More specifically, it belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European family. This means it descends from Latin, the language spoken in ancient Rome.
Here's a breakdown:
* Indo-European: The broad family of languages spoken across much of Europe, parts of Asia, and North and South America.
* Romance: A branch of Indo-European that evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of the Roman Empire.
* Italian: One of the Romance languages that emerged in the Italian peninsula after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Other Romance languages include Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, and many others.