As a nation state, Italy has emerged only in 1871. Until then the country was politically divided into a large number of independant cities, provinces and islands. The currently available evidences point out to a dominant Etruscan, Greek and Roman cultural influence on today's Italians.
The dialects of modern Italian all have their roots in the spoken form of Latin (Vulgar Latin), in use throughout the Roman Empire. Vulgar Latin had, no doubt, its own local peculiarities before the fall of the Empire. The political instability that followed Roman rule kept Italy from re-uniting as ...
