Italian

Why Florentine became the standard

Dante's Commedia, written in his native Florentine and later given the title Divina by Boccaccio, was read across the peninsula. Florence's wealth and prestige, and the position of its speech between the northern and southern dialects, gave that choice weight. In the 16th century Pietro Bembo held up Petrarch as the model for vernacular writing, and the argument over what Italian should be, the questione della lingua, ran until the end of the 19th century. Bembo's side prevailed. The Accademia della Crusca was founded in Florence in 1582 and 1583, and the first Italian dictionary followed in 1612.

Alessandro Manzoni, a Milanese, wrote I promessi sposi in Florentine. In the preface to his 1840 edition he described the choice as rinsing his Milanese in the waters of the Arno, and the novel became the model for later Italian fiction.

How few Italians spoke Italian at unification

Not many. The linguist Tullio De Mauro estimated that only 2.5% of the population could speak standard Italian properly in 1861; Arrigo Castellani put the figure at 10%. Literacy rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911 and 78.1% in 1951, and by 1951, on De Mauro's count, 87% could speak Italian, although 63.5% still usually spoke their local language.

Those local languages are often called dialects, which is misleading. They grew from spoken Latin before Italian existed and are sister languages of the Tuscan that became the standard. Italian law recognises twelve groups as historical language minorities.

Where else Italian holds official standing

Switzerland makes Italian official nationally and in Ticino and Grisons, and Ticino is the only canton where it predominates. In Vatican City it is the language of administration and official documents, and the Holy See works in it. Beyond the list, Italian has official minority status in Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and six municipalities of Brazil. It was the official language of Corsica until 1859, and of Nice, Savoy and Monaco until 1860.