One of my new year resolutions is to Learn Italian, below are some of the facts of the Italian language, you can check and share.
1. Italian has over 64 million native Italian speakers, but if you include those who use it as a second language then it is about 85 million.
2. Italian is known as the Language of Music because of its use in Musical terminology and Opera. Words like tempo, crescendo and soprano are all Italia, because the reason is that the inventor of modern musical notation, Guido d’Arezzo, was Italian.
Italian Language Facts
3. Italian is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union.
4. According to CNN Poll Italian is rated as the “Sexiest accent” by Native English Speakers and French is Second.
5. Italian is the Official language in 7 Countries and EU Region which includes Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Istria County (Croatia), Slovenia Slovene Istria (Slovenia) and the European Union. And it also Recognized as Minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Eritrea, Libya, Romania, Slovenia and Somalia.
Facts of Italian Language
6. Italian is one of the Romance languages of five most widely spoken Romance languages by a number of native speakers are Spanish (470 million), Portuguese (250 million), French (150 million), Italian (60 million), and Romanian (25 million).
7. Italian has been reported as the fourth frequently taught foreign language in the world after Spanish, French and German.
8. In 16th century Italian Explorer Niccolò de’ Conti found that the words in Telugu language end with vowels, just like those in Italian, and hence referred it as “The Italian of the East”. Check 16 Interesting Facts of Telugu Language.
9. According to the “Garzanti” dictionary, the longest word in the Italian language is ‘precipitevolissimevolmente’ meaning ‘very quickly’, but at 26 letters, it is surpassed by some medical terms such as 29-letter ‘esofagodermatodigiunoplastica’ which refers to a kind of plastic surgery.
10. The word “America” comes from Italian, Yes “America” is named after Amerigo Vespucci an Italian explorer who recognized North and South America were separate continents in 15th century.
11. ‘Ghiaiaiuolo’ and ‘cuoiaiuolo’ are two words with eight consecutive vowels, and there are two words with eight instance of letter ‘i’ – ‘indivisibilissimi’ and ‘indistinguibilissimi’.
12. There are only 21 Letters in Italian j, k, w, x, and y doesn’t exist in Italian.
13. When Italy was unified in 1861, only 2.5 percent of the population could speak the language – they all spoke their regional variants. Now, that figure is in the high 90s, though around five percent speak only or predominantly in their regional language.
Bonus: There is a 64 letter long word, the Written format of Number 454,544 has 64 letters ‘quattrocentocinquantaquattromilacinquecentoquarantaquattresimo‘.