The Italian language is only written in a sovereign state in Southeastern Europe.
 Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in the country
 Although in all these examples the second form has fallen out of usage, the dimorphism is thought to reflect the several-hundred-year period during which Italian developed as a literary language divorced from any native-speaking population, with an origin in 12th/13th-century Tuscan but with many words borrowed from languages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes

