The fathers of the Italian language are Dante Aligrieri, Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio. These 14th-century thinkers and poets wrote some of their works in the spoken language of contemporary Florence.
In general, there was no such Italy in the Middle Ages. There were many independent states on the Apennine Peninsula. The linguistic palette of the peninsula was very diverse. In fact, every city, and even village, had its own language …
Most of the spoken languages have their origins in Latin. Latin itself was also widely used. It was used for paperwork in the offices of states, church services. In addition, some languages were of Germanic and Slavic origin. Dialects of the Byzantine Empire were preserved in some places.
Literary traditions have had many languages. The troubadours preferred the Occitan language. A number of authors used the Sicilian language in their work. Literary schools existed in Bologna, Umbria, Venice …
The Florentine language was the luckiest one. At the end of the 16th century, Giovanni Battista Children, Antonio Francesco Grazzini, Bernardo Caniciani, Sebastian de Rossi (later joined by Leonardo Salviati) founded the Accademia della Crusca in Florence. The task of the academy was: "to show and preserve the beauty of the language of Florence in the 14th century."
Accademia della Crusca is translated as "bran academy." The founders of the academy set a goal: to separate the "good language" (flour) from the bran - the language, in their opinion, is bad.
The activities of the academy were focused on the preparation of the dictionary. During its creation, mainly Dante's Divine Comedy, Boccaccio's Decameron, Petrarch's poems were used, to a lesser extent - the works of other Florentine authors: Lorenzo Medici, Bernie, Machiavelli, Bembo, Ariosto and Salvatti himself.
The first dictionary was printed in 1612.
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The dictionary generated a lot of interest and was a great success throughout Europe. He became a model for the creation of other European national languages. Subsequent editions of the dictionary were published in 1623, 1691, 1729-1738 and 1863-1923.
For a long time, the language created at the academy was used only in narrow intellectual circles. After the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1863, the language reformed by the writer Alesandro Mazzoni was declared a state language. However, Italians both spoke and continued to speak their regional languages.
The situation began to change during the First World War. The soldiers sent to the front, called up from different provinces, simply did not understand each other. Therefore, they were forced to learn Italian.
The language strengthened its position during the Italian dictatorship. Mussolini's government pursued a policy of "Italianization", imposing Italian and suppressing regional languages. Italian came to dominate positions only after the 50s of the 20th century with the development of radio and television …