section_path: Demographics/Languages
section_name: Languages
paragraph_text: Languages
  
  Italy's official language is Italian. There are an estimated 64 million native Italian speakers around the world, and another 21 million use it as a second language. Italian is often natively spoken as a regional dialect, not to be confused with Italy's regional and minority languages; however, during the 20th century, the establishment of a national education system led to a decrease in regional dialects. Standardisation was further expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, due to economic growth and the rise of mass media and television.
  
  Twelve "historical minority languages" are formally recognised: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan, and Sardinian. Four of these enjoy co-official status in their respective regions: French in the Aosta Valley; German in South Tyrol, and Ladin as well in some parts of the same province and in parts of the neighbouring Trentino; and Slovene in the provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine. Other Ethnologue, ISO, and UNESCO languages are not recognised under Italian law. Like France, Italy has signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but has not ratified it.
  
  Due to recent immigration, Italy has sizeable populations whose native language is not Italian, nor a regional language. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics, Romanian is the most common mother tongue among foreign residents: almost 800,000 people speak Romanian as their first language (22% of foreign residents aged 6 and over). Other prevalent mother tongues are Arabic (spoken by over 475,000; 13% of foreign residents), Albanian (380,000), and Spanish (255,000).