ITALIAN LANGUAGE. That one of the Romance languages, or modern descendants of Latin. which is ill the Italian Peninsula, in Sicily, Corsica. and Sardinia. in a portion of Switzerland, and Southwestern Austria (Tyrol, Istria. Dalmatia, Trii.,t I. in Aloha, and in a small district in the southeast corner of France. The term Italian may denote generically the Romance dialects of the regions mentioned. or it may be used to indicate their common medium of literature and culture, the dialect of Tuscany. Literary Italian was given permanent importance when Dante and the writers of the fourteenth century adopted the Tuscan dialect as the idiom of their works. The dialects at large diverge so 11111(•11 that a native of the south of Italy find- it difficult to make himself understood in the north of the Peninsula. A short story by linceaccio has been translated into several hundred Italian patois and dialects.
Tuscan and the lesser dialects of the Italian speaking domain are living forms of a popular, spoken Latin, which in vocabulary and differed from the Latin of the classics not a little. Thus the popular Latin had a tendency to substitute prepositional phrases for ease dis tinctions and verbal periphrases for single forms as, for example. amare !mho) I Ital. (inler6) for ainabo: and as these substitutions prevailed in the newly evolved speech. it results that Italian is largely an analytical language, Nrhere •la,sieal Latin was chiefly inflectional in character. So, also, we meet with many words in Italian which are not to he found in the classic Latin doeum•nts, hut which, from the remarks of early grammarians. we know to have been commonly used by the people. When the bar barians overran Italy they left some of their Germanie words as c.ontributions to the speeeli of the land. but apart from this and some similar of a later date and of learned importa the lexical. phonological, and grammatical I If are developments or Modifiea tions of the corresponding elements of the popular or vulgar Latin. On vulgar Latin and its im portance for the history of Italian and the other Romanee languages, consult Seelmann, Dir .4 us sprach(' des Luteins arch physiologisch-histor isehen Grundsiit:en (Heilbronn. IStirr) ; Deel'okalisinus des Fulgiirlateins (Leip zig. ; Groeber. Vulyiirlateinische Sub strate romaniseher II7-irier, in W61111in, flit lateinisrhe Lexirographie (ib., ISS4) ; :Meyer
Liibke. %;rsehichtr der lateinisrhen Volkssprarhen, in nroeher, Orundriss der gomnni.srlcen Philologir (Strassburg, SS5) : Budinsky, Die Ausbreitung la icinischen Sprarhrn iihcr liaiIen nand die Prorinzen (Berlin. ISS1).
We may now consider briefly some striking characteristics of the Tuscan dialect, the Ital ian par excellence, or rather of that tongue \Odell we find to have been employed by most of the great writers from Dante down. First, we shall see that Italian is a far more vocalic tongue than Latin. Save the infinitives, which often end in r, when not followed by s impure (as sp. st, sc. etc.). or by a vowel, and a few foreign words, such as nord,sud,lapis, and monosyllables such as in, per, con, and non, all Italian words end in a vowel. Thus cants becomes carp, and prin cipeta becomes prineipe. This vocalic tendency is furthermore observable iu the avoidance of con sonantal groups like in spagna, which becomes itt Ispagna, or institute, which gives istituto. Of the Latin consonants x and aspirate h have disappeared, though c in pure Tuscan is under some conditions aspirated. as hasa for case. The combinations bl, p1, tl, gl, and c/ become bi, pi, fl, ghi, and chi, as in biasimarc (blasphemare), picno (plenus),liore (fioreml, ghiandu (glandes). c)tiaro (Miro). On is liquefied. Thus dignus gives degno (pronounced de-nyo). Ct becomes ft (dictum > dctto) pt becomes it (raptzon > ratto); gd becomes dd (frig'dus > freddo). Ini tial simple consonants usually remain, but e before e and i become t4 (English eh). Thus carve. coda, cure, but Cicerone. pronounced in Latin Kikcrone, becomes cicerone, pronounced tz.lgerone. So y. as in gcmma or gibbo. Jam becomes gia, and justum, giusto, in which the i is merely a sign to mark the palatal, as it is also in Giovanni. to be pronounced Diovanni. That is. the Italian gi is like our j. So se before i and e is no longer sk. as in Latin. but like sh in English. I. and sc are made guttural by putting in an h. Thus chi, syherro, sehiera. In Italian (but only seldom in other Romanic languages) there are true double consonants. pretto = pret-to. wino = an-no. qobbo = gob-bo. etc. it is always trilled on the tongue; not gutturally, as in French.