Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest surviving text that can be definitively called vernacular Italian language dates from the year 960. The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento stand as the first clear evidence of this transition from Vulgar Latin. An earlier sample exists in the Veronese Riddle from the 8th or early 9th century.
Dante Alighieri established the canonical standard for Italian by writing his epic poem the Commedia in his native Florentine dialect. The Accademia della Crusca in Florence published the first Italian dictionary in 1612 to cement the Florentine dialect as the foundation of the modern language. Pietro Bembo's ideas prevailed during the questione della lingua debate between 1582 and 1583.
In 1861 when Italy was officially unified only 2.5 percent of the population could speak the standardized Italian language. This figure represented just 630,000 citizens out of a population of over 25 million. Literacy rates climbed from 25 percent in 1861 to 78.1 percent by 1951 to accelerate adoption.
Italian is an official language in Italy San Marino Switzerland and Vatican City. It holds official minority status in Croatia Slovenia Romania Bosnia and Herzegovina and six municipalities in Brazil. The language is also widely spoken in Malta and Albania where significant portions of the population speak it fluently.
Italian is spoken by between 68 and 85 million people worldwide with approximately 64 million native speakers as of 2024. It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union representing 13 percent of the population. The language is spoken as a second language by 13 million citizens within the European Union.