Italian voice-over agency

Which countries have Italian as a national language?

Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and is also one of four official languages in Switzerland.

Italian was Malta’s official language until 1934, and is still widely spoken there (almost two-thirds of the population are fluent in Italian).

In Istria County in Croatia, Italian is recognised as an official minority language.

How many people speak Italian as their first language?

It is estimated that around 60 million people speak Italian as their first language in the EU, and another 14 million speak it as a second language.

There are large expatriate Italian communities in the United States, Canada, Australia and Argentina. Over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, although only around one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.

Italian is spoken by a minority of people in Monaco, Corsica and southeast France. The language is still widely understood in the African countries of Libya and Eritrea – a hangover from the Italian colonial era.

Did you know…

• The lexical similarity (which compares word sets) between Italian and other languages is: 90% with French, 88% with Catalan, 85% with Spanish and Portuguese, and 77% with Romanian.
• There are only 21 letters in the Italian alphabet. The letters j, k, w, x and y are not used, although they do appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky and taxi.
• Italy was the place for educated European gentleman to visit during the Renaissance. In England at this time, Italian became the second most common modern language to be learned, after French. Italian loanwords were – and continue to be – used throughout Europe in cultural contexts such as art and music.
• Some of the most distinct Italian dialects – unsurprisingly – are found on the islands of Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica. A group of dialects in the north/northwestern part of Italy display a strong French influence, and are known as Gallo-Italian.

The Italian economy

Italy has a diversified industrial economy – the ninth largest in the world, the fourth largest in Europe and the third largest in the Eurozone (in terms of nominal GDP).

The country is split economically between the more industrial north (dominated by private companies), and the less developed, agricultural south (with high unemployment). The production of high-quality consumer goods by SMEs (often family-owned) is important to the country’s economy.

Italy is a member of the G7, the G8, the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.