Qj4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdrvyCfwu1M

same thing for Cànada instead of Canadà

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siUFozLUbMc
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VebiDudfFs
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7WPU29W1qc
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCxnmpaM7rg
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3uz9GBQ0Cg

--Mirandolese (talk) 23:12, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

"All varieties"

What is that supposed to mean in the infobox, "85 million all varieties"? --JorisvS (talk) 16:28, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Introduction

The introduction right now claims Italian to be spoken in countries such as Bosnia, Albania etc. That is highly misleading, there are hardly more Italian speakers in Bosnia than Japanese in Ireland. I know Ethnologue is used as a source, and that is (once again) the problem. As has been said in a large number of language articles, Ethnologue is not a reliable source, it's filled with errors. I'm going to remove this sentence unless a reliable source is presented.Jeppiz (talk) 12:25, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree, thanks for reverting that ridiculous addition. --Nemo 18:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Italian in other countries

That vandalizer proves he knows very well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.87.133.107 (talk) 10:04, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

ITALIAN IST THE 4TH MOST STUDIED LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD, EVEN MORE THAN GERMAN

http://becomingitalianwordbyword.typepad.com/becomingitalian/2014/06/italian-is-the-fourth-most-studied-language-in-the-world.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.46.203.98 (talk) 18:30, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Correction request ("Phonology" section)

Romanian viațǎ is irrelevant for the comparison of the outcomes of "vīta", because it is deemed to be descended from *vīvitia http://m.dexonline.ro/definitie/via%C8%9B%C4%83 (vīta would have simply given vitǎ). 37.190.148.74 (talk) 00:40, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Standard Italian

The article rightly states that 'standard Italian', based on Tuscan, was adopted by the State after Italy unification (1861). That may give the impression that before 1861 standard Italian was not in use. That's wrong. Actually, standard Italian had been adopted by all pre-unitarian Italian States as official language since centuries, and was then used even beyond the current boundaries of the Italian republic, for instance in Corsica, in the region of Nice, in Istria, in Malta. Only two areas of current Italy did not have standard Italian as official language: Aosta valley (which used French) and South Tyrol (province of Bolzano), which had German (except for very few areas, where German shared its status with Italian). The last region of Italy to adopt officially standard Italian was Sardinia, in 1721. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.9.5.11 (talk) 16:21, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the Tuscan and Southern dialects of Italian were used in Malta.

Map

The world map, with all those countries in light blue, seems a bit excessive. Instead, it would be better to use green squares to denote expatriate communities like in other language articles. Califate123! (talk) 15:19, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The map, quite frankly, borders on the ridiculous in claiming everything from Canada to Bulgaria as italophone countries. As nobody has contested this for several months, I'm removing the map.Jeppiz (talk) 14:29, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

History of the Italian language

There should be a specific article about History of Italian. The history of many languages are listed in {{Language histories}}, but Italian is missing. Italian is a relevant language and should have an article for his history. Currently, the link to the history present in {{Italian language}} redirects to a section of this main article.

The current section is not smaller than other articles about the history of a language, but it can be expanded. Some parts are still incomplete. The article says that in 1861, only 2.5% of the Italian population could speak the language, but it does not explain how the language became spoken by almost the entire population (59 million speakers).

The phonological history is not presented in the article. This part should be written and presented in the article as well. It should present the sound changes that Italian has undergone since Vulgar Latin.

The history of the orthography is another thing that could be added.

Some resources:

• List of sound changes of Latin roots into Italian
• History

Torneira (talk) 20:56, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Punctuation

How do the rules of punctuation differ from English? -- Beland (talk) 20:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Numbers

I last studied Italian about two decades ago. I'm almost sure the numbers section has too many diacritics. —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 02:55, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

You're right. There is only one accent that should be there. Some could have been said to indicate pronunciation, but with the IPA alongside it, there is no need to deviate from the normal orthography. --JorisvS (talk) 13:12, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Expansion of infobox "nation=" entry

@93.32.169.124: referring to this edit and subsequent revert - aside from the fact that Slovenia and Croatia were already mentioned under "Minorities", so they didn't need to be added again, are you really sure it makes sense to add "organizations"? How many "organization" do you think may exist that adopt Italian as an official language? I'm pretty sure that infobox could get really long. Template:Infobox_language explicitly says that "nation" is for a "list of countries in which it is an official language", so if anything, one could argue that even some of the pre-existing entries were overkill. In addition, calling the places in Croatia and Slovenia where Italian is a minority language "dependencies" is WP:POV language, as those are first-class parts of those countries' territories. LjL (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Italian Language in "Countries and languages lists"

Wht does not exist a page to describe the Italian-Speaking countries, in the same way of German, English or Spanish? So it's possible to analize a complete situation of Italian language in the world, with the exact number of speakers. --Freebird73 (talk) 08:55, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Make one, it's a wiki. (Although I'm not entirely sure Italian warrants a standalone article for that given it's hardly as widely-spoken as English or Spanish... the comparison seems very far-fetched!) LjL (talk) 16:54, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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23:00 (11:00 PM)

Is 11 o'clock night (notte) or evening (sera) in Italian language? The english is "11 o'clock at night" but the Italian translation is "le 11 di sera", literally "11 o'clock in the evening". Is the translation wrong, or the English is wrong? http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-italian/11-o-clock-at-night 122.200.1.158 (talk) 03:57, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Both are correct - two different languages. For example in Italian they say - "Io ho 25 anni" while in English they say - "I am 25 years old". Two completely different verbs are used to describe the same situation. Denisarona (talk) 04:47, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

dialects

i'm going to change the part about dialects. i will call dialects of italian all local idioms not spoken by linguistic minorities recognized by law 482/99. here i will answer to people who consider them languages and want them to be spoken exclusivelly and to be official. some of you might say:

"they are not varieties of italian. they are not intelligible with italian and unesco recognizes them as languages". so i answer: even all local idioms of france , germany , netherlands and belgium , swedish traditional local idioms , danish traditional local idioms , some kroat local idioms and chineese local idioms are not varieties of the respective national languages and in most cases unesco recognizes them as languages. but most of them are called dialects. even in wikipedia. for example while the page about italian dialects is called languagess of italy , the page about local idioms in germany not spoken by linguistic minorities (so not frisian , danish or sorabian) is called dialects of german. why this difference? german dialects are not varieties of german language and are not intelligible with standard german. and unesco recognizes them as languages.NOT dialects.

"they don't derive from standard italian". my answer: no primary dialect derives from a standard language. so this is nonsense.

" (standard)italian has spread only in recent times" .my answer: the same for example is true for french , german , dutch , danish , swedish , croatian , chineese. in france only 20% in 1880 spoke french. in denmark , i've read , standard danish has spread during 20 century.

"italian was imposed". my answer: in every country a standard language is "imposed" as a result of standardization. even in thoose countries where local idioms are not intellegible with the national language and are not varieties of it according to unesco.

i would like to remind other things.

1 standard italian was the official language of italian states well before unity. for example it had been the official language of kingdom of neaples since 1544 (due to girolamo seripando) and the official language of piedmont since 1561 (editto di rivoli).it replaced latin. tuscan based italian was also the language of culture. standard italian was freely choosen by pre unitarian states.it was choosen due to literary prestige thanks to dante , petrarca and boccaccio , called tree crowns. choosen by pre unitarian states , not imposed to them. so , it was choosen by italian dialects. only for linguistic minorities it was imposed , as they did not have independent states. for example friuli was governed by veneto and sardinia by piedmont. school was in italian. books were written in italian. but , few people went to school and few people could read. due to this there wasn't much influence from standard italian. in rome , where all children had attended school since 1500 standard italian has influenced roman dialect , wich was similar to neapolitan. so , if the obligation of education had been established before and if people had started reading before , now italian dialects (local idioms NOT spoken by linguistic minorities) would be more similar to standard italian.

2 all italian local idioms , exept thoose recognized by law 482/99 , belong to italoromance family and are closely related to italian. including gallo italic. it's false that gallo italic belongs to western romance. for example gallo italic has vowel plurals and not s plurals , galloitalic does not have s endings in verbs and in pronouns , instead it has vowel endings and sometimes a t in second singular person. gallo italic , like the rest of italoromance does NOT have latin consonantic bonds pl , cl , fl ... gallo italic has metaphonesis. recognized minority languages are either NON romance or are western romance. friulian , ladin , sardinian , catalan , french , arpitan , occitan have s plurals , s endings in verbs , s ending in pronouns and NO metaphonesis. recognized minority lsnguages also differ from sourrounding idioms/dialects. for example friulian , ladin , occitan , arpitan have "io" or similar , and not "mi" in order to say "i" , verb to have from latin habere starts with vowels... recognized minority languages also have similarities with other languages considered "worth of protection". while sourrounding idioms do not. for example in friulian verb to have has similarities with that of french... while in gallo italic it has not.

example of plurals: house/houses. in ladin cesa/ceses. in venetian casa/case. dog/dogs in friulian cjan/cjans in venetian can/cani.

3 about intellegibility i wouldn't say it is zero between standard italian and what i call dialects of italian or italian dialects. all of them are romance idioms. and in written form mutual intelligibility is quite high. consider also that in the last 150 years they have been influenced by standard italian.

and then i don't understand why german local idioms are called dialects of german even though they are different from german and italian local idioms are called languages of italy.

p.s i'm italian and i know what i've written. --151.49.93.242 (talk) 20:20, 19 August 2016 (UTC). i've made the change , as i've promised.--Pangaglia (talk) 20:02, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pangaglia: Please have a look at Wikipedia's rules regarding edits like this. Your edits appear to be derived from your own expertise, opinions, and research, and editors are not allowed to insert things sourced this way. RunnyAmiga ※ talk 20:06, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

no , it is NOT my own opinion. it's hostory and it's linguistics. i am the author of the paragraph about dialects in this talk page. why are german local idioms except thoose spoken by linguistic minorities called dialects of german language (inspite being recognized by unesco as languages) and italian local idioms are considered languages? why this distinction between german dialects and italian dialects? it is NOT a neutral point of view. read what i've written.--Pangaglia (talk) 20:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pangaglia: Did your addition to the article come from a published source? RunnyAmiga ※ talk 20:17, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

of course. for example italian law 482/99 , that recognizes only the languages i've listed. every linguist including ascoli , considered thoose idioms you call langages italian dialects. bernardino bondelli wrote the "essay on gallo italic dialects" not the "essay on gallo italic languages". the decision to recognize only thoose populations as linguistic minorities come from a work of a commission made up by the most important italian linguists , including tullio de mauro and gian battista pellegrini.--Pangaglia (talk) 20:43, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pangaglia: So the concern is that the term "dialect" is offensive and "idiom" is not? I don't know if it's because of a language barrier or something else but I'm having a really difficult time understand what you want to change and why you want to change it. RunnyAmiga ※ talk 21:00, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

you have not understood. i want to change the part about dialects. instead of calling all local idioms "languages" , i will call dialect all thoose you call "languages" except languages recognized by italian state , spoken by populations recognized by italy as linguistic minorities. i have already said why in this part called dialects , here in the discussion page.--Pangaglia (talk) 14:31, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pangaglia: The prose you are trying to add has several issues in terms of usage and grammar and your posts here have the same problem. You have to make it plain to an English-speaking person what you're trying to say. I've read and re-read your addition to the article and I can barely understand it. I know this isn't a kind thing to say but I don't know how else to approach this. RunnyAmiga ※ talk 19:19, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

what don't you understand? i want to change the part about dialects because it calls italian dialects "languages". i want to call italian dialects "italian dialects". only the languages recognized by italian state , spoken by populations recognized by italy as linguistic minorities , are languages. i want to call italian dialects what you call languages. except recognized minority languages.--Pangaglia (talk) 19:54, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• Pangaglia I reverted your most recent edit and left a message on the talk page. This is the third time this material or something similar has been inserted. I want you to know that you are crossing the line into vandalism because these are unacceptable per WP:MOS (see sentence structure or syntax), and WP:NOR - which is a content policy on Wikipedia. Also, you are in contradiction to WP:3RR for which you can be blocked. I am sure you don't want to start out on Wikipedia having your account blocked. Also. I know it is WP:OR because of this talk page discussion. Please do not add this content to this article again and please study Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines per WP:Policies ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 23:17, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

i will edit again the part about dialects. it is not vandalism. what you are doing is vandalism. you are cancelling my edits only because you don't agree with me without explaining me why. and you find excuses like syntax mistakes. if there are syntax mistakes , why should you cancel the edit? correcting the mistakes would be the right thing. i made an edit and i explained why i don't agree with your opinion. i explained why italian dialects are not languages. you have changed my edits and reverted them just because you don't agree. you have not told me why. you have not explained here why according to you they are languages. you have just reverted them without explanation. this is vandalism.--Pangaglia (talk) 13:45, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Rioplatense Spanish

The sentence, "This form of Spanish is known as Rioplatense Spanish", appears too late in the text. It should probably relate to Argentina but you have it after the part about Brazil (where they speak Portuguese). 66.241.130.86 (talk) 13:56, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Closeness to Latin

The lead previously stated that Italian is closest to Latin after Sardinian. The source, however, was an old study that did not make that claim, only saying that the Italian vowel system is closest to Latin after Sardinian, so I edited the article to reflect that. An IP alleged this was vandalism, which indicates a lack of understand of what vandalism on Wikipedia means. The IP reinserted the claim using a source (Encyclopaedia Britannica, so a good source) but as it's behind a pay wall and the IP did not cite (as in "cite", not "paraphrase" or "summarize") what EB says, I invite the IP to do so here. Jeppiz (talk) 21:28, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

The dynamic IP seems to refuse the discussion, and reinserted the claim over WP:BRD. Once again, please engage and discuss the matter instead of just edit warring as you're currently doing. Jeppiz (talk) 22:07, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It is NOT behind a paywall, relevant statement is literally quoted in the note, but you probably didn't want to read it: "if the Romance languages are compared with Latin, it is seen that by most measures Sardinian and Italian are least differentiated and French most (though in vocabulary Romanian has changed most)". Entry "Romance languages", Paragraph "Classification methods and problems". Link: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Romance-languages Now, do you really you want to question E. Britannica, or do you only want to vandalize the page? 188.11.54.61 (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

First of all, if you do not know how to behave and you have no interest in Wikipedia policies, you should not edit Wikipedia. Everything about your behavior is wrong here. Second, I already said EB is a reliable source, and nobody has argued against the truth of the claim. The problem is that you change "it is seen that by most measures to "is". Jeppiz (talk) 22:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

So you just want to add the expression "by most measures"? Then why didn't you do it, instead of deleting everything? Anyways, if you want to add those 3 specific words, I'm ok with that. As for the behavior, removing well sourced and long-standing information not only is "impolite", but also against wikipedia rules. 188.11.54.61 (talk) 22:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I've removed your claim that was a day old and undiscussed. What I did prior to that was to move a claim and rewrite it so that it aligned with the source, which is exactly what we are all required to do if we discover claims not corresponding to the source. Jeppiz (talk) 22:36, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure, except that the "undiscussed claim" was taken from what is probably the most reputable encyclopedia on the planet, the attached note didn't "summarize", but literally quoted the relevant statement, the "paywall" that allegedly prevented you from checking the source was not really a paywall at all, and most English speakers would probably agree that the new language that we agreed upon is - "by most measures" (excuse me for the pun) - basically equivalent to the one that I had used first. It was an interesting discussion, I'm very satisfied with the final result. 188.11.54.61 (talk) 23:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Combinations of clitic pronouns

Could a native speaker please take a look at this? It's about combinations of clitic pronouns. Esszet (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Minority languages

Please continue to revert all these claims of minority languages being falsely recognized based on the original research that an Italian minority in a country constitutes an official status being given by said country. Just reverted these unsourced claims that stuck for nearly three weeks by an IP user. Example: United States. There is no such official minority of the Italian language recognized by the U.S. government or by any individual states. Heck, French isn't even official in Louisiana. Savvyjack23 (talk) 02:50, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Added countries who officially recognized it as a minority language (sourced). Savvyjack23 (talk) 06:51, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Classification

The following was a sub-note added in the classification's section by Strikerino. While I will attempt to formalized his note without the personal additions in-article, I believe his initial thoughts should be addressed on the talk page. It read,

"The following needs to be mentioned, that the Sicilian language is actually a direct descendant of Vulgar Latin. Therefore it the second Romance language, this is a fact that many linguists do not mention, in the case of the Tuscan being the precursor of Italian is incorrect. Dante himself wrote that he was a big fan of the Sicilian school which was already transcribing in Sicilian in the 13th century. Later on Tuscan scholars were greatly influenced by Sicilian scholars who had already distinguished themselves throughout the Italian peninsula. In one instance a Sicilian notary in Milan whose task was to transcribe important document had filled in the blank spaces with Sicilian poems to make sure that no one could add anything after the documents had been made legal. An article was published by Noemi Ghetti in an Italian magazine called the "Babylon Post" in 2013, which shows evidence of researches finding documents proving this.[2]" Savvyjack23 (talk) 02:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Some Suggestions

1. The intro seems to be a bit overly detailed regarding the history of the language. Some of the content in the third paragraph would be better situated as an introductory paragraph in the history section.

2. We may want to add a section detailing the geographical expansion of the Italian language over the course of history and how it spread outside of Italy.

Djiang1019 (talk) 01:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

3. The grammar section could definitely be expanded more - this source is a pretty good free source of information. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JttCb4GHLqsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=italian+language&ots=Pz-5NY01fa&sig=SJ28XVQtvUWF1XTLtveLEOviNEs#v=onepage&q=italian%20language&f=false Djiang1019 (talk) 21:51, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

4. We can add a table containing information regarding the population of Italian speakers by country. Ethnologue (https://www.ethnologue.com/language/ita) contains this information for larger countries, but other sources may be needed for smaller ones.

5. We can compare simple Italian morphemes (such as pronouns) to that of other Latin or other Romance languages.

Djiang1019 (talk) 21:51, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Suggestions

    There are a few items that I would like to add to the article Italian Language. One thing I want to add is more in the Renaissance section. I think it is important to discuss the spread of the Italian language, but also say how the protestant reformation, which occurred simultaneous to the renaissance, allowed for the spread of other languages, such as German. I think it is important to note that because the Renaissance not only promoted the spread of the Italian language, but also led to the spread of other languages as people started breaking away form the Roman Catholic Church. 
    Another thing I would add is more information about the advancement of technology. I think it is important to note that through various technological advancements, people are able to learn the Italian language much easier. For example, from the app Duolingo, I could learn Italian just through my wireless device.

Possible references and sources:

The role of technology http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=etc08 Modern Language Journal -- Technology in Language Use, Language Teaching, and Language Learning -- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/modl.12302/epdf?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_referrer=onlinelibrary.wiley.com&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED_NO_CUSTOMER ICT and Language Learning: From Print to the Mobile Phone by M. Kenning -- https://books.google.com/books?id=TNOHDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/may/12/technology-language-teaching-learning-pedagogy Reanna.shah (talk) 23:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Comment

"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." Speling12345 (talk) 8:50, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Italian is a recognized

Italian is a recognized minority language in Israel. Speling12345 (talk) 8:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

gemination of initial consonants

Gemination of initial consonants is not standard Italian at all. Just listen to "standard speakers" like theatre actors and movie dubbing. Actually, it is regarded as a vernacular pronunciation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.46.180.189 (talk) 10:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually, RS is so normal (and "standard") that it's incorporated in spelling if a relevant compound is written as one word: che che sia > checchessia, da bene > dabbene, etc. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 13:37, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Addition to Article

Renaissance

The Renaissance era was known as the time of "rebirth." The long-exsisting ideals that the Roman Catholic Church held were being understood from new perspectives. Individuals were forming new beliefs in various forms: social, political, and intellectual. The Roman Catholic Church was losing its control over the population by not being open to change and the increase in opposing beliefs. The ideals of the Renaissance were shown throughout the Protestant Reformation, which took place simultaneously to the Renaissance. The Renaissance embraced ideals of humanism, which was the idea of encouraging individual to focus on themselves and their full potential. The Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther disagreeing with the selling of indulgences from Johann Tetzel and his eventual break-off from the Roman Catholic Church in the Diet of Worms. After Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, he founded a sect of Catholicism, called Lutheranism. Luther believed in faith alone and scripture alone, so he decided to translate the Bible into many other languages which would allow for people from all over Europe to read the Bible. Previously, the Bible was only written in Latin, but after the Bible was translated, it could be understood in many other languages, including Italian. The Italian language was able to spread even more with the help of Luther and the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press facilitated the spread of Italian because it was able to rapidly produce texts, such as the Bible, and cut the costs of books which allowed for more people to have access to the translated Bible and new pieces of literature . Reanna.shah (talk) 22:55, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

==

I believe this paragraph should be deleted or revised. The invention of the printing press is relevant to the development of the Italian language but I don't think the Protestant Reformation is relevant.

"However, the influence of Protestantism was confined to small groups and not many common people outside urban areas accepted the movement or its doctrines. Indeed by 1600 there was no Protestant presence in Italy apart from some foreign mercenaries, diplomats and traders. The Catholic Church was actually stronger than in 1500." - "Why did the Reformation fail in Renaissance Italy?" https://dailyhistory.org/Why_did_the_Reformation_fail_in_Renaissance_Italy%3F

"The first printed translation of the Bible into Italian was the so-called Malermi Bible, by Nicolò Malermi in 1471 from the Latin version Vulgate. Other early Catholic translations into Italian were made by the Domenican Fra Zaccaria of Florence in 1542 (the New Testament only) and by Santi Marmochino in 1543 (complete Bible).[1]

Protestant translations were made by Antonio Brucioli in 1530, by Massimo Teofilo in 1552 and by Giovanni Diodati in 1607 who translated the Bible from Latin and Jewish documents; Diodati's version is the reference version for Italian Protestantism." - "Bible translations into Italian" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Italian

RayEstonSmithJr (talk) 04:11, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Technology

(maybe under education)

The continual advancements in technology plays a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. Due to the fact that the Internet is widely accessible to many people across the world, educational institutions implemented the use of technology throughout its teachings. Technology allows for globalization to occur; people are able to communicate with each other from all parts of the globe and spread their languages and ideas. Speakers of a variety of languages from all over the world use technological devices, such as computers and smartphones, are able to write to each other and share their cultures. .

The use of technology has a major impact on the teachings of languages. Educational institutions incorporate technology to facilitate students in the teachings of foreign languages. Prior to the breakthrough of technology, teachers would primarily use chalkboards and students had to learn the vocabulary and grammar through old-fashioned textbooks. Now, the implementation of technological devices allows for teachers to create presentations and incorporate helpful videos to teach the information and students have access to a plethora of information and the ability to analyze their own speech when they are learning a new language. In addition, students have the chance to communicate directly with their teacher at any time of the day if they need help with a specific topic. On the other hand, technology can have a negative influence in the learning environment. Instead of students using the Internet on technological devices as a learning tool, they can use the Internet to do things that are not strictly related to the task at hand. In addition, if the students and/or teacher do not know how to use the piece of technology, the time it takes to learn how to use the piece of technology could have been utilized in other areas pertaining to the actual study of the language.. Reanna.shah (talk) 23:02, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

z

" ⟨z⟩ symbolizes /dz/ or /ts/ depending on context" seems to be incorrect or at least misleading since there are so many exceptions listed at Italian_orthography#S_and_Z that the pronunciation seems to vary from word to word based on usage habits that are often unrelated to the spelling or even the etymology and in addition vary regionally and chronologically. What is especially surprising is that even Treccani does not always provide pronunciation help though it usually does. It would be interesting to ask them if, f.ex., the pronunciation is missing from http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/avvezzo1 due to human error or because the variation in usage is extreme or some other reason. --Espoo (talk) 06:16, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Canepari's Dizionario di pronuncia is a good place to check. See this for zio (and the guide for how to interpret).

http://www.dipionline.it/dizionario/ricerca?lemma=zio

--47.32.20.133 (talk) 13:18, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Ignoring Sicilian school contribution in this article

GianFra (talk) 09:31, 10 April 2018 (UTC)Please have a look at any relevant book on linguistics and you will find the role played by the Sicilian School. It is even mentioned in Encyclopedia Britannica that has a quite shorter article devoted to Italiano. While it is ignored in this article and a useful contribution has been archived in past notes. There are only some links that to a learner without previous knowledge will seem out of context. I am new to wikipedia and I would like to know how this happened. Is it possible to see if it was once included and then removed by someone else?

Irrelevant: Ligurian is recognized as a regional language in the department of the Alpes-Maritimes

Truth value of the claim aside, Ligurian is irrelevant to this article. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:20, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

It is debated, that the Sicilian language is the oldest and direct descendant of Vulgar Latin

This is just silly, and there is no serious debate. Sicilian can't be "older" than any other language that is a continuation of spoken Latin, all of which are by definition "descendants" (continuations, actually; the concept of a generational break, if that's what's intended, makes no sense in the real world of actual languages and speakers). --47.32.20.133 (talk) 20:12, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Official minority language in Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Italian is a minority language in Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as reported in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Why continue to remove it? Please someone check it. Sources: [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] --DavideVeloria88 (talk) 31 May 2019 (UTC)

the sources seems ok, let's wait the thoughts of other editors, thanks. LuigiPortaro29 (talk) 20:18, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

There is absolutely no Italian in Bosnia, in not a single corner of the entire country. It is not difficult to prove it, it is enough a single trip there. Or simply ask some person of Balkan, of any Balkan country: "hey, what about Italian in Bosnia?"... It is not difficult to imagine the answer: "WHAT????!!!!". Italian in Bosnia is something tremendously hilarious and absurd as saying Indonesian in Italy, or something like that. Total nonsense. I mean, my wife is from Balkan, I know all countries there...but you do not even need to know as much in order to say that is something totally absurd. I really do not know why some Bosnian guy put Italian in a list of 20 languages to be "enhanced" in Bosnia. I mean...Bosnia does not recognize any language apart Bosnian (or Serbo/Crotian, as you prefere). They do not "protect" anything and are really not in the mood of "enhancing" some exotic and non-existent languages in their territory...which is split between Serbs, Bosniaks and Croatians. We mentioned Italian in the text, but please, putting Bosnian flag besides the Slovenian and Croatian ones is ridiculous. The box is only intended for countries where a language is OFFICIAL, first or minority, but RECOGNIZED from the country's government or from a region of the respective country. The Slovenian and Croatian flags are ok, because even if Italian is only spoken in some villages or small towns there and by a tiny minority, it is recognized as a minority language in Istria county. Myself I saw Italian signs in some villages there, etc. Bosnia is a world apart, does not have anything to do. There is no Italian presence in no part or village in Bosnia.

In Romania the situation may be a bit different, there are some Italians there, in this paper they are said to be 3331 persons: http://www.dri.gov.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Multilingvism-si-limbi-minoritare-in-Romania.pdf

But I cannot find any document that proves that Italian language is somehow recognized in Romania. We need something to justify Romanian flag in the Italian box, the mention in this charter is not enough as it does not prove any real protection or enhancement of a language nor the presence of a linguistic minority, and it is not being taken into account for other languages either. With only a mention in this charter but not official documents or some other proof, a mention in the article, as we did for Bosnia and Romania, is more than enough --Springpfühler (talk) 16:32, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

This whole input sounds like a lot of WP:OR. The treaty has been signed and ratified by Bosnia and Romania, that's what the source says. This is an official and reliable source, that should be surely reported. Even more, the infobox specifies de jure: so it's clear that it follows what you are saying from your experience i.e. that Italian is not actually spoken there, but the official papers say something else. --Ritchie92 (talk) 16:39, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I actually just did a brief search on Google and found a few sources stating that Italian is in fact spoken by a minority of about 3,600 people in Bosnia: Ethnologue, WorldAtlas, and GraphicMaps. Apparently there is also a village in Bosnia, Štivor, which was populated by Italians from Trento. --Ritchie92 (talk) 16:52, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, generally speaking Ethnologue and similar pages are not any realiable source, for example because they really list EVERY single language without even differenciating if it is official, unofficial, minority, immigrant, etc...In the Bosnian page is even listed "Montenegrin", you can imagine... We do not have any info about the supposed 3600 persons who speak Italian in Bosnia. They must be immigrants, because even if some people in Štivor still speaks Italian (or Trentino?), according to the page (which does note mention any source) they should be about 250 persons...what may be already unaccurated and/or outdated, because according to the Bosnian Wiki page population in Štivor in 2013 was just 159 people...https://bs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0tivor So, it seems like very few Italians are still living there. Štivor is not even a municipality, belonging to Prnjavor. Consequently, such a small amount of people who speak a language in a village of a municipality are definitely too little and lack of any importance in order to put the language spoken by them as a "recognized minority language" of the country where they are. We could mention this village somewhere in the article, but being honest we definitely can't put the Bosnian flag among the countries where Italian is spoken, that would be totally unjustified.

What is sure, it is that Italian is not recognized by the Bosnian or Romanian Governments. This Charter of European minority languages is not a recognition of the fact a language is really being promoted, protected or taught. It is much more a list of nearly every single language to find in a given country but it does not say anything about the real status of any of them. That is why it is not being taken in consideration for most languages also from other Wikis, not only the English one. In the case of German, for example, 5 countries who include it as a "minority language" are not listed in the German language's page, and just those countries where German is REALLY a minority language, being taught in school, co-official, etc., are included.--Springpfühler (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Transcription problems in Words section

The transcriptions are symbolized as phonemic / /, yet most entries supply non-phonemic phonetics such as vowel length (/ˈuːno/, /ˈduːe/, inexplicably not in others: /ke ˌore ˈsono/), and assimilation of nasals (/beɱveˈnuːto/, /noŋ kaˈpisko/) -- accurate would be e.g. /ˈuno/ and /non kaˈpisko/ or [ˈuːno] and [noŋkaˈpisko]. RS is inconsistent, shown in /kekˈkɔːsa/, not in /ˌkome va/). Someone put a lot of work in this, so I hate to be too critical, but a decision really does have to be made regarding phonemics or phonetics (structure or pronunciation). Since lots of phonetic detail is there, the easiest solution would be to substitute out the phonemic slashes / / with phonetic brackets [ ], then just a little bit of cleanup for accuracy and consistency. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 17:35, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Good catch. I'm on board with the idea of substituting the parameters to conform to the phonetic standard for consistency and practicality. Parabellus (talk) 16:45, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll give it a little more time to see if anyone has a good reason for preferring phonemic representation. If not, I'll proceed to re-doing the tables. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:52, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

"Future of Italian" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Future of Italian. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:51, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

⟨ng⟩

I can't find any explanation here or elsewhere on WP whether the spelling ⟨ng⟩ is pronounced ŋɡ or ŋ in Italian before a, o, and u. So there is info on how to pronounce piangere but not pianga (i.e. like English finger or singer). Wiktionary doesn't have that either... --Espoo (talk) 07:55, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

/n/ is [ŋ] before /k/ and /g/: /bjanko/ → [bjaŋko], /pjango/ → [pjaŋgo]. An explanation of sorts is in the WP article Italian phonology. Italian orthography relates phonology to spelling. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:43, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

The whole point is that we have a section called "writing system" in this article that has a lot of info most readers find unnecessary and confusing and too detailed and that is missing info most readers are looking for, especially on the very small number of exceptions to one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Your explanation "/n/ is [ŋ] before /k/ and /g/" belongs in the phonology section but would be out of place and confusing in the writing system section. That and the other two articles need something like this: The spelling ⟨ng⟩ is pronounced [ŋg] before the letters a, o, u, and ?, but it's pronounced [n.d͡ʒ] before the letters e, i, and ?. --Espoo (talk) 09:09, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I was answering your observation "I can't find here or elsewhere..."; what you were looking for is found elsewhere, and part of what you were looking for, palatalization, is found in this article. Nevertheless, your proposal sounds okay to me, if it can be massaged into text here, with one fundamental adjustment: The spelling ⟨ng⟩ represents [ŋg] before the letters a, o, u, and [n.d͡ʒ] before the letters e, i. Italian orthography -- mislabeled in this article as Italian alphabet -- seems a more obvious place to look for mapping spelling to phonetics, though. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:49, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I've just now seen what you've done with the article today. Among many other things, please think through statements such as these before committing them to print:

The letter h is always silent, but it influences the pronunciation of the letters c and g.

The letter i is usually but not always silent in the spellings ci and gi.

"influences the pronunciation of" is unhelpful, and invites others to spend their time fleshing it out. In just a little bit of additional text the function of the digraphs can be described.

"i is usually but not always silent in the spellings ci and gi" is both unhelpful and of dubious accuracy. Is the camicia type considerably more frequent than the farmacia type? What about gibbo, gigante, Gino, giro etc. etc. and a plethora of word-internal and word-final -gi(-) with [i]? Is it legit to label magico or Gigi unusual? Even if so, what principles are at work? Whatever they are, they're repeated in gi, sci. Summarize cogently; if that can't be done, direct readers to an explanation. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 17:36, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Duolingo

It said that there were 29.1 million English-speakers learning Italian on Duolingo. That figure is way excessiv; the true value, according to Duolingo, is 4.94 million. I corrected that.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 05:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

"Italianised" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Italianised. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 2#Italianised until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:03, 2 August 2020 (UTC)