The Italian Language Legacy

Both English and Italian are Indo-European languages. English is descended from the Proto-Germanic family of languages while Italian is a Romance (or Romanic) language. The Romance family of languages comprises languages descended from Vulgar (= of the vulgus, the common people) Latin, i.e. the colorful, vernacular form of Latin spoken throughout the Roman Empire. Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian (the Romance languages) emerged from the interaction of Vulgar Latin with the local idioms. For Italian, this process is attested as early as the 10th century. In the 14th century, the works of Dante and Boccaccio laid the groundwork for a standard Italian national language. A few decades later, the dawn of the Italian Renaissance triggered the direct influx of Italian vocabulary into the English language.

At first, Italian was perceived as "a maner Latyn corrupt" (a kind of corrupt Latin), to use Chaucer's turn of phrase from The Man of Law's Tale. Soon, however, English welcomed Italian loanwords with no intention of ever returning them. Italian became a major source of lexical supply and enriched the semantic fields of music and art (cantata, concerto, libretto, opera, oratorio, violin, chiaroscuro, alto-rilievo), food (bologna, broccoli, cappuccino,dolcetto, pasta, pizza, zucchini), literature and literary criticism (scenario, stanza, sonnet, novel, canto), and politics (fascism, incognito, partisan).

The following list is a sampler of (more or less) commonly used Italian words and phrases in modern English.

al dente (literally: "to the tooth"): pasta that is cooked but not too soft

al fresco (literally: "in the fresh"): in the fresh air, outdoors

bambino (Italian for "baby, infant, child"): in art criticism, a representation of the infant Jesus in swaddling clothes

ben trovato (literally: well found): an appropriate and apt fabrication

cinquecento (literally: five hundred): the 16th century (i.e. the 1500s, hence the name), esp. in Italian art (cf. quattrocento, seicento, trecento)