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Italian Language
About 70 million people living in 29 Southern-European countries speak Italian. These also include independent states as the Vatican and the Republic of San Marine.History of Italian
Italian is a simplificated form of the vulgar oral Latin which was spoken in the Roman Empire. Although phonetic has remained more or less the same, the grammar has simplificated a lot, for instance the five Latin cases don't exist anymore.The satandardization of the language had as its leader in one of the greatest poets and writers of all times, Dante Alighieri. His most popular work, the Commedia, was written in Southern Italy's regional dialects and in Dante's native Tuscan. Thanks to its popularity, the Commedia was known virtually by everyone, so that its language became a sort of primitive form of Italian and a national mean of communication.
Dialects
Although there is a single form of National Language, if you visit the entire peninsula you are going to hear bizarre constructions and different words to call the same objects. Italian dialects mainly divided in Northern and Southern dialects, even if in some regions, like Sardinia, they speak a so different form of language that people from other regions are not able to understand it.Grammar
Italian has a quite complex set of grammar rules, which affects even the smallest parts like the noun. The general rule would be that nouns inflect according to gender (masculine and feminine) and number (singular and plural). Unfortunately, there are exceptions: some nouns have only the singular form ("un re, due re" - one king, two kings), others are used only in the plural form. (occhiali-glasses).Slang
Studying Italian on grammar books can be a quite hard task. better to have a trip there and, why not, being conquered by its beautiful sorroundings and set there for a while.So, during your stay in Italy, you might meet a "boccalone" (a big mouth) which will spend a few minutes having "due chiacchere" (a few words) with you and later will introduce to you a wonderful Italian woman who "vi fara perdere la testa" (will drive you crazy) so that "vi metterete insieme" (you will start a relationship) and you will end up being a perfect bilingual, with less work for your brain and more pleasure for your sight.