Why us?

Italian

Italian is the mother tongue of about 70 million people worldwide. 58 million of them live in Italy, while other 12 million reside in 29 countries across the globe. It is one of the official languages of Switzerland, and the official language of San Marino and the Vatican City. As a second language, it is spoken in Slovenia and Croatia, France and Monaco, Romania, Malta and other countries.

Modern Italian dialect originated in Florence and became the basis for the official language of Italy, while the world famous Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri is often credited with standardizing the Italian language we know today. Italian is widely spoken in Slovenian seaside towns and in various regions of Croatia. In Switzerland, it is the native tongue of 10% of the population and in Malta, the majority of the citizens speak Italian fluently (until 1934 Italian served as Malta’s official language). Such is the case in several other countries.

The Italian alphabet contains only 21 letters – the letters j, k, w, x and y don’t exist in Italian, except for loan words. The word “jeans”, for example, is often the only entry in Italian dictionaries under the letter ‘j’. While currently, the Accademia della Crusca fiercely projects the purity of the Italian language, upon Italy’s unification in 1861, only 2.5% of the population could speak Italian, but instead spoke their regional variants of the language that could differ significantly from the “original”.

Interesting facts: 89% of the Italian vocabulary is shared with French, 88% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Portuguese and Spanish, and 77% with Romanian. Despite Italy’s relatively small size, Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world.