If you are passionate about history and languages, the history of the Italian language is one of the most fascinating stories you’ll encounter. Italian has its roots in Latin and older local tongues.
Get ready for a journey into one of the most original linguistic sagas, featuring ancient Romans, invading barbarians, and a group of poets who transformed the vernacular Florentine into the most romantic language of them all: the Italian language.
Table of Contents
Where did the Italian language come from?
Italian is one of the Romance languages, along with Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian. All of them stem from the Latin spoken during the Roman Empire. So, our journey to discover the origins of the Italian language must start with the times of ancient Rome.
In the beginning, there was Latin
Latin was a language spoken in the modern Italian region of Lazio (where Rome is), which belongs to the vast Indo-European language family, like Germanic languages, Greek, and many others.
It became widely spoken due to the influence of the Roman Empire, and it was never the static language we imagine nowadays. From the beginning, the Romans absorbed the culture and many words of the populations they conquered.
As an example, they took all Greek gods and made them their own. For this reason, the spoken language in the Roman era had traits from the Etruscans, Siculi, ancient Greeks, Gauls, and many more. Keep in mind that the Roman Empire stretched from Spain to the Middle East, and from England to North Africa!
Many Latin words from that era survived into modern Italian through literary tradition and everyday usage.
| Latin | Italian | Italian Sentence | English Translation |
| fīlum | filo (thread) | Hai un filo che pende dalla giacca. | You have a thread hanging from your jacket. |
| grātia | grazie (thanks) | Grazie. Arrivederci! | Thanks. Goodbye! |
| mātrem | madre (mother) | Questa è mia madre. | This is my mother. |
| mŏdus | modo (way/manner) | Ci dev’essere un modo. | There must be a way. |
| mūrum | muro (wall) | Questo muro è lungo quattro metri. | This wall is four meters long. |
| nĭvem | neve (snow) | Giocano nella neve. | They are playing in the snow. |
| nŭcem | noce (nut) | L’animale mangia una noce. | The animal is eating a nut. |
| pătrem | padre (father) | Questo è mio padre. | This is my father. |
| pēnsum | pensare (to think) | Non ci voglio pensare. | I don’t want to think about it. |
| pŏrtum | porto (port) | La nave è nel porto. | The ship is in the port. |
| sōlem | sole (sun) | Il sole è giallo. | The sun is yellow. |
| taurum | toro (bull) | Ho visto un toro. | I saw a bull. |
| tēlam | tela (fabric) | Questo vestito ha una bella tela. | This dress has a beautiful fabric. |
| témpus | tempo (time) | Prima passavo molto tempo a sciare. | I used to spend time skiing. |
From barbarians to pizza
In the third century, Germanic tribes from the North of Europe started migrating into Roman territory. Romans called them barbari (barbarians) because of the broken Latin they spoke, which the Romans considered babbling. After the Western Roman Empire collapsed, barbarian kingdoms became the main government in the Early Middle Ages.
The newcomers brought their vocabulary into everyday conversations and reshaped many local words with their pronunciation. One of the most famous examples of Italian words inherited from this period is pizza, originally pita bread, reshaped by Lombard pronunciation, turning the “t” into a “z.”
The Lombards had a particularly significant influence on modern Italy. They were a tribe from northwestern Germany, who ruled Italy from AD 568 to 774, and contributed many words relating to war and parts of the body (yep, they clearly loved fighting!).
| Italian Words/Lombard Origin | English |
| anca | hip |
| balcone | balcony |
| bara | coffin |
| federa | pillowcase |
| guancia | cheek |
| guerra | war |
| Lombardia | region in Italy |
| milza | spleen |
| palla | ball |
| ricco | rich |
| russare | to snore |
| scaffale | shelf |
| schiena | back |
| spaccare | to split/break |
| spranga | bar/iron rod |
| stinco | shin |
| zuffa | fight/scuffle |
Have you noticed how familiar some of these Italian words look? English is a Germanic language with many Italian cognates (words with the same root and meaning). This similarity comes partly from the influence of ancient Germanic languages on Italian, and partly from Latin, which entered English through the Old French spoken by the Normans when they conquered England in 1066.
The rise of the volgari (vernaculars)
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire (AD 476), Italy went through a political rollercoaster, constantly reshaping internal borders. Barbarian invasions, independent city-states called comuni, maritime republics, and local lordships: This was the long historical period called the Middle Ages, which lasted until Christopher Columbus’s trip to America (1492).
Latin was still the official language of literature, philosophy, and law. Yet, in everyday life, people started speaking local variations of it, which ended up becoming the volgari medievali (medieval vernaculars). These languages were so different that people from Milan would struggle to understand someone from Bologna or Naples.
Dante and the birth of Italian
Vernaculars first appeared in written form in legal documents and later in the poetry of the Sicilian School, a literary movement at the court of Emperor Frederick II.
However, the real foundation of Italian culture was laid in 14th-century Florence by Dante Alighieri. Dante was the first to reflect seriously on the role of vernacular languages. In his unfinished work, De Vulgari Eloquentia (On the Eloquence of the Vernacular), he even analyzed 14 Italian volgari in search of a “noble” vernacular capable of handling elevated subjects.
Between 1306 and 1321, he made something completely new: He wrote a 14,233-verse poem in the Florentine vernacular, with a hint of Latin, and new words he invented. The book was, of course, the Divine Comedy, the most famous book of Italian literature.
In the poem, Dante coined many words that are still used today, like:
- molesto (annoying)
- fertile (fertile)
- mesto (sad)
- contrappasso (to suffer the opposite), a form of punishment from Inferno
He also created many Italian expressions that, through the centuries, became Italian idioms.
- Stai fresco! (literally: stay cold)
- Today, this is a sarcastic way to say, “That will never happen.” In the Inferno, it referred to the punishment for traitors frozen in eternal ice.
- Galeotto fu… (Galeotto was…): Still used when referring to the matchmaker or spark of a love story or significant event.
- The original line described how the book of Lancelot and Guinevere’s romance sparked Paolo and Francesca’s forbidden love in Dante’s Inferno.
- Bel Paese (beautiful country): A common way to refer to Italy today. Dante’s verse said: del bel paese là dove’ l sì suona, which means “the beautiful country (Italy) where the word sì (“yes” in the Italian language) is spoken.
- Senza infamia e senza lode (without infamy and without praise/unremarkable).
After Dante: The codification of Italian
Dante opened the door, but Petrarch and Boccaccio carried the torch. Petrarch’s Canzoniere set the standard for Italian lyric poetry, while Boccaccio’s Decameron provided a model for prose.
In 1525, the Renaissance humanist Pietro Bembo codified their works into the foundation of a unified literary language, establishing Florentine as the benchmark for Italian. However, the debate continued until the 20th century, when linguistic homogenization finally began. There’s even a term for this century-long discussion: questione della lingua (literally, the language question).
How is Italian different from Latin?
Italian slowly evolved from Latin, but there was never a clean break between the two. For example, words could end with “-m” or “-s” in Latin, while Italian words never end with a consonant. But this shift was already happening in Roman times, when native speakers often “forgot” those endings in everyday speech.
Italian has developed substantial differences from Latin.
1. From declensions to word order
One of the biggest changes was the loss of declensions. In Latin, nouns and adjectives changed their endings depending on their grammatical role. Italian dropped this system, so word order became essential to understanding Italian phrases.
- Latin: word order doesn’t matter, because the suffixes “-us” and “-am” make the subject and object clear:
- Marcus amat Claudiam. = Claudiam amat Marcus. = Claudiam Marcus amat. → Marco loves Claudia.
- Italian: word order changes the meaning:
- Claudia ama Marco. = Claudia loves Marco.
- Marco ama Claudia. = Marco loves Claudia.
2. Sound changes
Italian pronunciation developed from Latin through several sound changes:
- Latin has 10 vowels (ă, ā, ĕ, ē, ĭ, ī, ŏ, ō, ŭ). The Italian language simplified them into seven vowels (a, e, i, o, u, with open/closed variants for “e” and “o”).
- Grouped consonants in Latin became modern Italian double consonants.
- “mn” → “nn”
- “ct “→ “tt”
- Some diphthongs are created and dissolved.
- “ĕ” and “ŏ” → “ie” and “uo”
- “ae” and “oe” → “e”
- “au” → “o”
3. Morphological changes
The structure of words also shifted from Latin into Italian:
- New gender rules in Italian: The neuter Latin gender disappeared.
- Italian articles were born: Definite articles come from the Latin pronoun ille, and indefinite articles come from unus (one).
- Il bambino mangia. = The boy is eating.
- un bambino = a boy
- Italian verbs gained the brand-new conditional mood.
4. Changes in the vocabulary
Many Italian words come from everyday Latin, which was more expressive than Classical Latin. Meanwhile, Classical Latin survived in technical fields like science, law, or literature, not just in Italian, but in English too!
- ēquus (horse, Classical Latin) → equino (equine), equitazione (horse riding)
- caballus (workhorse/gelding in late Latin, probably from Celtic or Gaulish) → cavallo (horse)
How is Italian different from other Romance languages?
All Romance languages descend from Latin, and this common origin is evident. Look at the sentence “The sky is blue.”
- Latin: Caelum caeruleum est.
- Italian: Il cielo è azzurro.
- Spanish: El cielo es azul.
- French: Le ciel est bleu.
- Portuguese: O céu é azul.
- Romanian: Cerul este albastru.
But in Italy, things were a bit more complicated. Multiple local vernaculars developed side by side, all with their own features. What we now call Italian wasn’t simply the natural evolution of Latin: It was built, standardized, and elevated from one of those vernaculars. Fascinating, right?
Could another dialect have become Italian instead of Florentine?
Technically, yes. Venetian was also considered a strong candidate, but Venice lacked the extraordinary literature of Florence, and Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio were imitated by non-Florentian writers, giving Florentine writers the edge.
Still, modern Italian owes a lot to Venetian. Some words you’ll learn in your Italian language lessons come straight from it:
- s’ciavo (literally: slave or servant, used as a greeting in Venice) → ciao (hi)
- Pantalone (a popular Venetian theater character) → pantaloni (pants)
Even the word grazie (“thank you” in Italian) comes from Latin, but likely reached modern Italian through Venetian usage.
Languages vs. dialects in modern Italy
Talking about languages vs. dialects in Italy is tricky, and sometimes even emotional.
When Italy became a unified country in 1861, everyone spoke their local dialect. Because of this, most Italians were labeled as illiterate if they only spoke their own vernacular. It took over a century for standard Italian to spread across the country, thanks mainly to compulsory education and television.
Today, traveling around Italy, you’ll still hear people often speaking the modern descendants of those old vernaculars. Officially, only two of them are recognized as separate minority languages: Sardo (Sardinian), a Romance language spoken in Sardinia, and Friulano (Friulian), a Rhaeto-Romance language from the region Friuli Venezia Giulia.
Here is an example of how different these two proverbs from Sardinia and Friuli are in Italian:
- Sardinian: Sa domo est pitticca, su coru est mannu.
- In Italian: La casa è piccola, il cuore è grande. = The house is small, but the heart is big.
- Friulian: Soreli a San Martin, al dà un invièr cianìn.
- Se c’è il sole il giorno di San Martino, l’inverno sarà rigido. = If it is sunny on Saint Martin’s Day, winter will be harsh.
All the other vernaculars are classified as Italian dialects, even though they don’t actually stem from Italian. Many have their own grammar systems and rich literary traditions (like Sicilian or Neapolitan), sound very different from standard Italian, and have developed their own dialects.
Frequently asked questions about the Italian language and its origin
Got more questions buzzing in your head? Don’t worry, we’ve got the answers.
Is Italian a mix of Spanish and Latin?
Nope. Italian and Spanish come from Latin, and neither came from the other. Spanish influenced some regional Italian dialects during the centuries when the Crown of Aragon ruled parts of Italy, like Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples. However, they are different Romance Languages.
What languages are spoken in Italy?
Italian is the only national language in Italy. But there are more languages and dialects spoken in Italy nowadays. The languages recognized as minorities and protected for their cultural value are:
• Albanian/Arbëreshë: southern Italy
• Catalan: city of Alghero, Sardinia
• Croatian: Molise
• French and Franco-Provençal: Aosta Valley
• Friulian and Slovenian: Friuli Venezia Giulia
• Germanic languages: Trentino-South Tyrol
• Griko and modern Greek: parts of Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily
• Ladin: a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Dolomites
• Occitan: Alpine valleys of Piedmont and in Calabria
• Sardinian: Sardinia
What are the top three languages spoken in Italy?
Italian is by far the most spoken language by native Italians (92% of the population), according to Language Knowledge research. Looking at both native and non-native speakers, the top three languages in Italy are:
• Italian: 94%
• English: 28%
• French: 7%
Which countries speak Italian?
Besides Italy, Italian is the official language of San Marino, the Vatican City, and a part of Switzerland.
How many people speak Italian?
Today, about 85 million people around the world speak Italian. Of these, roughly 67 million are native speakers, while the rest use Italian as a second language.
Many learn Italian because they love culture and want to travel to Italy. Classical music is also very tied to the Italian language. Plus, Italian is one of the easier languages to learn. With a solid method and the tips on how to speak Italian, you can be the “plus one” of the 85 million Italian speakers who enjoy this beautiful language every day.
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