Sydney Italian Translation Services

About the Italian Language

The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin starting in the twelfth century, and the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Italian as a language used in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the Province of Benevento that date from 960–963. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early fourteenth century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine.