Italian, although undoubtedly a beautiful language, could hardly be called useful in the grand scheme of things. Italy’s population is just under 60 million and unlike France and Spain, whose former colonies still use the languages of their colonisers, Italy has no official linguistic presence overseas. Yet thousands of people in the UK are enchanted by Italian, studying it on evening courses, at school or university; striving to improve their skills in a tongue that comparatively few people worldwide speak.

Undoubtedly the best way to learn a foreign language is to immerse oneself in it. For some it is enough to travel in a place and talk to native speakers, but most students require a more structured context if they are going to see an improvement. Luckily for students of Italian there are hundreds if not thousands of language schools for foreigners all over the country, from Rome to Milan and Naples to Siena.

What your teachers may not tell as you scribble down prepositions and chant verb endings is that Italian is actually a relatively young language, only spreading across the country in the 19th century with the unification of Italy. Before this period each region (and sometimes individual towns or villages) had its own language, based upon Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, German or Arabic depending on the region’s location and its history of foreign invasion. Modern Italian is most similar to pre-unification Tuscan, as it was in Tuscany that attempts to standardise the language began in the 15th century. This is a piece of good fortune for scholars of Italian literature who can, without too much effort, study the works of great poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in their original forms.

Although Italian is now fully standardised, dialects based on the old, pre-unification languages are still enormously important. In the north it tends to be mainly older people, particularly those with few qualifications, who regularly speak in their local dialect, whereas in the south a large proportion of the population still do. Throughout the country dialects are used within the family and it is not uncommon for elderly relatives to speak Italian very poorly or not at all. When speaking in their own dialects Italians from the north and Italians from the south will barely understand each other; there are even significant variations within regions, so that Francesca from Pesaro will not understand everything that Maria from Cattolica says, even though the two Adriatic coastal towns are less than 20km apart.

Language variations, more that just a simple matter of communication, tie into a complex web of regional, cultural, economic and culinary loyalties. This can mean a good-natured debate about whose region makes the creamiest sheep’s cheese or whose local festival is the most entertaining, but there is also a darker side to this competition.

There is a particular antipathy between the north and the south of Italy, the north viewing the south as a drain on the economy now that the majority of Italy’s industry and business is based in the north and southern agriculture is no longer lucrative. Mostly this antipathy takes the form of private grumbling but instances of out-and-out racism do exist and many southerners residing in the north claim that discrimination is not uncommon.

The way that foreigners studying in Italy will be most struck by these differences however is in normal, day-to-day conversation. Overhear your local greengrocer talking to an elderly customer and you may not understand anything they say. Visit the relatives of Italian friends and be bewildered by the way the family talk to each other. House-share with dialect-speaking Italians and pick up a whole range of non-standard words, phrases and mannerisms.

While Italian has a fairly logical grammar system and is not very difficult to pronounce once you’ve got your tongue around the rolled ‘r’, it takes more than correct conjugations and a flawless accent to fool the natives. Speaking the fully standardised language will always give you away as a foreigner because ‘real’ Italian is full of subtle (and not-so-subtle) variations depending on where it is spoken and where the speaker is from. But immerse yourself in a place, talk to the locals, pick up an accent and a few words of dialect and you’ll fit right in. Just be prepared for arguments about who makes the best cheese.