What dialects are spoken in Italy? Drawing precise boundaries for Italian dialects is a complex challenge, given the country's extraordinary linguistic variety. This diversity makes it difficult to identify large bands of isoglosses, i.e. geographical areas with common morphological, phonetic or lexical traits. Simply put, even neighboring villages can have dialects with significant differences. However, we can outline macro-areas based on peculiar characteristics that group together numerous dialects. Here is a summary of some distinctive phonetic features: 1. **Northern Macroarea**: Delimited by the La Spezia-Rimini line, the northern dialects are distinguished by the weakening of intervocalic consonants (such as the simplification of doubles), the drop of final unstressed vowels, except the "a", and the assimilation of palatal consonants (e.g., "c" transformed into "s"). An example is "gióso de vin", where "goccio" turns into "gióso". 2. **Tuscany Macroarea**: Separated by the Rome-Ancona line, this area includes Tuscan, from which standard Italian derives. A distinctive feature is the Tuscan gorgia, that is, the aspiration of "k", "t", "p" (e.g. "Mihela is in the phratho"). 3. **Central-Southern Macro Area**: This area includes Lazio, Umbria, Marche, Puglia and northern Calabria. It is distinguished by the indistinct final vowel ə (e.g. "quant'è bellə!"), the voicing of the plosives after the nasal (e.g. "dente" which becomes "dende") and the affrication of the "s" (e.g. " a council"). 4. **Extreme Southern Dialects**: Covers Salento, central-southern Calabria and Sicily. Common features include the distinction between the final Latin vowels "o" and "u" (e.g. "focu meu!" which is equivalent to "Oh my God!" in southern Calabria) and cacuminal sounds, similar to those found in Indian and Scandinavian (e.g. "bedda mia" with the voiced retroflex plosive sound).