Languages of Italy

Italy is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in Europe. About 45.9% of the Italian population speak primarily Italian at home, while another 32.2% speak a local language alongside Italian.

Italian is the country's national and official language, and has a standard form and regional varieties. It is the most spoken language in Italy. In addition to Italian, numerous local and regional languages are spoken; most of these, like Italian, belong to the Romance language group. In Italy, these are commonly called dialetti ("dialects"). The majority of languages often labelled as regional are distributed in a continuum across the regions' administrative boundaries; speakers can typically recognize the features that distinguish their own variety from others spoken nearby.

According to Italian linguist Tullio De Mauro, at the time of the unification of Italy in 1861, 2.5% of the population spoke Italian. The language later spread widely among the general population through compulsory education, urbanization, internal migration, bureaucracy, military service, and mass media (both print and audiovisual media) from the 1950s onwards.

Italian was originally based on the Tuscan varieties spoken in Florence during the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of the local languages evolved independently from Vulgar Latin, and are therefore not derived from Italian. Some local languages did not evolve from Latin, as they belong to other Indo-European branches. For example, Cimbrian is Germanic, Arbëresh varieties are Albanian, Slavomolisano is Slavic, and Griko is Hellenic. Other languages are spoken by immigrant communities.

The second most spoken language in Italy is a dialect continuum known outside of Italy as Neapolitan language, spoken by about 11 million people in most of Southern Italy, excluding Sicily and Sardinia. The Neapolitan language was classified with this name by UNESCO as an endangered language, and it is also the term used by Ethnologue, while Glottolog uses "Continental Southern Italian". In Italy, the term Intermediate Southern Italian (meridionale intermedio) is preferred, as the word napoletano only refers to the varieties spoken in the city of Naples and its surroundings.

Twelve languages are officially recognized as spoken by linguistic minorities: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian. Sardinian is considered one of the largest of these, with approximately one million speakers, even though the number of speakers is overall declining.