Italian Voice Over Agency

Everything you never needed to know about speaking Italian

The official language of Italy
Italy wasn’t unified until 1861 so it wasn’t until then the official language became Italian. Standard Italian is based on the Tuscan dialect

A 21-letter alphabet
The Italian alphabet only has 21 letters and that means there are no Italian words with the letters J, K, W, X and Y. If you see words with these letters in Italy it means they have been borrowed from another language.

Before his time
The great Italian author, Dante, wrote his famous Divine Comedy or Dante’s Inferno as it is also known was written in 1314. He wrote the book using the Tuscan dialect, so you can see he was ahead of his time as this dialect wasn’t made an official language until 1861.

The May King
Italy voted to become a republic after WWII, but before this it was a monarchy. The last King was King Umberto III and he ruled from the 9th May until the 12th June, just 36 days. That’s why he is known as the May King.

Money makes the world go around
It a tradition and sign of good luck to throw money into the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Tourists throw in around 3,000 euros a day which means approximately 1,000,000 euros a year. The money is collected and given to Caritas Rome which is a local catholic charity.

Did Shakespeare visit Italy?
Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 13 of them are set in Italy. The plays include The Merchant of Venice in Venice, Romeo and Juliet in Verona and Antony and Cleopatra is set in Rome. But whilst he seemed to have an affinity with the country there is no evidence available to say he ever visited Italy.

Pinocchio is Italian
Pinocchio is well-loved story about a boy whose nose grows longer when he tells fibs. The story was written by Italian Carlo Collodi in 1880 and it was first read by children and adults in the newspaper that serialised it.

Italy has three volcanoes
The most famous volcano in Italy is Vesuvius which destroyed the town of Pompei when it erupted in August 24th in the year 79. But there are another two active volcanoes which are Mount Etna on the Italian island of Sicily and Mount Stromboli off the north coast of Sicily

A tiny country
Italy is home to the Vatican City which is a sovereign nation with the Pope as its head of state. The Vatican city is the world’s smallest country. It became independent in 1929 and has a population of less than 500 people.

Italian Pizza
It was the Italians who invented Pizza. The first Pizzas came from Naples. Immigrant workers brought the dish to America in the 1940s and now Pizza is popular all over the world. The Italians eat Pizza with a knife and fork whilst its piping hot!

A short history on the Italian language

Italian is a Romance language, derived from Latin, and belongs to the Italic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Of all the Romance languages it is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary.

There are many different Italian dialects, even today. Historically, each city-state had their own dialect and it wasn’t until the 14th century that one began to dominate over the others.

Modern standard Italian is based on the Tuscan dialect, which prevailed for several reasons, including the region’s central position geographically, the importance of Florence in terms of commerce and culture, and the closeness of the Tuscan dialect to classical Latin.

It wasn’t until the unification of Italy in 1861, however, that standard Italian became the country’s national language.

Which countries have Italian as a national language?

Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and is also one of four official languages in Switzerland.

Italian was Malta’s official language until 1934, and is still widely spoken there (almost two-thirds of the population are fluent in Italian).

In Istria County in Croatia, Italian is recognised as an official minority language.

How many people speak Italian as their first language?

It is estimated that around 60 million people speak Italian as their first language in the EU, and another 14 million speak it as a second language.

There are large expatriate Italian communities in the United States, Canada, Australia and Argentina. Over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, although only around one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.

Italian is spoken by a minority of people in Monaco, Corsica and southeast France. The language is still widely understood in the African countries of Libya and Eritrea – a hangover from the Italian colonial era.

Did you know…

• The lexical similarity (which compares word sets) between Italian and other languages is: 90% with French, 88% with Catalan, 85% with Spanish and Portuguese, and 77% with Romanian.
• There are only 21 letters in the Italian alphabet. The letters j, k, w, x and y are not used, although they do appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky and taxi.
• Italy was the place for educated European gentleman to visit during the Renaissance. In England at this time, Italian became the second most common modern language to be learned, after French. Italian loanwords were – and continue to be – used throughout Europe in cultural contexts such as art and music.
• Some of the most distinct Italian dialects – unsurprisingly – are found on the islands of Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica. A group of dialects in the north/northwestern part of Italy display a strong French influence, and are known as Gallo-Italian.

The Italian economy

Italy has a diversified industrial economy – the ninth largest in the world, the fourth largest in Europe and the third largest in the Eurozone (in terms of nominal GDP).

The country is split economically between the more industrial north (dominated by private companies), and the less developed, agricultural south (with high unemployment). The production of high-quality consumer goods by SMEs (often family-owned) is important to the country’s economy.

Italy is a member of the G7, the G8, the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.