The Italian language comes from Latin.In ancient times Latin possessed two forms: • a written and literary one ( used by

scholars and well educated people) • and a spoken one ( used by the

majority of the population)

In the 2° century A.D., when the Roman Empire was at its peak, it

was unified politically, legally and linguisticallyRome

imposed its laws and its language on all the conquered countries.

When the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 A.D., following the Barbaric Invasions, the

different types of vulgar Latin spoken in the conquered regions gave rise to new

languages which derived from Latin, but each of them with their own

characteristics: Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Romanian etc…were born.

In Italy Latin survived longer than in any other country, and it broke into many different “dialects” which were called

“Vulgar languages”

The first person who considered the great variety of the various languages (dialects) spoken in Italy was Dante Alighieri. In his work:

“De Vulgari Eloquentia” he states that there were 7 dialectsspoken to the East of

the Pennines and another 7 spoken to the West.

The Italian language which became the language of Literature is the Italian of the written tradition used by writers such as

Dante Petrarca

Boccaccio

all from Tuscany

Susequent studies have confirmed these kinds of linguistic differenceswhich were also promotedby a long political and social division of Italy

The unification of Italy made the Italian language used by clerks, nobility and functionaries in all the Italian courts but also in the bourgeoisie .

The Italian literature's first modern novel, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Alessandro Manzoni

further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river)

as he states in the Preface to his 1840 edition.

It is universally recognized that the Tuscan dialect became the official Italian language, spoken by everybody today.

But every toun keeps the tradition of its own dialect. For example, in the area where we live Cisternino, Locorotondo , Martina Franca, Ostuni and Fasano, towns which are only few kilometres away, have got different dialects and sometimes we can’t understand some words. Dialects are used mainly with relatives, with friends, but never with people of other regions or other towns.

Italian remains the official language