When Italy was unified in 1861 only 2,5% of the population of the Kingdom could speak Italian, but numbers have been growing since then. Now virtually the whole population can speak and write it.

Apart from the languages of recent migrants, people who have come to Italy for short periods for work and who keep straight ties with their motherlands, such as the Romanians, Moroccans and Brazilians, there are some communities which have been here for hundreds — or in some cases thousands of years — and, though Italian citizens, speak a non-Italian language.