Italian Language
Italian or lingua italiana ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. By most measures and together with Sardinian, Italian is the closest language to Latin, from which it descends via Vulgar Latin.
Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City.
Large expatriate communities also speak Italian in the Americas and Australia.
It is the second most widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers, 15% of the EU population. It is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million.
During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin, though the great majority of people were illiterate, and only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian peninsula, as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. As they are commonly referred to, these dialects evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings.