Introduction
Italian belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. Like the other Romance languages, it is a descendant of Vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans and imposed by them on the peoples under their rule. Italy map. Therefore, it shares many characteristics with other Romance languages. It is spoken by 57.7 million people in Italy with a total worldwide 64 million speakers in some 29 countries. Italian language, Italian Italiano, Romance language spoken by some 66,000,000 persons, the vast majority of whom live in Italy. It is the official language of Italy, San Marino, and Vatican City. Italian is also an official language of Switzerland, where it is spoken in Ticino and Graubünden cantons by some 666,000 individuals.
Italian dialects form a continuum of intelligibility, with the geographically distant ones being mutually unintelligible. In modern Italy, people communicate mostly in regional dialects, although standard Italian is the only written language. It is estimated that about half of Italy’s population does not speak standard Italian as a native language. Most speakers of the dozens of regional Italian dialects come in contact with standard Italian in elementary school. Before starting, each student chooses their Italian language level (from A1-C1) and the number of minutes they want to spend using the app every day. In each lesson you learn 14 new Italian words about many different themes (all of them useful for everyday life), such as business, travel, emergencies or words to use in general conversation. There is also a section dedicated to Italian slang, which isn’t very common in traditional lessons or in apps, but is very useful for students who want to live in Italy, helping you get to grips with the most authentic part of the Italian language – communicating with native speakers.
