Languages from the Cradle - lullabies of Europe

About the Italian language
The various languages spoken in what we now call Italy went through a process of transformation from Latin into a spoken form of Vulgar Latin until the new Italian language, which was formalised in the early years of the 14th century, after Dante Alighieri’s work known as La Comedia. His much-loved work was read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the “canonical standard” that others could all understand. Italian has always had a distinctive dialect for each city.
Starting in late medieval times, Italian language variants became the primary commercial language for much of Europe (especially the Tuscan and Venetian variants). This became solidified during the Renaissance with the strength of Italian banking and the rise of humanism in the arts. During the period of the Renaissance, all educated European gentlemen were expected to visit Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was thus expected that educated Europeans would learn at least some Italian; the English poet John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian.
To establish modern Italian as a literary and not only as a spoken language, scholars were divided into three factions: the purists claimed that the language might only be based on the great literary classics (notably, Petrarch, and Boccaccio); other Florentines who preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times, and the Courtesans who insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new standard. Eventually the purists’ ideas prevailed, the result being the publication of the first Italian dictionary in 1612. After unification, a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country, introduced many more words and idioms from their home dialects. "Ciao" is Venetian. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most other European languages in matters of art and music. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland.
Italian is written using the Latin alphabet.Italian uses the acute accent over the letter E (as in perché, why/because) to indicate a front mid-close vowel, and the grave accent (as in tè, tea) to indicate a front mid-open vowel. The grave accent is also used on letters A, I, O, and U to mark stress when it falls on final vowel of a word (for instance gioventù, youth).The letter H at the beginning of a word in the spoken language is always silent.

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Disclaimer: The project Languages from the cradle has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.