ITALIAN - where is it spoken?

Problem
I started learning Italian using Duolingo when I planned taking a trip to Umbria, in the centre of Italy.  I am not the only one to study on Duolingo. It claims to have 14 million learners!

Italian seemed similar to Latin which I learned in school. One notable similarity was dropping the personal pronoun. In school I learned a m o, I love. The ending tells you it is first person, no need to add I in front. The same applies to modern Italian. The technical term is a null-subject (no subject) language.

Would all my effort be of use anywhere else? I wondered where else Italian is spoken. Where can you go to get started speaking or to keep up your Italian?

Answers
You and I can practise Italian in Italian restaurants. (Although sometimes in London your wait staff are Romanian. But Romanian is very similar to Italian, in fact the word Romanian comes from the word Rome. The Romanians say ciao for goodbye.)

• Italy.
• Sardinia.
• Sicily.
• San Marino.
• The Vatican.
• Southern Switzerland (Grigioni and Ticino cantons)
• Immigrant groups in 27 other countries also use Italian. These countries include (not in size order but alphabetically): Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, the United States, Venezuela.

What does Wikipedia say?

Italian ( italiano (help·info) [itaˈljaːno] or lingua italiana [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language.  Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages.^[7]

 Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City and western Istria (in Slovenia and Croatia). 

(It used to have official status in Albania, Malta and Monaco, where it is still widely spoken, as well as in former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa regions.) 

Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.^[8] 

It has official minority status in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania.^[9] 

Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages.^[10] 

It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers (13% of the EU population). It is spoken as a second language by 14 million EU citizens (3%).^[1] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million.^[3]

Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. 

Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world.^[11][12]

Number of speakers by country^[8][edit]

Country	Number of speakers
Italy	57,700,000
Romania	1,502,950
France	829,000
Switzerland	666,000
Croatia	618,600
Australia	300,000
Brazil	50,000
San Marino	25,000
Monaco	5,600
Somalia	4,000
Slovenia	3,760
Vatican City	330

That table tells a surprising story. More people speak Italian in Romania than in France or Switzerland. More people speak Italian in France than in Switzerland. I must admit that having heard the German and French in Switzerland, I suspect the accent might be not what you are expecting. I reckon I'm better off practising my Italian in an Italian restaurant with three native Italian speakers, or people who speak Italian with parents born in Italy.

However, if you are going to Switzerland on business, either a meeting or conference, or mid-point for colleagues in different countries who speak different languages, you now know where to go for the benefit of those who want to read and speak Italian. We went to Switzerland on business and stayed on and went to Milan to the opera at La Scala opera house.

Useful Websites
LANGUAGE
www.duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language (Long conversational vocabulary list.)
http://official-swiss-national-languages.all-about-switzerland.info (Table of which languages are spoken where.)

TRAVEL TO ITALY
Two Toastmasters clubs in Roma and Florence welcome speakers of Italian. Their bilingual websites will give you a bit of practice:
https://www.meetup.com/ToastmastersFirenze/

TRAVEL TO SWITZERLAND
http://switzerland.embassyhomepage.com/switzerland_tourist_information_bern_tourist_attractions_lucerne_flights_switzerland_holiday_resorts_lausanne_swiss_hotels.htm
Italian speaking cities are Lugano (40,000) Locarno (20,000) and Bellinzona (25,000).

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of languages.

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