Geographical distribution of the Italian language

An important part of Italian American identity, the Italian language has been widely spoken in the United States of America for more than one hundred years, due to large-scale immigration beginning in the late 19th century. Since the 1980s, however, it has seen a steady decline in the number of speakers, as earlier generations of Italian Americans die out and the language is less often spoken at home by successive generations due to assimilation and integration into American society. Today Italian is the eighth most spoken language in the country.

The Italian language in Italian Switzerland or Swiss Italian (Italian: italiano svizzero) is the variety of the Italian language taught in the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland. While this variety is mainly spoken in the canton of Ticino and in the southern part of Grisons (about 270,000 native speakers), Italian is spoken natively in the whole country by about 700,000 people: Swiss Italians, Italian immigrants and Swiss citizens with Italian citizenship.

The Accademia Italiana di Lingua (AIL) is a professional association of schools, institutions and experts in the field of teaching Italian as a foreign language. They organise instruction and testing of students interested in having a diploma for Italian language studies. The AIL initiated the first diploma exams for the study of modern Italian.

Lunfardo (from the Italian lombardo or inhabitant of Lombardy, lumbard in Lombard) is an argot originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in the Río de la Plata region (encompassing the port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo) and from there spread to other urban areas nearby, such as the Greater Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Rosario.