Italian

The Italian group, known to scholars as the Italo-Dalmatian languages, also takes in the islands and the vernaculars once spoken on the Dalmatian coast. Its languages descend from Vulgar Latin; the earliest surviving Romance vernacular text, the Placiti Cassinesi of 960 to 963, comes from near Benevento.

Sicilian holds the oldest literary tradition: the Sicilian School of 1230 to 1266, led by Giacomo da Lentini at Emperor Frederick II's Palermo court, forged the first Italian literary language and the sonnet. Primacy passed to Florentine Tuscan with Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the fourteenth century. The Renaissance debate favoured Pietro Bembo's Florentine standard and the first Italian dictionary appeared in 1612.

Dalmatian served the merchant republic of Ragusa until the late fifteenth century, then yielded to Venetian and Croatian. Sardinian was used in medieval judicates before Catalan and Castilian gained prestige.