Editing Italian language (section)

=== Origins<span class="anchor" id=""Old Italian""></span> ===<!-- "Old Italian" redirects here -->
[[File: Indovinello veronese.jpg|thumb|The [[Veronese Riddle]] ({{circa}} 8th or early 9th century), a riddle reflecting either a form of Medieval Latin or the earliest extant example of Romance vernacular in Italy]]
The Italian language has developed through a long and slow process, which began after the [[Fall of the Western Roman Empire|Western Roman Empire's fall]] and the onset of the [[Middle Ages]] in the 5th century.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.italian-language.biz/italian/history.asp|title=History of the Italian language|publisher=Italian-language.biz|access-date=24 September 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060903094736/http://www.italian-language.biz/italian/history.asp|archive-date=3 September 2006|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Latin, the predominant language of the western Roman Empire, remained the established written language in Europe during the Middle Ages, although most people were illiterate. Over centuries, the [[Vulgar Latin]] popularly spoken in various areas of Europe—including the [[Italian peninsula|Italian Peninsula]]—evolved into local varieties, or dialects, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. These varieties are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but [[sister language]]s of Italian.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=The Italian language today|last1=Lepschy|first1= Anna Laura|last2=Lepschy|first2=Giulio C.|date=1988|publisher=New Amsterdam|isbn=978-0-941533-22-5|edition=2nd|location=New York|pages=13, 22, 19–20, 21, 35, 37|oclc=17650220}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last1= Andreose | first1 = Alvise |last2=Renzi |first2=Lorenzo | contribution = Geography and distribution of the Romance Languages in Europe| editor-last = Maiden | editor-first = Martin |editor2-last= Smith | editor2-first = John Charles |editor3-last= Ledgeway | editor3-first = Adam |title=The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages | volume = 2, Contexts| pages =302–308 |publisher = Cambridge University Press |place = Cambridge | year = 2013 }}</ref>

The linguistic and historical demarcations between late Vulgar Latin and early Romance varieties in Italy are imprecise. The earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the [[Placiti Cassinesi]] from the [[Duchy of Benevento|province of Benevento]] that date from 960 to 963, although the [[Veronese Riddle]], probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy.<ref>D'Antoni, Francesca Guerra. "A New Perspective on the Veronese Riddle". Romance Philology 36, no. 2 (1982): 185–200, at 186. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44943244.</ref> The [[Commodilla catacomb inscription]] likewise probably dates to the early 9th century and appears to reflect a language somewhere between late Vulgar Latin and early vernacular.

[[File:Dante03.jpg|thumb|[[Dante Alighieri]], whose works helped establish modern Italian language, is considered one of the greatest poets of the [[Middle Ages]]. His epic poem ''[[Divine Comedy]]'' ranks among the finest works of [[world literature]].<ref>{{Cite book| last=Bloom | first=Harold | author-link=Harold Bloom | title=The Western Canon | url=https://archive.org/details/westerncanonbook00bloorich | url-access=registration | year=1994| publisher=Harcourt Brace | isbn=9780151957477 }} See also [[Western canon]] for other "canons" that include the ''Divine Comedy''.</ref>]]
The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer [[Dante Alighieri]], written in his native [[Florentine dialect|Florentine]]. Dante's [[Epic poetry|epic poems]], known collectively as the ''[[Divine Comedy|Commedia]]'', to which another Tuscan poet [[Giovanni Boccaccio]] later affixed the title ''Divina'', were read throughout the Italian peninsula. His written vernacular became the touchstone for elaborating a "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. The poetry of [[Petrarch]] was also widely admired and influential in the development of the literary language, and would be identified as a model for vernacular writing by Pietro Bembo in the 16th century.

In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, Florentine also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically a middle way between the northern and the southern Italian dialects.

Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the [[Kingdom of Naples]], or Austria in the [[Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia]]), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the [[Austro-Hungarian Empire]].

Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as [[city-state]]s. Those dialects now have considerable [[Variety (linguistics)|variety]]. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of [[Regional Italian]]. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between [[Rome|Roman]] Italian and [[Milan]]ese Italian are [[syntactic gemination]] of initial [[consonant]]s in some contexts and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. ''va bene'' 'all right' is pronounced {{IPA|[vabˈbɛːne]}} by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), {{IPA|[vaˈbeːne]}} by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the [[La Spezia–Rimini Line]]); ''a casa'' 'at home' is {{IPA|[akˈkaːsa]}} for Roman, {{IPA|[akˈkaːsa]}} or {{IPA|[akˈkaːza]}} for standard, {{IPA|[aˈkaːza]}} for Milanese and generally northern.{{sfn|Berloco|2018}}

In contrast to the [[Gallo-Italic languages|Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama]] of northern Italy, the [[Italo-Dalmatian languages|Italo-Dalmatian]], [[Neapolitan language|Neapolitan]] and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-[[Occitan language|Occitan]] influences introduced to Italy mainly by [[bard]]s from France during the Middle Ages, but after the [[Norman conquest of southern Italy]], Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages.

The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ([[Late Middle Ages]]) gave its language weight, although [[Venetian language|Venetian]] remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and [[Ligurian language (Romance)|Ligurian (or Genoese)]] remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the [[Medici bank|Medici Bank]], [[Renaissance humanism|humanism]], and the [[Renaissance]] made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.