ScriptLookup

Italian

italiano
it 65M speakers

Italian (italiano) is a Indo-European language with approximately 65M speakers speakers. It is written using the Latin script. Its BCP 47 language code is it.

Italian (italiano) is a Romance language and the official language of Italy, San Marino, Switzerland (alongside German, French, and Romansh), and Vatican City. It is spoken by approximately 65 million native speakers and is closely related to Latin, making Italian the closest living language to Classical Latin.

Italian has been a major cultural force in the West, serving as the language of the Renaissance, opera, classical music (giving musical terms like piano, forte, allegro), and the Roman Catholic Church. It is written with the Latin alphabet.

Writing Systems Used for Italian

Latin
Primary
Hello World
LTR Latn

Frequently Asked Questions

What alphabet or script does Italian use?
Italian is written using the Latin script (ISO 15924 code: Latn). Latin is written left-to-right.
What direction is Italian written?
Italian is written Left-to-right. Text runs from left to right, the same direction as most European languages.
How many people speak Italian?
Italian has approximately 65M speakers speakers worldwide. It is a member of the Indo-European language family.
What language family does Italian belong to?
Italian belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is written with the Latin script.
What is the language code for Italian?
The BCP 47 language code for Italian is "it". This code is used in software, web standards (the HTML lang attribute), and internationalization contexts.

Language Facts

BCP 47 Code
it
ISO 639-3
ita
Status
living
Speakers
65M speakers
Language Family
Indo-European
Scripts
1
Primary Script
Latin

Other Latin Languages

Acehnese Acoli Adangme Afar Afrikaans Aghem Akan Akoose Alabama Albanian Aleut Anii Ao Naga Aragonese Araona Arapaho Arawak Aromanian Arpitan Asturian

Data sourced from Unicode CLDR and ISO 639-3. Last updated April 20, 2026.