Italian languages

Languages of Italy
Languages of Italy by groups
Official languages	Italian
Regional languages	see "legal status"
Minority languages	see "legal status"
Main immigrant languages	Spanish, Albanian, Arabic language, Romanian, Hungarian, and Romani
Main foreign languages	English (34%) French (16%) Spanish (11%) German (5%) Other regional language (6%)
Sign languages	Italian Sign Language
Common keyboard layouts	Italian QWERTY
Source	Special Eurobarometer, Europeans and their Languages, 2006

There are a large number of local languages spoken in Italy, most of which are indigenous evolutions of Vulgar Latin, and thus are classified as Romance languages. Although they are sometimes referred to as regional languages, there is no uniformity within any Italian region, and speakers from one locale within a region are typically very aware of features that distinguish their local language from the speech of other places nearby. The official and most widely spoken language is Italian, a descendant of Tuscan.

All Romance varieties spoken in Italy, except Standard Italian, are often colloquially referred to as "dialects", although for some of them the term may coexist with other labels like "minority languages" or "vernaculars". However, the use of the term "dialect" to refer to the languages of Italy erroneously implies that the languages spoken in Italy are actual "dialects" in the prevailing linguistic sense of "varieties or variations of a language." This is generally not the case in regards to the languages of Italy, as they are, for the most part, not varieties of Standard Italian. Most of the regional languages of Italy evolved locally from Vulgar Latin alongside, but mostly independently, of what would become Standard Italian, long before the fairly recent spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy. In fact, Standard Italian is itself either a continuation of, or a dialect heavily based on, the Florentine Tuscan language. The indigenous local Romance speech types of Italy are thus better classified as separate languages evolved independently from Latin, rather than "dialects" or variations of the Standard Italian language. Conversely, with the spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy in the 20th century, local varieties of Standard Italian influenced to varying extents by the underlying local languages, most noticeably at the phonological level, have also developed throughout the peninsula; though regional boundaries seldom correspond to isoglosses distinguishing these varieties, they are commonly referred to as Regional Italian (italiano regionale).