A member of the Italo-Dalmatian group of languages, standard Italian began to be developed in the 13th and 14th centuries as a literary dialect. At first basically a Florentine dialect, stripped of local peculiarities, it eventually acquired some characteristics of the dialect of Rome in particular and has always been heavily influenced by Latin.

The origins of the language are very complex and mostly formalized by Dante Alighieri, who mixed south Italian dialects, especially from Sicilian, with his native Tuscan. Of the major Romance languages, which were ultimately derived from the Latin language, Italian is the closest to Latin. The economic power that Tuscany wielded at the time gave its dialect weight, though Venetian remained widespread in the markets and streets of the Terra Firma.

Italian dialects developed from Vulgar Latin, the colloquial language of the late Roman Empire. The early texts, reflecting the spoken language of Italy, are written in dialects.

Today, the variant dialects form a continuum of intelligibility, although geographically distant dialects may be radically different. The northern dialects include what are often called the Gallo-Italian dialects (Piedmontese, Lombard, Ligurian, Emilian-Romagnol); as the influence of a Celtic (Gaulish) substratum is discernible, some linguists consider them separate languages pertaining to the Gallo-Romance Subgroup. The other northern group of dialects, spoken in northeastern Italy, is called Venetan (including Venetian, Veronese, Trevisan, and Paduan dialects, etc.). Istrian, which is spoken on the peninsula now divided between Croatia and Slovenia, with a tiny portion belonging to Italy, is sometimes considered yet another northern Italian dialect, or an independent language of the Balkano-Romance Subgroup. The Tuscan dialects (including those of Corsica) are often held to form a linguistic group of their own, while in the south and east three broad dialect areas are grouped loosely together: (1) the dialects of the Marche (Marchigiano), Umbria, and Rome; (2) Abruzzian, Apulian, Neapolitan, Campanian, and Lucanian; and (3) Calabrian, Otrantan, and Sicilian, which are believed by some to be influenced by the Greek once spoken there (which still survives in isolated pockets on the extreme southern portion of the peninsula).

In modern Italy, dialects are still the primary spoken idiom, though the standard Italian is virtually the only written language. Speakers of an Italian dialect, even one as superficially different as Sicilian, can with effort understand standard Italian, and can even learn it by such means as listening to radio programs. For most Italians, their first contact with the standard language comes in primary school, in which until recently was the only dialect used. Standard Italian is virtually the only dialect of culture in modern Italy, and with immigration from the south to the industrial north it is becoming increasingly the language of intercommunication.

Roman alphabet and contains only 21 letters. J, K, W, X and Y are used in foreign words only.

• Modern Italian developed in the 13th and 14th century out of Latin and numerous local dialects. In that time Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch revolutionized literature. They all lived in Florence or Tuscany and turned the Florentine dialect into the standard variety.
• Many terms from art history and music theory are Italian.
• Given its roots, it is the perfect language to discover European history.