1. There are 21 letters in the Italian alphabet. That's right: j, k, w, x and y don't exist in Italian, except for in loan words, meaning 'jeans' is often the only entry under 'j' in Italian dictionaries. Some of the dialects do use these letters though, particularly 'j' and 'k', and for that reason they appear in some proper names of people and places.

2. Oops, did we say 'dialects'? Strictly speaking, that's wrong, because the regional languages of Italy are just that - languages. Dialects are variants of a standard language, but in Italy these different languages developed from Latin independently, before eventually people decided it made sense to settle on one common tongue.