Italian is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people primarily in Italy. Standard Italian is based on the Tuscan dialect and is somewhat intermediate between the languages of Southern Italy and the Gallo-Romance languages of the North.

Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and is an official language in Switzerland because it's spoken in Ticino and Grigioni cantons. It is also the second official language in Vatican City and in some areas of Istria in Slovenia and Croatia with an Italian minority. It is also widely known and taught in Monaco and Malta. (It served as Malta's official language until Maltese was enshrined in the 1934 Constitution.) It is also widely used in France (Corsica and Nice) and Albania.

It is widely used by immigrants in Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Canada, Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. It is spoken in parts of Africa that were formerly under Italian rule such as Somalia, Libya and Eritrea.

The presence of Italian people is very substantial above all in South America. In this case the presence of Italian Language, most of all its northern dialects, are abundant in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Here the Spanish and the Portuguese Languages are influenced by Italian particularly in some parts of these countries (i.e. Rio Grande do Sul, Cordoba, etc.).