How far is Dante's Italian from contemporary Italian?

The language used by Dante, I hear, is more intelligible for a speaker of modern Italian than Shakespeare is for a speaker of modern English. I’ve read the Inferno in Italian and I will say as far as content goes, Dante is often a difficult poet to figure out but the actual language he uses was surprisingly easy for me, a non-native speaker, to understand. read more

The language itself is pretty much the same. Some words have changed, some construct fell out of use, but still. This is not to say that Dante is easily readable by anyone who has the linguistic skill. read more

If by "language of Dante" you mean the form of Italian he would speak in his everyday life, then probably a native Italian speaker would understand most of it (though it would sound very different from today's language). read more