Italian

About 93 million people speak the Italian language in the world. Of these, approximately 68 million speak it as their mother tongue, which comes almost entirely from ordinary Latin, spoken by soldiers of the ancient Roman Empire, unlike classical Latin, which was spoken by the court and by more educated people of the empire. Currently, their native speakers come mainly from Italy, but also from southern Switzerland - the "Italian Switzerland" - and also from the independent Republic of San Marino and the Vatican City, which has Italian as its official language alongside Latin. There are several Italian-speaking communities in the Americas due to the strong movement of Italian emigration, particularly in Argentina, Brazil, USA, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Uruguay.