r non-official. Italophone minorities. Italy's official language is Italian.[161] Ethnologue has estimated that there are about 55 million speakers of the languag

"Italophone" world.
  Official language.
  Secondary language or non-official.
  Italophone minorities.
Italy's official language is Italian.[161] Ethnologue has estimated that there are about 55 million speakers of the language in Italy and a further 6.7 million outside of the country.[162] However, between 120 and 150 million people use Italian as a second or cultural language, worldwide.[163]
Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on the Florentine variety of Tuscan and is somewhat intermediate between the Italo-Dalmatian languages and the Gallo-Romance languages.
Italy has numerous idioms spoken all over the country and some Italians cannot speak Italian at all.[164] However, the establishment of a national education system has led to decrease in variation in the languages spoken across the country. Standardisation was further expanded in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to economic growth and the rise of mass media and television (the state broadcaster RAI helped set a standard Italian).
Several linguistic groups are legally recognized,[165] and a number of minority languages have co-official status alongside Italian in various parts of the country. French is co-official in the Valle d’Aosta—although in fact Franco-Provencal is more commonly spoken there. German has the same status in the province of South Tyrol as, in some parts of that province and in parts of the neighbouring Trentino, does Ladin. Slovene is officially recognised in the provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine in Friuli Venezia Giulia.
In these regions official documents are bilingual (trilingual in Ladin communities), or available upon request in either Italian or the co-official language. Traffic signs are also multilingual, except in the Valle d’Aosta where – with the exception of Aosta itself which has retained its Latin form in Italian (as in English) – French toponyms are generally used, attempts to italianise them during the Fascist period having been abandoned. Education is possible in minority languages where such schools are operating.
Religion
Main article: Religion in Italy