Italian question

No, Don.

Modern Italian is quite different from the then spoken Latin.

Italians learn Latin as a foreign language even though they think about it as proprietors.

Not only language differs but the change in the concepts would make understanding quite difficult...

So how/when did it evolve into todays Italian?

Italian is only one of the various Romance languages, offspringing from Latin (like French, Spanish, Portugues, Romanian etc).

'Italians' first spoke just various dialects - still in the medieval ages sources are written in a great variety of different [native] dialects (or in Latin).
During the 14th century the Tuscan dialect began to predominate, because of the central position of Tuscany in Italy, and because of the aggressive commerce of its most important city, Florence.
Besides that, Florentine culture produced the three literary artists who best summarized Italian thought and feeling of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.
Furthermore, Tuscan departs least in morphology and phonology from classical Latin, and it therefore harmonizes best with the Italian traditions of Latin culture.


And than the Accademia della Crusca was founded in 1583, which has been accepted by Italians as authoritative in Italian linguistic matters.

And from that times onwards ... :wink:

Thanks Walter and Francis

There were early italic groups (tribes?) in the peninsula, but they didn't speak italian as we know it (see Francis and Walter's posts).