Hubbry Logo
Neapolitan languageNeapolitan languageMain
Open search
Neapolitan language
Community hub
Neapolitan language
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Neapolitan language
Neapolitan language
Neapolitan language
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia

Neapolitan
napulitano
Native toItaly
RegionCampania
EthnicityMezzogiorno Italians
Native speakers
5.7 million (2002)[1]
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-2nap
ISO 639-3nap
Glottologneap1235  Continental Southern Italian
sout3126  South Lucanian = (Vd) Lausberg
Southern Italo-Romance languages
Neapolitan as part of the European Romance languages[image reference needed]

Neapolitan (autonym: ('o n)napulitano [(o n)näpuli't̪ɑːnə]; Italian: napoletano) is a Romance language of the Southern Italo-Romance group spoken in most of continental Southern Italy. It is named after the Kingdom of Naples, which once covered most of the area, and the city of Naples was its capital. On 14 October 2008, a law by the Region of Campania stated that Neapolitan was to be protected.[2]

While the language group is native to much of continental Southern Italy or the former Kingdom of Naples, the terms Neapolitan, napulitano or napoletano may also instead refer more narrowly to the specific variety spoken natively in the city of Naples and the immediately surrounding Naples metropolitan area and Campania region. The present article mostly deals with this variety, which enjoys a certain degree of prestige and has historically wide written attestations.[3][4]

Distribution

[edit]
A Neapolitan speaker, recorded in Italy
1895 song in Neapolitan

Largely due to massive Southern Italian migration in the late 19th century and 20th century, there are also a number of Neapolitan speakers in Italian diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, and Venezuela[citation needed]. However, in the United States, traditional Neapolitan has had considerable contact with English and the Sicilian languages spoken by Sicilian and Calabrian immigrants living alongside Neapolitan-speaking immigrants and so the Neapolitan in the US is now significantly different from the contemporary Neapolitan spoken in Naples[citation needed]. English words are often used in place of Neapolitan words, especially among second-generation speakers[citation needed]. On the other hand, the effect of Standard Italian on Neapolitan in Italy has been similar because of the increasing displacement of Neapolitan by Standard Italian in daily speech[citation needed].

Classification

[edit]
Giambattista Basile (1566–1632), author of a collection of fairy tales in Neapolitan that includes the earliest known versions of Rapunzel and Cinderella

Neapolitan is a Romance language and is considered as part of Southern Italo-Romance. There are notable differences among the various dialects, but they are all generally mutually intelligible.

Italian and Neapolitan are of variable mutual comprehensibility, depending on affective and linguistic factors. There are notable grammatical differences, such as Neapolitan having nouns in the neuter form and a unique plural formation, as well as historical phonological developments, which often obscure the cognacy of lexical items.

Its evolution has been similar to that of Italian and other Romance languages from their roots in Vulgar Latin. It may reflect a pre-Latin Oscan substratum, as in the pronunciation of the d sound as an r sound (rhotacism) at the beginning of a word or between two vowels: e.g. doje (feminine) or duje (masculine), meaning "two", is pronounced, and often spelled, as roje/ruje; vedé ("to see") as veré, and often spelled so; also cadé/caré ("to fall") and Madonna/Maronna.[5] Another purported Oscan influence is the historical assimilation of the consonant cluster /nd/ as /nn/, pronounced [nː] (this is generally reflected in spelling more consistently: munno vs Italian mondo "world"; quanno vs Italian quando "when"), along with the development of /mb/ as /mm/~[mː] (tammuro vs Italian tamburo "drum"), also consistently reflected in spelling. Other effects of the Oscan substratum are postulated, but substratum claims are highly controversial. As in many other languages in the Italian Peninsula, Neapolitan has an adstratum greatly influenced by other Romance languages (Catalan, Spanish and Franco-Provençal above all), Germanic languages and Greek (both ancient and modern). The language had never been standardised, and the word for tree has three different spellings: arbero, arvero and àvaro.

Neapolitan has enjoyed a rich literary, musical and theatrical history (notably Giambattista Basile, Eduardo Scarpetta, his son Eduardo De Filippo, Salvatore Di Giacomo and Totò). Thanks to this heritage and the musical work of Renato Carosone in the 1950s, Neapolitan is still in use in popular music, even gaining national popularity in the songs of Pino Daniele and the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare.

The language has no official status within Italy and is not taught in schools. The University of Naples Federico II offers (from 2003) courses in Campanian Dialectology at the faculty of Sociology, whose actual aim is not to teach students to speak the language but to study its history, usage, literature and social role. There are also ongoing legislative attempts at the national level to have it recognized as an official minority language of Italy. It is a recognized ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee language with the ISO 639-3 language code of nap.

Here is the IPA pronunciation of the Neapolitan spoken in the city of Naples:

English Italian (standard) Neapolitan (standard) Neapolitan (diacritics) IPA (Neapolitan)


Our Father who art in heaven, Padre Nostro, che sei nei cieli, Pate nuoste ca staje 'n cielo, Patë nuóstë ca stajë 'n ciélö, [ˈpɑːtə ˈnwostə ka ˈstɑːjə nˈdʒjeːlə]
hallowed be thy name Sia santificato il tuo nome. santificammo 'o nomme tuojo. santificàmmö 'o nómmë tuójö. [sandifiˈkamm(ə) o ˈnommə ˈtwoːjə]
Thy kingdom come, Venga il tuo regno, Faje veni' 'o regno tuojo, Fajë vënì' 'o règnö tuójö, [ˈfɑːjə vəˈni o ˈrɛɲɲə ˈtwoːjə]
Thy will be done, Sia fatta la tua volontá, sempe c'a vuluntà toja, sèmpë c'a vuluntà tòjä, [ˈsɛmbə ˈkɑ: vulunˈda (t)ˈtɔːjə]
on earth as it is in heaven. Come in cielo, così in terra. accussì 'n cielo, accussì 'n terra. accussì 'n ciélö, accussì 'n tèrrä. [akkusˈsi nˈdʒjeːlə akkusˈsi nˈdɛrrə]
Give us this day our daily bread Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano, Fance ave' 'o pane tutte 'e juorne, Fancë avé' 'o panë tuttë 'e juórnë, [ˈfandʒ aˈve o pˈpɑːnə ˈtutt e ˈjwornə]
and forgive us our trespasses E rimetti a noi i nostri debiti e liévace 'e riébbete e liéväcë 'e riébbëtë [e lˈljeːvəʃ(ə) e ˈrjebbətə]
as we forgive those who trespass against us, Come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori. cumme nuje 'e luvamme all'ate. cummë nujë 'e luvàmmë all'atë. [ˈkummə ˈnuːjə e lluˈwammə alˈlɑːtə]
and lead us not into temptation, E non ci indurre in tentazione, Nun ce fa' spanteca', Nun cë fa' spantëcà', [nun dʒə ˈfa ʃpandəˈka]
but deliver us from evil. Ma liberaci dal male. e liévace 'o male 'a tuorno. e liéväcë 'o malë 'a tuórnö. [e lˈljeːvəʃ(ə) o mˈmɑːl(ə) a ˈtwornə]
Amen. Amen. Ammèn. Ammèn. [amˈmɛnn(ə)]

Alphabet and pronunciation

[edit]

Neapolitan orthography consists of 22 Latin letters. Much like Italian orthography, it does not contain k, w, x, or y even though these letters might be found in some foreign words; unlike Italian, it does contain the letter j. The following English pronunciation guidelines are based on General American pronunciation, and the values used may not apply to other dialects. (See also: International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects.)

All Romance languages are closely related. Although Neapolitan shares a high degree of its vocabulary with Italian, the official language of Italy, differences in pronunciation can make the connection unrecognizable to those without knowledge of Neapolitan. The most striking[citation needed] phonological difference is the Neapolitan weakening of unstressed vowels into schwa (schwa is pronounced like the a in about or the u in upon).[a] However, it is also possible (and quite common for some Neapolitans) to speak standard Italian with a "Neapolitan accent"; that is, by pronouncing un-stressed vowels as schwa or by pronouncing the letter s as [ʃ] (like the sh in ship) instead of [s] (like the s in sea or the ss in pass) when the letter representing /s/ is in initial position followed by a consonant, but not when it is followed by a dental occlusive /t/ or /d/ (at least in the purest form of the language) but by otherwise using the vocabulary and grammatical forms of Italian.

Therefore, while pronunciation presents the strongest barrier to comprehension[citation needed], the grammar of Neapolitan is what sets it apart from Italian. In Neapolitan, for example, the gender and number of a word is expressed by a change in the accented vowel because it no longer distinguishes final unstressed /a/, /e/ and /o/ (e.g. luongo [ˈlwoŋɡə], longa [ˈloŋɡə]; Italian lungo, lunga; masc. "long", fem. "long"), whereas in Italian it is expressed by a change in the final vowel. These and other morpho-syntactic differences distinguish the Neapolitan language from the Italian language and the Neapolitan accent.

Neapolitan has had a significant influence on the intonation of Rioplatense Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires and the surrounding region of Argentina and in the entire country of Uruguay.[6]

Vowels

[edit]

While there are only five graphic vowels in Neapolitan, phonemically, there are eight. Stressed vowels e and o can be either "closed" or "open" and the pronunciation is different for the two. The grave accent (à, è, ò) is used to denote open vowels, and the acute accent (é, í, ó, ú) is used to denote closed vowels, with alternative ì and ù. However, accent marks are not commonly used in the actual spelling of words except when they occur on the final syllable of a word, such as Totò, arrivà, or pecché, and when they appear here in other positions, it is only to demonstrate where the stress, or accent, falls in some words. Also, the circumflex is used to mark a long vowel where it would not normally occur (e.g. sî "you are").

Vowels
Front Central Back
High i u
High-mid e ə o
Low-mid ɛ ɔ
Low a
Letter IPA Pronunciation guide
a /a/~[ɑ]
/ə/ 		a is usually open and is pronounced like the a in father
when it is the final, unstressed vowel, its pronunciation is indistinct and approaches the sound of the schwa
e /ɛ/
/e/
/ə/ 		stressed, open e is pronounced like the e in bet
stressed, closed e is pronounced like the a in fame except that it does not die off into ee
unstressed e is pronounced as a schwa
o /ɔ/
/o/
/ə/ 		stressed, open o is pronounced like the o in often
stressed, closed o is pronounced like the o in closed except that it does not die off into oo
unstressed o is pronounced as a schwa
i /i/
/j/ 		i is always closed and is pronounced like the ee in meet
when it is initial, or preceding another vowel
u /u/
/w/ 		u is always closed and is pronounced like the oo in boot
when it is initial, or preceding another vowel

Consonants

[edit]
Labial Dental/Alveolar Post-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar
central sibilant
Nasal m n ɲ (ŋ)
Plosive/
Affricate 		voiceless p t t͡s t͡ʃ k
voiced b d (d͡z) d͡ʒ ɡ
Fricative voiceless f s ʃ
voiced v (z) (ʒ) ʎ
Lateral l
Approximant w j
Trill/Tap r ~ ɾ
Letter IPA Pronunciation guide
p /p/
[b] 		pronounced the same as the p in English spill (not as the p in pill, which is aspirated)
voiced after m
b /b/ pronounced the same as in English, always geminated when preceded by a vowel
t /t/
[d] 		dental version of the English t as in stop (not as the t in top, which is aspirated)
voiced after n
d /d/ dental version of the English d
c /t͡ʃ/~[ʃ]
[d͡ʒ]
/k/
[ɡ] 		when followed by e or i the pronunciation is somewhere between the sh in share and the ch in chore, especially after a vowel
otherwise it is like the k in scan (not like the c in can, which is aspirated)
in both cases voiced after n
g /d͡ʒ/,
/ɡ/ 		when followed by e or i the pronunciation is like the g of gem, always geminated when preceded by another vowel
otherwise it is like the g in get
f /f/ pronounced the same as in English
v /v/ pronounced the same as in English
s /s/
[d͡z]
[z] 		pronounced the same as in English sound unless it comes before a consonant other than /t d n r l/
pronounced as ds in lads after n
pronounced as English z before d or after n
/ʃ/
[ʒ][7] 		pronounced sh when followed by a voiceless consonant (except /t/)
zh when followed by a voiced consonant (except /n d r l/)
z /t͡s/
[d͡z] 		unvoiced z (not occurring after n) is pronounced like the ts in jetsam
voiced z is pronounced like the ds in lads after n
j /j/ referred to as a semi-consonant, is pronounced like English y as in yet
l /l/ pronounced the same as in English
m /m/ pronounced the same as in English
n /n/ pronounced the same as in English; if followed by a consonant, it variously changes its point of articulation
r /r/~[ɾ] when between two vowels it sounds very similar to the American t in later; it is a single tap of a trilled r
when at the beginning of a word or when preceded by or followed by another consonant, it is trilled
q /kʷ/ represented by orthographic qu, pronounced similarly as in English, but more accurately described as pronouncing k and w simultaneously rather than sequentially
h h is always silent and is used to differentiate words pronounced the same and otherwise spelled alike (e.g. a, ha; anno, hanno)
and placed after g or c to indicate the hard sound when e or i follows (e.g. ce, che; gi, ghi)
x /k(ə)s/ pronounced like the x in next or like the cus in raucus; this consonant sequence does not occur in native Neapolitan or Italian words

Digraphs and trigraphs

[edit]

The following clusters are always geminated if vowel-following.

Letter IPA Pronunciation Guide
gn /ɲ/ palatal version of the ni in the English onion
gl(i) /ʎ/~[ʝ] palatal version of the lli in the English million, most commonly realized like a strong version of y in the English yes.
sc /ʃ/ when followed by e or i it is pronounced as the sh in the English ship

Grammar

[edit]
Neapolitan text at the Scampìa Carnival; note the definite article 'o.

Definite articles

[edit]

The Neapolitan classical definite articles (corresponding to the English word "the") are 'a (feminine singular), 'o (masculine singular) and 'e (plural for both). They are traditionally spelled with the apostrophe to signify the elided sound l.

Before a word beginning with a consonant:

Singular Plural
Masculine 'o 'e
Feminine 'a 'e C:
Neuter 'o C: ∅

"C:" = the initial consonant of the following word is geminated if followed by a vowel.

These definite articles are always pronounced distinctly.

Before a word beginning with a vowel, l' or ll' are used for both masculine and feminine, singular and plural. Although both forms can be found, the ll' form is by far the most common.

In Neapolitan, the gender of a noun is not easily determined by the article, so other means must be used. In the case of 'o, which can be either masculine singular or neuter singular (there is no neuter plural in Neapolitan), the initial consonant of the noun is doubled when it is neuter. For example, the name of a language in Neapolitan is always neuter, so if we see 'o nnapulitano we know it refers to the Neapolitan language, whereas 'o napulitano would refer to a Neapolitan man.

Likewise, since 'e can be either masculine or feminine plural, when it is feminine plural, the initial consonant of the noun is doubled. For example, consider 'a lista, which in Neapolitan is feminine singular, meaning "the list". In the plural, it becomes 'e lliste.

There can also be problems with nouns whose singular form ends in e. Since plural nouns usually end in e whether masculine or feminine, the masculine plural is often signaled orthographically, that is, by altering the spelling. As an example, consider the word guaglione, which means "boy" or (in the feminine form) "girl":

Singular Plural
Masculine 'o guaglione 'e guagliune
Feminine 'a guagliona 'e gguaglione

More will be said about these orthographically changing nouns in the section on Neapolitan nouns.

A couple of notes about consonant doubling:

  • Doubling is a function of the article (and certain other words), and these same words may be seen in other contexts without the consonant doubled. More will be said about this in the section on consonant doubling.
  • Doubling only occurs when a vowel follows the consonant. No doubling occurs if it is followed by another consonant, such as in the word spagnuolo (Spanish).

Indefinite articles

[edit]

The Neapolitan indefinite articles, corresponding to the English a or an, are presented in the following table:

Masculine Feminine
Before words beginning with a consonant nu na
Before words beginning with a vowel n'

Verbal conjugation

[edit]

In Neapolitan there are four finite moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative, and three non-finite modes: infinitive, gerund and participle. Each mood has an active and a passive form. The only auxiliary verbs used in the active form is (h)avé (Eng. "to have", It. avere), which contrasts with Italian, in which the intransitive and reflexive verbs take èssere for their auxiliary. For example, we have:

Neapolitan

Aggio

AUX.have.1SG.PRES

stato

be.PTCP.PAST

a

in

Napule

Naples

ajere.

yesterday

Aggio stato a Napule ajere.

AUX.have.1SG.PRES be.PTCP.PAST in Naples yesterday

I was in Naples yesterday.

Italian

Sono

AUX.be.1S.PRES

stato

be.PTCP.PAST

a

in

Napoli

Naples

ieri.

yesterday

Sono stato a Napoli ieri.

AUX.be.1S.PRES be.PTCP.PAST in Naples yesterday

I was in Naples yesterday.

Doubled initial consonants

[edit]

In Neapolitan, many times the initial consonant of a word is doubled. This is called syntactic gemination (raddoppiamento sintattico in Italian). This linguistic phenomenon occurs also in Italian and in Finnish.

  • All feminine plural nouns, preceded by the feminine plural definite article, 'e, or any feminine plural adjective, have their initial consonant doubled.
  • All neuter singular nouns, when preceded by the neuter singular definite article, 'o, or by a neuter singular adjective, have their initial consonant doubled.
  • In addition, other words also trigger this doubling. Below is a list of words that trigger the doubling of the initial consonant of the following word.

However, when there is a pause after the "trigger" word, the phonological doubling does not occur (e.g. tu sî (g)guaglione, "You are a boy", where sî is a "trigger" word causing doubling of the initial consonant in guaglione, but in the phrase 'e do sî, guaglió? "Where are you from, boy?", no doubling occurs. Neither does doubling occur when the initial consonant is followed by another consonant (other than l or r), e.g. 'o ttaliano "the Italian language", but 'o spagnuolo "the Spanish language", where 'o is the neuter definite article). This doubling phenomenon happens phonologically (in pronunciation), and the doubling is not always represented in spelling. However, many Neapolitan-language editions do represent syntactic gemination in writing, resulting in many words spelled with initial double consonants. So, je so' pazzo ("I am crazy") may also be spelled je so' ppazzo (regardless of the spelling, it is pronounced with syntactic gemination). In Italian and Finnish, syntactic gemination is not reflected in writing.

Words that trigger doubling in pronunciation

[edit]
Viola Carofalo wearing a T-shirt with Neapolitan je so' pazzo ("I am crazy.")
  • The conjunctions e and né but not o (e.g. pane e (c)caso; né (p)pane né (c)caso; but pane o caso)
  • The prepositions a, pe, cu (e.g. a (m)me; pe (t)te; cu (v)vuje)
  • The negation nu, short for nun (e.g. nu ddicere niente)
  • The indefinites ogne, cocche (e.g. ogne (c)casa; cocche (c)cosa)
  • Interrogative che and relative che but not ca (e.g. che (p)piense? che (f)femmena! che (c)capa!)
  • accussí (e.g. accussí (b)bello)
  • From the verb "essere", so'; sî; è but not songo (e.g. je so' (p)pazzo; tu sî (f)fesso; chella è (M)Maria; chilli so' (c)cafune but chilli songo cafune)
  • chiú (e.g. chiú (p)poco)
  • The number tre (e.g. tre (s)segge)
  • The neuter definite article 'o (e.g. 'o (p)pane, but nu poco 'e pane)
  • The neuter pronoun 'o (e.g. 'o (t)tiene 'o (p)pane?)
  • Demonstrative adjectives chistu and chillu which refer to neuter nouns in indefinite quantities (e.g. chistu (f)fierro; chillu (p)pane) but not in definite quantities (e.g. Chistu fierro; chillu pane)
  • The feminine plural definite article 'e (e.g. 'e (s)segge; 'e (g)guaglione)
  • The plural feminine pronoun 'e, e.g., 'e (g)guaglione 'e (c)chiamme tu? "
  • The plural masculine pronoun 'e preceding a verb, but not when 'e is an article; in 'e guagliune 'e (c)chiamme tu?, the first 'e is an article, so it does not trigger doubling; the second 'e does trigger doubling because it is a masculine plural pronoun.
  • The locative lloco (e.g. lloco (s)sotto)
  • From the verb stà: sto' (e.g. sto' (p)parlanno)
  • From the verb puté: può; pô (e.g. isso pô (s)sapé)
  • Special case Spiritu (S)Santo

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]

Additional sources

[edit]
  • Iandolo, Carlo (2001). A lengua 'e Pulecenella: Grammatica napoletana (in Italian). Sorrento: Franco Di Mauro. ISBN 978-8885263710.
  • De Blasi, Nicola; Imperatore, Luigi (2001). Il napoletano parlato e scritto: Con note di grammatica storica [Written and Spoken Neapolitan: With Notes on Historic Grammar] (in Italian) (2nd ed.). Napoli: Dante & Descartes. ISBN 978-8888142050.
  • Del Vecchio, Emilano (3 July 2014). "Neapolitan: A Great Cultural Heritage". TermCoord.
  • Verde, Massimiliano (17 June 2017). "Consegnato il primo Certificato Europeo di Lingua Napoletana" [Granted the first European Certificate of the Neapolitan language]. NapoliToday (in Italian). First Course of Neapolitan Language according to the QCER CEFR with the Patronage of City of Naples realized by Dr.Massimiliano Verde "Corso di Lingua e Cultura Napoletana" with a document of study in Neapolitan Language by Dr.Verde

First public document in Neapolitan Language of the XXI century according to a text of Dr.Verde; the touristic Map of the III Municipality of Naples in Neapolitan Language:

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Neapolitan language

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Neapolitan (autonym: napulitano) is a of the Italo-Dalmatian subgroup spoken primarily in the region of , encompassing the city of and adjacent provinces. It is estimated to have around 5.7 million speakers, making it the most widely spoken non-standard variety in . Despite frequent as a dialect of Italian in popular and political discourse, Neapolitan exhibits significant mutual unintelligibility with standard Italian and possesses distinct , , and , qualifying it linguistically as a separate . Originating from spoken in the region, its development incorporates pre-Roman Oscan substrates and superstrata from successive invaders including , , , and , reflecting the turbulent history of . Neapolitan boasts a venerable literary heritage, with early texts from the and prominent works by authors such as , alongside its profound cultural impact through traditional songs and theater that have influenced global perceptions of Italian folk traditions. Classified as vulnerable by due to declining intergenerational transmission amid the dominance of standard Italian in and media, efforts persist to preserve and promote it as a recognized under European frameworks.

History

Origins from Vulgar Latin

Neapolitan derives from the spoken in the region following the fall of the in the 5th century CE, evolving as a distinct Southern Italo-Romance variety amid the fragmentation of Latin into regional . This development occurred in a linguistic continuum influenced by the region's pre-Roman substrates, including Oscan, an Italic language spoken by Samnite tribes before Roman conquest in the BCE, which left traces in phonological patterns such as the assimilation of /nd/ to /nn/ (e.g., in certain toponyms and lexical items). Greek substrates from colonies, dating to the 8th century BCE, contributed loanwords verifiable in modern Neapolitan vocabulary, such as crisommola ('apricot') from khrusoun mēlon ('golden apple'), reflecting bilingualism in the Neapolis area until . The earliest written attestations of proto-Neapolitan features appear in the Placiti Cassinesi, a series of juridical documents from 960–963 CE originating near and , which exhibit Romance elements diverging from Latin, including simplified verb forms and phonetic reductions characteristic of Southern varieties. By the 13th century, phonological divergences from Tuscan (the basis of Standard Italian) were evident, such as the palatalization and in clusters like Latin /kt/ yielding /tt/ (e.g., factum > fatto, 'done'), a shift common in Southern Italo-Romance but absent in Central varieties, supported by comparative analysis of early medieval texts. Geographic factors, including the Apennine barrier separating from , fostered relative isolation that preserved archaic traits, while in 1071 CE and subsequent Spanish rule from 1504 CE reinforced local evolution by introducing superstrata without fully supplanting the substrate, as evidenced by retained metaphony (vowel raising before final /i/) unique to Southern Italo-Romance. These influences underscore a causal trajectory from imperial Latin dissolution to a consolidated regional idiom by the , distinct from northern trajectories.

Development in the Kingdom of Naples

During the Kingdom of Naples (1282–1816), Neapolitan functioned as the de facto vernacular of the and administration, particularly after the Aragonese , alongside Latin for formal and records. Under , who seized in 1442, a reportedly mandated the replacement of Latin with Neapolitan in public documents and proceedings, elevating its prestige in official contexts. This plurilingual environment, incorporating Catalan and Castilian influences from Aragonese rulers, nonetheless prioritized Neapolitan for local governance and elite communication, as evidenced by surviving administrative texts and chronicles. Literary production in Neapolitan emerged prominently in the , with histories like the Cronaca di Partenope documenting Neapolitan origins and events in the local idiom, distinct from Tuscan literary norms. Aragonese patronage further boosted its use, fostering courtly poetry and narratives influenced by broader , though often in hybrid forms blending Neapolitan with Latin elements. In the era under Aragonese rule (1442–1504) and subsequent Spanish viceroys (1504–1714), Neapolitan flourished in bilingual manuscripts and early printed works, reflecting its role in cultural expression amid Mediterranean exchanges. Naples's printing output surged in the 16th century, producing over 1,400 titles, some incorporating Neapolitan vernacular alongside Italian and Latin, which disseminated local beyond court circles. Historical accounts from the period highlight limited between Neapolitan and northern Italian varieties, such as Tuscan, with 14th-century observers noting disorientation among speakers due to phonological and lexical divergences. Linguistic analyses estimate below 85% with standard Italian precursors, underscoring Neapolitan's distinct evolution within Italo-Romance, independent of Tuscan dominance.

Post-unification suppression and decline

Following the in 1861, the pre-existing Casati Law of November 13, 1859—which had established compulsory in the Kingdom of with instruction conducted exclusively in the Tuscan-based —was extended across the new kingdom to promote administrative and national cohesion. This policy mandated schooling in Italian, relegating regional varieties like Neapolitan to non-official contexts and fostering in , where Neapolitan persisted in informal, familial, and rural domains while Italian was required for formal advancement. Linguist Tullio De Mauro estimated that at unification, only about 2.5% of spoke standard Italian, with the vast majority, including in the south, relying on local varieties such as Neapolitan for daily communication; the reforms accelerated a shift by prioritizing in Italian for bureaucratic efficiency, despite initial resistance and uneven implementation due to southern infrastructural deficits. By the early , Italian had assumed dominance in , legal proceedings, and emerging print media, eroding Neapolitan's prestige as speakers associated it with lower and limited opportunities. and data reflect this transition: national literacy rates rose from approximately 25% in 1861 to 60% by , correlating with increased Italian proficiency through mandatory schooling, though southern regions lagged due to economic disparities. In , where Neapolitan was the primary for over 90% of the rural population pre-World War I, home transmission began declining as Italian became the gateway to urban employment and , creating incentives for parents to prioritize it over Neapolitan in child-rearing. The interwar and postwar periods intensified the decline through socioeconomic changes: 20th-century drew millions from rural to industrial centers like and , where Italian was essential for wage labor and integration, further marginalizing Neapolitan. amplified this, with radio broadcasts starting in the and nationwide television from the onward delivered solely in standard Italian, exposing younger generations to a unified linguistic model and reducing dialectal exposure; surveys indicate that by the late , primary use of Neapolitan had fallen below 20% among southern youth, with Italian supplanting it as the default for intergenerational transmission amid these structural pressures.

Geographic distribution

Primary speech areas in southern Italy

The Neapolitan language maintains its strongest presence in the region, particularly within the metropolitan area, where demographic data indicate a population of approximately 3.1 million residents as of 2023, many of whom actively use Neapolitan in daily communication. This core zone represents the epicenter of active speech, supported by ethnographic mappings that highlight consistent first-language acquisition and intergenerational transmission in urban and peri-urban settings. Extensions of primary usage reach into contiguous areas of , northern , and northern , forming a continuum of mutually intelligible varieties historically tied to the former . Ethnographic and linguistic surveys delineate active speaker zones distinct from mere historical claims, with total estimates ranging from 5.7 million to 7.5 million speakers across as of recent assessments. Higher retention gradients appear in suburbs and offshore islands such as , where sociolinguistic studies document robust vernacular proficiency amid bilingualism with standard Italian, contrasting with assimilation trends in certain coastal enclaves influenced by and migration. Verifiable linguistic boundaries include the northern limit along the Garigliano River, where isoglosses—such as shifts in vowel systems and morphological markers—separate Neapolitan traits from adjacent dialects, as mapped in dialectological analyses. These demarcations underscore active usage confined to the upper southern Italic domain, excluding lower southern extremes like Sicilian-influenced areas.

Dialectal variations and subgroups

Neapolitan constitutes a dialect continuum within the Southern Italo-Romance group, encompassing varieties spoken primarily in and adjacent areas of , with internal diversity marked by phonological, lexical, and morphological differences. These variations arise from historical factors such as , routes, and substrate influences from pre-Romance languages, leading to hybrid forms without a unified standard beyond the urban core. The ISO 639-3 code "nap" designates this cluster as a single language unit, while UNESCO classifies it as vulnerable, reflecting micro-variations that challenge monolithic classification. Urban Neapolitan, centered in , represents the prestige variety influenced by contact with standard Italian and serves as a phonological and lexical reference, featuring metaphony in stressed vowels and frequent vowel elisions. Northern subgroups, such as those in Aversa (Aversano) and (Irpino), preserve more conservative vowel qualities, with reduced metaphony and distinct consonant realizations, maintaining higher mutual intelligibility with the urban form along the continuum. Southern varieties, including Cilentano in the region, incorporate Greek lexical loans from ancient settlements—such as terms for agriculture and seafaring—and exhibit innovations like stronger aspiration of . Phonological criteria highlight micro-variations, such as the realization of /s/ as [ʃ] (palatalized sibilant) in intervocalic or preconsonantal positions in peripheral dialects, contrasting with the urban in similar contexts, as documented in Italo-Romance sibilant studies. Lexical distinctions further delineate subgroups; for instance, northern forms retain Latin-derived terms less altered by Romance innovations, while southern ones show substrate effects in vocabulary related to local topography and economy. Mutual intelligibility remains relatively high (approaching full comprehension) between adjacent varieties but diminishes southward, forming a gradient rather than discrete boundaries, consistent with dialect continua patterns. Empirical mapping via ISO and UNESCO data underscores this continuum, with no rigid subgroups but rather transitional zones shaped by geographic isolation and mobility.

Diaspora communities

Significant Neapolitan-speaking communities formed abroad due to waves of emigration from the Kingdom of Naples and surrounding areas between the 1870s and 1920s, driven by economic hardship and agricultural crises. Over four million Italians entered the during this period, principally through New York, with a large share originating from and the hinterland, establishing dialect-dominant enclaves in cities like New York and . Similar migrations to —where Italian descendants number in the millions—and created overseas pockets where Neapolitan was initially the primary vernacular in family and social contexts. In these diaspora hubs, Neapolitan endures in limited domains such as domestic speech, religious rituals, and cultural events, distinct from standard Italian usage among Italian-Americans. For instance, theater groups and festivals in New York preserve oral traditions through performances in Neapolitan varieties, often tied to historical patterns where southern dialects outnumbered Tuscan-based Italian. However, the language has hybridized with host tongues, incorporating English loanwords (e.g., rendering "capicola" as "gabagool" in Italo-American parlance) and structural influences, reflecting in bilingual environments. Transmission has declined sharply across generations, with ethnographic research on New York-area heritage speakers documenting near-total shift to English by the third generation and limited fluency (<20% maintaining dialect proficiency) even among second-generation individuals from dialect-speaking families. Surveys of Italian diaspora languages highlight similar erosion in Argentina and Australia, where intergenerational use falls below 10% for full fluency amid assimilation pressures and lack of institutional support. These patterns underscore Neapolitan's vulnerability outside Italy, confined increasingly to elderly speakers and niche revivals rather than everyday vitality.

Classification

Place within Romance languages

Neapolitan occupies the Southern Italo-Dalmatian subgroup within the broader Italo-Western branch of Romance languages, evolving from Vulgar Latin varieties spoken in southern Italy during late antiquity. This positioning aligns with standard phylogenetic models that delineate Italo-Dalmatian as intermediate between Western Romance (e.g., Gallo-Romance) and Eastern Romance, with Southern Italo-Dalmatian encompassing varieties from Campania southward. Its closest relatives include Sicilian and northern Calabrian, sharing a common ancestral node characterized by innovations such as metaphonic vowel alternations and retention of Latin intervocalic stops, though Neapolitan exhibits distinct local developments. Divergence metrics, derived from comparative reconstruction in Romance etymological studies, place the split from Proto-Romance around the 8th century AD, amid the fragmentation of into regional continua following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Neapolitan coalesced as a recognizable entity by the 10th century, as attested by the Placito di Capua (960 AD), the earliest surviving Romance document from southern Italy, which demonstrates phonological shifts like Latin /ɛ/ to /e/ and syntactic patterns independent of northern Italo-Romance forms. Classification as a distinct language is formalized under ISO 639-3 code "nap," reflecting structural autonomy in phonology (e.g., preservation of Latin geminate consonants in clusters like /pp/, /tt/) and lexicon, separate from standard Italian. Ethnologue corroborates this, cataloging Napoletano as a stable indigenous language with inherent mutual unintelligibility to other Italo-Dalmatian varieties beyond core dialects, based on lexicostatistical distances exceeding 20% from Tuscan-derived Italian. These metrics underscore Neapolitan's phylogenetic independence, with unique innovations including syntactic gemination triggered by proclitic elements, a feature conserved from Latin prosody but rare in neighboring branches.

Lexical and structural comparisons to Italian

Neapolitan and Standard Italian, both descending from Vulgar Latin spoken in the Italian peninsula, exhibit substantial lexical overlap in core vocabulary derived from their common Latin ancestor, though this similarity is moderated by regional innovations and substrate effects not uniformly present in Tuscan-based Italian. Objective metrics such as Swadesh basic vocabulary lists reveal cognate rates typically in the 75-85% range, lower than those between Standard Italian and certain northern Italo-Dalmatian varieties, reflecting divergent lexical retention patterns influenced by southern pre-Roman languages like Oscan, which contributed features such as the assimilation of Latin /nd/ to /nn/ in Neapolitan but not in Tuscan. Structurally, Neapolitan displays phonological distinctions from Standard Italian's seven-vowel system (/i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u/), incorporating a neutral mid-central vowel schwa (/ə/) that frequently neutralizes unstressed syllables, a feature absent in Tuscan phonology and leading to systematic sound shifts. Syntactic variations further demarcate the two, with Neapolitan preserving archaic morpho-syntactic elements from early Romance stages, including differential use of possessive and auxiliary verbs that diverge from Italian norms, attributable to independent evolutionary paths shaped by local substrates rather than uniform drift from a centralized standard. These lexical and structural disparities manifest in computational linguistics, where 2024 analyses of Italian language varieties demonstrate that neural models pretrained on Standard Italian corpora encounter significant parsing errors and lower accuracy on Neapolitan inputs, underscoring quantifiable syntactic and morphological mismatches that exceed mere phonetic variation. Such findings affirm the languages' shared Latin substrate while highlighting causal divergences driven by geographic isolation and substrate admixtures in southern Italy, including and elements that reinforced distinct phonological and grammatical trajectories.

Linguistic status and debates

Criteria for language versus dialect distinction

Linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects emphasize mutual intelligibility, structural autonomy, and the presence of independent norms or standardization, rather than mere geographic or political boundaries. Neapolitan exhibits limited mutual intelligibility with Standard Italian, particularly for monolingual speakers unfamiliar with the variety, due to divergent phonology, lexicon, and syntax that hinder comprehension without prior exposure. This contrasts with dialects proper, such as , which maintain high mutual intelligibility with Italian—often approaching full comprehension for speakers of the standard—owing to closer lexical and grammatical alignment. Neapolitan demonstrates structural autonomy through distinct grammatical features absent or marginal in Italian, including a neuter gender class for nouns with unique plural formations (e.g., collective plurals like guaglion for "boys" functioning as a mass noun) and divergent article paradigms, such as the use of 'o for masculine singular in place of Italian il, alongside schwa endings that alter morphological patterns. These elements, combined with independent lexical inventories and phonological shifts (e.g., Latin clavis yielding Neapolitan chiave versus Italian chiave but with broader systemic divergences), indicate no shared normative standard with Italian, supporting classification as a separate language under structuralist criteria like those in (code: nap). Empirical benchmarks from reference works reinforce this: Ethnologue catalogs Neapolitan as a distinct Italo-Romance language with approximately 5.7 million speakers, applying mutual intelligibility tests to delineate it from Italian continuum varieties. Similarly, 's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger designates Neapolitan as vulnerable, treating it as an autonomous language requiring preservation efforts separate from Italian. In contrast, socio-political classifications, such as those by the Italian state, label it a dialect to align with national unification policies favoring Tuscan-based Italian as the sole standard, prioritizing cultural and administrative unity over linguistic independence. This divergence highlights how non-linguistic factors can override empirical tests, though structural evidence favors language status.

Political and ideological influences on classification

Following the unification of Italy in 1861, state policies emphasized standard Italian—derived from Tuscan—as the unifying medium of communication, deliberately framing regional speech forms like Neapolitan as mere dialects subordinate to the national tongue. This approach prioritized administrative coherence and educational standardization amid profound pre-unification linguistic fragmentation, where estimates suggest only about 2.5% of the population spoke a form close to what became standard Italian. The policy's efficacy is evident in literacy's ascent from roughly 20-25% in 1861—marked by stark North-South disparities, with northern rates around 27% and southern far lower—to 98.4% adult literacy by 2001, enabling mass schooling, economic mobility, and reduced regional isolation without the inefficiencies of multilingual governance. Critics, often from academic and activist quarters favoring multicultural preservation, decry this as erasure of diversity, yet such views overlook the causal linkage between linguistic convergence and Italy's post-unification stability, including higher non-agricultural employment and patriotic integration observed in analogous standardization efforts elsewhere. Regional identity politics have intermittently leveraged Neapolitan's classification for autonomist agendas, particularly amid 1990s surges in Italian federalism debates, where southern movements invoked linguistic distinctiveness to assert cultural sovereignty against perceived northern dominance. These efforts, echoed in contemporary calls for official recognition tied to EU minority language frameworks, aim to counter historical marginalization but risk amplifying identity-based fragmentation; however, Italy's diglossic norm—proficient use of both standard Italian and regional varieties by most speakers—has empirically fostered functional bilingualism, enhancing cognitive flexibility and intergenerational transmission without inciting secessionist violence, as southern autonomist groups remain marginal compared to northern counterparts. Data from bilingual contexts underscore that such dual competence correlates with adaptive advantages in executive functions and societal cohesion, countering narratives that equate dialect status with oppression. A 2024 corpus analysis of Italian press coverage exposes persistent ideological undercurrents in classification debates, with outlets predominantly upholding the "dialect" label for Neapolitan and kin varieties, often subordinating them to Italian in ways that privilege unitary narratives over empirical linguistic divergence. This framing, while aligning with statist imperatives for cohesion, reflects a media tendency—potentially influenced by institutional inertia and aversion to balkanization—to downplay separate-language evidence from mutual unintelligibility metrics and historical divergence, even as contested-language advocates highlight rights denials. Such portrayals occasionally romanticize minority status for identity affirmation, yet overlook how post-unification dialect subordination pragmatically averted the administrative chaos plaguing more fragmented polities, prioritizing verifiable gains in human capital over ideologically driven diversity amplification.

Phonology and orthography

Vowel and consonant systems

The Neapolitan vowel system comprises seven monophthongal phonemes: the high vowels /i/ and /u/, the mid vowels /e/, /ɛ/, /o/, and /ɔ/, and the low vowel /a/. These distinctions, particularly between close-mid /e o/ and open-mid /ɛ ɔ/, are maintained in stressed syllables, with formant values averaging F1/F2 around 400/2200 Hz for /ɛ/ and 600/800 Hz for /ɔ/ in acoustic analyses of urban speakers. Nasalized variants ([ĩ ẽ ã õ ũ etc.]) emerge phonetically before nasal consonants or in nasal contexts, though not fully contrastive; empirical data from migrant speech corpora indicate 85-95% realization rates in exposed groups, reflecting regional consistency despite substrate influences. Unstressed vowels reduce, centralizing to [ə] or raising to [i, u], with acoustic reduction evident in shortened duration (under 50 ms) and merged F1/F2 spectra compared to stressed counterparts.
FrontCentralBack
Closeiu
Close-mideo
Open-midɛɔ
Opena
The consonant system includes 21-23 phonemes, featuring stops (/p b t d k g/), nasals (/m n ɲ/), fricatives (/f v s (z) ʃ (ʒ)/), affricates (/ts dz tʃ dʒ/), liquids (/l r ʎ/), and glides (/j w/). Geminates are phonemically contrastive for most obstruents and sonorants (e.g., /p/ vs. /p:/, /tt/, realized with closure durations exceeding 100 ms), distinguishing minimal pairs like capo [ˈkaːpə] "head" from cappo [ˈkapːə] "boss". Intervocalic lenition affects voiced stops, with /b d g/ surfacing as approximant-fricatives [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞], averaging voicing ratios of 70-80% and frication noise below 4 kHz in spectrograms; this holds even initially in some idiolects, per synchronic analyses. The sibilant /s/ exhibits affrication to [ts] post-nasally (e.g., penso [ˈpɛnsə]) and palatalization to [ʃ] before front vowels or consonants (e.g., scritto [ˈʃkrɪtːə]), yielding up to six allophones contextually; 2025 acoustic studies on heritage speakers confirm high fidelity (94% affricate rates) among proficient users, underscoring systemic stability over ideals. Affricates like /tʃ dʒ/ lack gemination counterparts in standard inventories, unlike Italian, while orthographic representation employs digraphs ( for /ʃ/) and trigraphs ( for /ʃ/) amid lacking unification.
MannerBilabialLabiodentalDental/AlveolarPost-alveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
p b (b:)t d (d:)k g (g:)
ts dztʃ dʒ
f vs (z)ʃ (ʒ)
Nasalmnɲ
Laterallʎ
Rhoticr
j
Geminates and lenited forms marked in parentheses indicate variable length or allophony; averages from urban Naples corpora prioritize empirical realizations over prescriptive norms.

Historical and regional pronunciation variations

Neapolitan pronunciation underwent significant historical shifts from Vulgar Latin roots, with palatalization processes—such as the affrication of velars before front vowels (/k/ and /g/ to [tʃ] and [dʒ])—evident in Old Neapolitan texts by the 14th-15th centuries, reflecting broader Southern Italo-Romance evolution. Acoustic analyses of medieval loanwords and orthographic evidence indicate early centralization of unstressed vowels to schwa [ə], a trait distinguishing Neapolitan from northern varieties where such reductions were less pronounced. These changes, documented in 15th-century manuscripts from the Aragonese period, laid the foundation for modern allophonic patterns, including intervocalic lenition of stops (/p, t, k/ to [b̥, d̥, ɡ̥]). Regionally, urban Neapolitan speech exhibits advanced velar softening (e.g., /ɡ/ approaching intervocalically) and greater prosodic compression compared to rural Campania dialects, where fuller realizations of mid vowels ([ɛ, ɔ]) persist due to conservative retention in isolated communities. Spectrographic studies reveal urban varieties' higher rates of /s/-palatalization to [ʃ] before /i/, a salient marker often absent or variable in rural hinterlands like , correlating with and data from the 19th-20th centuries. These synchronic differences, quantified via transitions and duration measures, underscore micro-dialectal gradients rather than uniform norms. Prosodically, Neapolitan aligns with stress-timed typology, featuring clustered unstressed syllables with reduced durations and higher variability (e.g., lower nPVI-V values), as confirmed by pairwise variability index analyses in Southern Italian corpora contrasting it to Standard Italian's syllable-timed evenness. Recent highlights this through spectrograms showing stress peaks driving elision, a intensified in rapid speech. In settings, such as U.S. Italian-American communities, these traits amplify into hyper-reduced forms, with schwa often deleted entirely, yielding not typical in peninsular variants, per migration-influenced phonetic surveys.

Orthographic conventions and challenges

Neapolitan orthography employs the Latin alphabet of 22 letters, mirroring standard Italian by excluding k, w, x, and y, though these may appear in loanwords or foreign names. Diacritics such as acute accents (e.g., à) are used sporadically to indicate stress or quality, but their application varies by writer or regional preference, with no mandatory rules enforced. The letter v represents the bilabial fricative /v/, while j is rare and typically limited to specific phonetic contexts like /j/ in certain dialects. Efforts to standardize Neapolitan writing date back to the 19th century, including proposals for consistent conventions influenced by Italian models, but none achieved authoritative status or broad adoption. As a result, no official orthographic authority exists, leading to inconsistent representations across texts; for instance, consulting multiple dictionaries yields divergent spellings for the same word, such as arbero, arvero, or àvaro for "tree." This variability stems from the language's oral tradition and lack of institutional support, with most speakers unfamiliar with writing it systematically. Such orthographic fluidity presents significant challenges for computational applications, including tasks like tokenization and , where non-standard variants complicate data preprocessing and model performance. A 2024 analysis of varieties highlights how orthographic inconsistencies in under-resourced forms like Neapolitan exacerbate resource scarcity, impeding automated text analysis compared to standardized . Despite recognition under code "nap," Neapolitan lacks EU-level or regional akin to that for other minority languages, perpetuating these issues without a centralized corpus or normative guidelines.

Grammar

Nominal and pronominal systems

Neapolitan nouns are inflected for two —masculine and feminine—and two numbers—singular and —with gender often realized through internal alternations or diphthongs, such as gruossŏ (masculine singular "big") versus grossă (feminine singular). Unlike , Neapolitan exhibits no case declensions, relying instead on prepositional phrases and pronouns for expressing . Adjectives agree with nouns in and number, typically following patterns akin to Italian but with regional phonetic reductions marked by diacritics on final vowels. Definite articles in Neapolitan derive from Latin and show before vowels, with forms varying by , number, and phonological . Masculine singular articles include 'o before most consonants, lo before /s/ + consonant or /z/-initial words, and l' or gl' before vowels. Feminine singular uses 'a universally, while plurals employ 'e for both genders in most cases, with li or gli in specific masculine plural contexts. Indefinite articles, lacking plurals, are 'nu or nu for masculine singular and 'na for feminine singular, also subject to (n' before vowels).
Gender/NumberBefore consonantBefore /sC/ or /z/Before vowel
Masc. Singular'olol' / gl'
Fem. Singular'a'a'a
Masc. Plural'elili / gli
Fem. Plural'e'e'e
The pronominal system emphasizes pronouns, which proclitically attach to verbs and encode direct or indirect objects, reflexives, and partitives. Third-person accusative s mirror article forms, such as lo for masculine singular direct objects (e.g., lo truovo "I find it"), paralleling Italian lo trovo but integrated into Neapolitan's distinct verbal morphology. The partitive ne, functioning like Italian to denote "some of it/them" or replace quantified nouns (e.g., Ne voglio "I want some"), underscores Neapolitan's analytic tendencies in expressing indefiniteness without plural indefinites. Subject pronouns are often omitted in pro-drop constructions, with stressed forms reserved for emphasis. Syntactically, adjectives frequently postpose to nouns (e.g., casă grandĕ "big house"), enhancing agreement visibility and preserving Romance word-order flexibility.

Verbal morphology and conjugation

Neapolitan verbs derive from Latin conjugations but feature simplifications, including a merger of the second (-ere) and third (-ire) classes, resulting in shared endings such as -imm for first-person in the present indicative (e.g., femm 'we do/make' from Latin faciō). This innovation reflects broader trends in Southern Italo-Romance, where paradigmatic leveling reduced distinct theme vowels while preserving stem alternations in irregulars. Perfect tenses employ auxiliaries avé ('to have') and essere ('to be'), paralleling Italian usage for transitive and unaccusative/motion s, respectively, though avé extends more broadly in Neapolitan, often supplanting essere for reflexives. The essere diverges with irregular stems, as in the present indicative: sò (1sg), sì (2sg), è (3sg), simm (1pl), site (2pl), song (3pl), deriving from Latin sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt via phonetic erosion and analogical reshaping. Tense-aspect systems retain synthetic forms from Latin, such as the (paréva 'I was speaking') and conditional (pararéssa), but the favors analytic constructions like avé a + (avé a parlá 'will speak') over synthetic -arrá endings (pararrá), with spoken corpora indicating the periphrastic variant's dominance in casual registers due to its transparency and alignment with ongoing analytic shifts in Italo-Romance. Subjunctive and imperative moods follow parallel patterns, with aspectual nuances conveyed via or participles rather than dedicated inflections. Phonological rules interact with verbal morphology through post-vocalic gemination of initial consonants, triggered after vowel-final words or clitics (e.g., dà ccá 'give here' from dà ca, or mme fà mmangiare 'make me eat'), a sandhi phenomenon inherited from prosody and pervasive in Southern dialects, enhancing rhythmic flow but complicating parsing in rapid speech. This applies variably to verb-initial elements, distinguishing Neapolitan from Northern varieties lacking such triggers.

Syntactic features

Neapolitan syntax permits greater flexibility in compared to Standard Italian, with a notable tendency toward verb-subject-object (VSO) structures in clauses, reflecting underlying Romance properties where postverbal subjects are licensed in focus or question contexts. This inversion is more pervasive in spoken Neapolitan than in Standard Italian's predominantly SVO s, though both languages derive from Latin's flexible ordering. Clitic climbing is obligatory in Neapolitan restructuring constructions, such as those involving modals, motion verbs, or perception verbs followed by infinitives, where object or reflexive clitics attach to the matrix verb rather than the embedded infinitive. For instance, in sentences like Voglio vedello ("I want to see it"), the clitic lo climbs to the higher verb voglio, a requirement in Southern Italian dialects including Neapolitan, contrasting with Standard Italian where climbing is optional and non-climbing (Voglio lo vedere) is grammatical. This parametric difference highlights Neapolitan's tighter monoclausality in such contexts. Negation in Neapolitan employs preverbal nun (from Latin non) with concordant elements like ("no one") or ("nothing"), resulting in negative doubling or concord structures such as Nun ce sta nisciuno ("There is no one"). This mirrors Standard Italian's non...nessuno but is more rigidly enforced in dialects, where single negation without concord is infelicitous, underscoring Neapolitan's adherence to negative concord typical of Italo-Romance varieties. Neapolitan maintains pro-drop properties akin to Standard Italian, allowing null subjects in finite clauses due to rich verbal agreement morphology, yet it permits resumptive pronouns in complex structures like relative clauses to resolve ambiguity or mark continuity, exceeding Italian's rarer use. Causative expressions often integrate a + infinitive for purpose-like causation or perception embeddings, diverging from Standard Italian's preference for fare + infinitive without such prepositional triggers in core causatives. These features contribute to syntactic divergence, with dependency analyses of dialect corpora revealing distinct parse trees for clausal dependencies compared to Italian baselines.

Vocabulary

Core lexicon and etymological sources

The core lexicon of Neapolitan, encompassing fundamental terms for body parts, numerals, , and environmental features, derives predominantly from spoken in the region during the late Roman period. This inheritance reflects the language's evolution as a Southern Italo-Romance variety, where phonological reductions (e.g., loss of final unstressed vowels) and morphological simplifications adapted Latin roots to local speech patterns without altering their semantic core in basic domains. For instance, "" for 'hand' traces directly to Latin "manus," and "acqua" for 'water' to "aqua," preserving etymological continuity evident in early medieval texts from the area. Pre-Roman substrates from such as Oscan, spoken in prior to Latin dominance around the 4th century BCE, exert limited but detectable influence on the core lexicon, primarily through toponyms and archaic nouns rather than high-frequency everyday terms. While phonological traits like aspirated stops may stem from Oscan interference, lexical retentions are sparse; proposed examples include derivations for youth-related concepts, though direct attestations remain debated among historical linguists. In contrast, substrates from colonies (8th–3rd centuries BCE) contribute modestly to core items outside strictly maritime domains, such as "petrosino" ('parsley') from Greek "petroselinon," integrated via early agricultural and . Romance-specific innovations in Neapolitan core vocabulary include semantic shifts from Latin prototypes, often driven by colloquial usage in post-Roman . A representative case is "guasto" ('bad' or 'spoiled'), evolved from Latin "vastus" ('' or 'empty') through intermediate senses of 'devastated' or 'laid waste,' as documented in medieval Romance derivations where environmental desolation connoted ruin. Such shifts highlight causal pathways from Latin's abstract spatial meanings to Neapolitan's evaluative ones, without external borrowings. Empirical assessments via Swadesh-style lists of 100–200 basic concepts underscore Neapolitan's conservative retention of Latin-derived forms relative to other , with approximately 85–90% overlap in proto-forms for items like pronouns, verbs of motion, and sensory terms, though unique derivations emerge in social descriptors (e.g., "" 'boy' from Latin "ganeonem" 'glutton,' implying playful excess). These comparisons, drawn from comparative Romance lexicons, reveal Neapolitan's fidelity to substrates while accommodating regional semantic nuances, distinguishing it from more innovated northern varieties.

Borrowings and influences from other languages

The Neapolitan language exhibits borrowings from , primarily mediated through medieval Sicilian intermediaries during the Emirate of Sicily (9th-11th centuries) and subsequent Norman rule, with examples including mulignana (''), derived from Arabic bādinjān via Sicilian pathways. These loans often pertain to and , reflecting and conquest dynamics in , though less pervasive than in Sicilian due to Neapolitan's continental position. Norman-French influences emerged in the 11th-12th centuries following the of the , which encompassed , introducing terms related to feudal administration and military organization, such as adaptations in governance vocabulary; however, direct lexical impact on Neapolitan remains limited compared to syntactic or toponymic traces, with stronger French elements appearing in Sicilian variants. The most substantial external layer stems from Spanish during the viceregal period (1504-1713), when Naples fell under Habsburg and Bourbon Spanish dominion, yielding approximately 400 attested loanwords in 19th-century etymological dictionaries like Vincenzo Altamura's Dizionario dialettale napoletano, concentrated in domains of military, aggression, robbery, insults, sexual practices, and organized crime, exemplified by camorra ('quarrel' or 'clandestine group'), from Spanish camorra ('dispute'). These hispanisms signal social upheavals, including soldier-sailor interactions and underworld formations. In contemporary usage, globalization has introduced English borrowings, particularly in technology and media, such as computer and internet, often retained in unadapted form or hybridized, though core cultural and daily lexicons show resistance to full assimilation, favoring Italian or native equivalents.

Semantic divergences from standard Italian

Neapolitan shares numerous lexical roots with standard Italian but features semantic divergences through false friends—cognates with shifted or distinct meanings—and calques that encode regional conceptual nuances absent or altered in the standard language. These gaps often stem from Neapolitan's embeddedness in local social dynamics, such as street honor codes and familial intimacy, versus Italian's more generalized, Tuscany-derived abstraction. A prominent false friend is guapparia, denoting bravado, swagger, or performative toughness linked to guappo (a dandyish bully or local tough guy influenced by Spanish guapo), which evokes cultural archetypes of Neapolitan machismo rather than the Italian garanzia ('guarantee' or 'warranty'). This divergence illustrates how Neapolitan semantics prioritize concrete social behaviors over legalistic assurances. Similarly, terms tied to the Camorra—Naples' indigenous organized crime network—exhibit specialized meanings; camorra originally signified a quarrel or dispute in Neapolitan vernacular before denoting the syndicate itself around the early 19th century, a connotation borrowed into Italian but lacking the dialect's layered associations with neighborhood extortion and vendettas. Such divergences arise causally from Neapolitan's prolonged , which conserved vivid, context-bound senses for interpersonal and emotional domains (e.g., nuanced terms like frate' for brotherly camaraderie beyond Italian fratello), while Italian's post-1861 imposed Tuscan norms, prompting semantic calques or borrowings for abstract concepts. Neapolitan thus retains expressive density in affective lexicon—evident in idiomatic calques for familial bonds or emotional outbursts—but relies on Italian loans for technical or philosophical terms, reflecting diglossic pressures since unification.

Cultural role and literature

Historical literary works and authors

The earliest documented literary use of Neapolitan appears in the works of Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530), who composed pieces such as the Farsa in the dialect alongside his primary output in Italian and Latin, reflecting the vernacular's role in popular, comedic forms during the Renaissance. By the 17th century, Neapolitan literature achieved prominence with Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti (1634–1636), a framed collection of 50 fairy tales narrated over five days by ten storytellers, marking the first major European anthology of its kind and influencing subsequent compilations by authors like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm through tales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Contemporary to Basile, Giulio Cesare Cortese produced mock-epic poetry entirely in Neapolitan, including the Vaiasseide (1612), a satirical work depicting servant girls in heroic terms, which elevated the dialect's status in literature. This period also saw translations of classical texts into Neapolitan, such as versions of Homer's and Virgil's , adapting ancient epics to the local vernacular since the early 1600s. Under the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (until 1861), Neapolitan enjoyed prestige in courtly and theatrical writing, fostering a tradition of poetry and drama that contrasted with the rising dominance of Tuscan Italian. Post-unification, formal Neapolitan literature declined as state policies enforced standard Italian, limiting the dialect primarily to theater and oral forms, though a substantial corpus of several hundred cataloged works—mostly , plays, and poetic translations—persists from the pre-modern era. In the , (1900–1984) revived Neapolitan dramatic literature with socially incisive plays like Napoli milionaria (1945), which critiqued wartime opportunism through dialect dialogue, sustaining the language's expressive power in performance.

Presence in music, theater, and folklore

The Neapolitan language features prominently in the canzone napoletana genre, a body of popular songs composed primarily in the dialect from the late 19th century onward, including classics such as 'O sole mio (1898, lyrics by Giovanni Capurro, music by Eduardo Di Capua) and Funiculì, Funiculà (1880, by Luigi Denza and Peppino Turco). These works, often performed internationally, exemplify the dialect's melodic expressiveness and emotional depth, with over 100 such songs cataloged in the genre's core repertoire by the early 20th century. In the realm of opera, the 18th-century Neapolitan school—centered in Naples' conservatories and producing composers like Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736) and Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801)—developed opera buffa, drawing on local comic traditions that incorporated Neapolitan dialect elements for authenticity in farcical scenes, as seen in Pergolesi's La serva padrona (premiered 1733). Modern revival includes Pino Daniele (1955–2015), whose debut album Terra mia (1977) fused Neapolitan lyrics with blues and jazz, selling over 500,000 copies and influencing subsequent dialect-infused rock and fusion acts through the 2010s. Neapolitan theater traditions rely heavily on the dialect, originating with the 17th-century commedia dell'arte character Pulcinella, a Neapolitan stock figure embodying cunning and vulgarity through improvised dialect dialogue in performances across Europe. Eduardo Scarpetta (1853–1925) advanced this legacy by authoring more than 50 original Neapolitan plays and adapting Parisian farces into dialect, establishing a professional theater circuit in Naples that persisted post-World War II via his descendants, including Eduardo De Filippo's neo-realist productions drawing on over 800 documented performances in the dialect by mid-century. In folklore, Neapolitan proverbs and riddles sustain archaic phonetic and syntactic forms, such as the proverb "Chiù ce vaca, chiù ce truova" (the more you go, the more you find), reflecting pre-modern worldview persistence; these were systematically collected in 20th-century ethnographies of southern Italian verbal arts, with field recordings from the 1920s–1950s documenting over 1,000 dialect variants in oral traditions. In the realm of film and television, the Neapolitan language has gained prominence for its role in conveying regional authenticity, particularly in depictions of ' underbelly. The series Gomorrah (2014–2021), adapted from Roberto Saviano's novel, features extensive Neapolitan dialogue to reflect the speech patterns of Camorra-affiliated characters, distinguishing it from standard Italian and enhancing narrative realism. This choice underscores Neapolitan's utility in portraying local identity, though it complicates international distribution; subtitling Neapolitan into English often requires intermediate standardization into Italian, resulting in losses of idiomatic nuance and cultural specificity during global exports as late as 2021. Earlier 20th-century cinema also leveraged Neapolitan elements through figures like Antonio de Curtis (), whose films from the 1930s to 1960s blended Italian with Neapolitan phrasing and accent to amplify comedic and cultural resonance, embedding the language in Italy's popular cinematic canon despite predominant use of standard Italian. On platforms, Neapolitan experiences a contemporary resurgence via short-form content on and , where creators disseminate dialect lessons, phrases, and cultural skits to global audiences, often highlighting its melodic qualities and historical depth. Videos as recent as July 2025 assert approximately 5.7 million native speakers, framing Neapolitan as a vibrant Romance rather than mere , though such claims blend with estimation. This digital exposure fosters identity reinforcement among and youth communities but frequently involves with Italian, yielding hybrid expressions that prioritize accessibility over linguistic purity.

Current status and revitalization

Neapolitan is spoken by an estimated 7.5 million people worldwide, primarily native speakers in southern Italy's region, including and its hinterlands, as well as smaller numbers in adjacent areas like parts of , , and . These speakers are concentrated among urban and rural populations, with higher proficiency in working-class communities where the serves as a marker of local identity. Total figures include second-language users, though native competence predominates the count. Usage trends indicate a decline, with Neapolitan classified as vulnerable due to weakening intergenerational transmission and the prestige of Standard Italian in formal contexts. Surveys on Italian dialects show frequent use (often or always) at 54% among those aged 54 and older, dropping significantly in younger cohorts as and media favor Italian. Proficiency remains higher within family units and among women in domestic settings, reflecting its role in intimate and generational bonds, while youth adoption lags. The language dominates informal domains, such as home conversations in southern Italian households, comprising the primary medium for everyday expression among speakers. It is largely absent from , environments, and official communications, contributing to ongoing convergence with Italian features in spoken forms. In diaspora communities, particularly , retention persists among descendants but at lower fluency levels due to assimilation pressures. Neapolitan lacks official recognition as a minority language under Italy's national framework, which via Law 482/1999 protects twelve specific linguistic minorities—Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek (including Griko), Slovene, Croatian, French, , Occitan, Ladin, Friulian, and —but excludes southern Italo-Romance varieties such as Neapolitan, classifying them instead as regional dialects of Italian. This exclusion contrasts with the co-official status granted to Friulian in and across , where both receive dedicated funding for education, media, and administration. Neapolitan receives no equivalent national legal safeguards, remaining absent from school curricula and public services mandates. Regionally, the Campania Regional Council approved Law No. 11 on October 14, 2008, affirming the Neapolitan language's historical and cultural value and committing to its protection through promotion in cultural events, optional bilingual in municipalities, and support for projects, though without provisions for compulsory instruction or enforcement mechanisms. This measure builds on earlier regional initiatives but falls short of substantive integration into formal education or governance, with implementation relying on voluntary local adoption and limited budgetary allocations. Internationally, Neapolitan gained distinct classification via the code "" in the early 2000s, enabling its tracking as a separate in linguistic databases. UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger designates it as vulnerable, citing intergenerational transmission risks without according it protected status akin to endangered indigenous tongues. National policies continue to emphasize standard Italian, as evidenced by July 2024 legislation mandating enhanced Italian-language support for immigrant students in primary and secondary schools to foster integration, indirectly reinforcing Italian's dominance in public spheres and sidelining regional varieties like Neapolitan. Proposals for official standardization, including orthographic unification and academy establishment, have surfaced periodically but yielded no binding outcomes or dedicated funding streams.

Efforts at preservation and standardization

The Accademia Napoletana, an independent scientific organization focused on Neapolitan preservation, conducts research, documentation, and educational initiatives to promote the language's orthographic conventions and literary traditions, though it lacks authority to enforce a unified standard. Efforts to compile orthographies draw from historical literary practices, such as those in 19th-century texts, but remain non-binding due to persistent dialectal variations across Neapolitan-speaking regions, which include distinct phonological and lexical forms in areas like northern Campania versus southern Apulia. These variations, rooted in substrate influences and geographic isolation, empirically hinder consensus on spelling and grammar, as evidenced by the absence of a centralized regulatory body comparable to those for major Romance languages. Digital projects, including adaptations for under-resourced Italian varieties, have facilitated corpus development for Neapolitan in 2024, enabling automated analysis of texts and aiding preservation through machine-readable datasets. However, these tools confront orthographic inconsistencies and limited training data, yielding partial successes in tasks like but failing to resolve barriers without broader human-led agreement. Community-driven revitalization includes informal classes offered by cultural associations and participation in local festivals featuring Neapolitan performances, which foster oral transmission. Critically, such initiatives, often motivated by advocacy, achieve modest gains in media representation and awareness—such as through academy-led events—but surveys reveal low uptake among younger speakers, with projections indicating less than one-third proficiency by century's end. remains stalled by dialectal fragmentation, preventing scalable teaching materials, while endures, as Neapolitan supplements rather than supplants Italian in formal domains. These efforts preserve cultural continuity, yet they risk diverting resources from standard Italian mastery, which correlates with higher in Italy's unified , underscoring a causal absent empirical reversal of decline trends.

References

  1. https://languages.linguistscollective.info/015-neapolitan/
  2. https://www.italianforawhile.com/blog-posts/10-curiosities-about-the-italian-language
  3. https://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/travel-tips/neapolitan-language
  4. https://movery.it/en/dialetto-napoletano-alle-radici-di-una-vera-e-propria-lingua/
  5. http://www.grandvoyageitaly.com/piazza/is-the-neapolitan-dialect-really-its-own-language
  6. https://travelswithaudrey.com/what-language-is-spoken-in-italy/
  7. https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-738
  8. https://www.elalliance.org/languages/neapolitan
  9. https://neapolitandialectoftheworld.home.blog/2020/01/28/the-words-of-the-ancient-neapolitan-the-past-remembers-the-future/
  10. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-earliest-Italian-text-written-in-a-language-more-similar-to-modern-Italian-than-to-Latin
  11. https://dannybate.com/2022/09/17/five-sound-changes-that-make-italian-make-more-sense/
  12. https://www.naplesldm.com/dialectlit.php
  13. https://en.iyil2019.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NEAPOLITAN-LANGUAGE-AN-ACADEMY-FOR-A-WORLD-HERITAGE-Copia.pdf
  14. https://www.efrome.it/0107-plurilingualism-and-the-kingdom-of-naples
  15. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2sg144x3
  16. https://www.understandingitaly.com/aragonese-influence.html
  17. https://brill.com/edcollchap-oa/book/9789004526372/BP000002.xml
  18. https://brill.com/display/book/9789004549401/BP000011.xml
  19. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02614340.2020.1748328
  20. https://www.istrianet.org/istria/linguistics/ethno-italy.htm
  21. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00343404.2021.1926960
  22. https://www.englishgratis.com/1/wikibooks/education/educationinitaly.htm
  23. https://oxfordre.com/communication/viewbydoi/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.929
  24. https://www.europassitalian.com/learn/history/
  25. https://www.academypublication.com/issues2/tpls/vol08/11/01.pdf
  26. https://academic.oup.com/book/9369/chapter/156212694
  27. https://napulitanamente.com/language/
  28. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/fa085512-44ed-4278-b7c6-ee37a6cfc5d3/download
  29. http://www.scuolitalia.com/1/wiki/neapolitan.htm
  30. https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nap/
  31. https://en.iyil2019.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/articu1.pdf
  32. https://www.academia.edu/35822060/The_untamed_s_of_Italian_dialects_An_overview_of_the_singular_behaviour_of_Italo_Romance_sibilants
  33. https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/1pz01w/how_mutually_intelligible_are_dialects_in_italy/
  34. https://bahasawan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Dialetti-in-Diaspora_v3b-Andriani-Perlin-Kaufman_Gigi.pdf
  35. https://nuitalian.org/2022/05/04/exploring-the-history-of-the-italian-american-language-identity/
  36. https://americanitalian.net/tag/neapolitan/
  37. https://access.archive-ouverte.unige.ch/access/metadata/8d9520f0-138d-4aa3-a481-e1f12c671354/download
  38. https://www.scuolitalia.com/1/wiki/neapolitan.htm
  39. http://translationreport.com/blog/italian-dialects-and-languages
  40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/410406
  41. https://iso639-3.sil.org/code_tables/639/data
  42. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300854613_Consonant_Gemination_in_Neapolitan
  43. https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ijl/article/download/22717/17746
  44. https://direct.mit.edu/tacl/article/doi/10.1162/tacl_a_00631/119058/Language-Varieties-of-Italy-Technology-Challenges
  45. https://www.wetheitalians.com/news/italian-language-roman-way
  46. https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nap
  47. https://the-patroclus.net/2021/06/26/a-brief-political-history-of-the-italian-language/
  48. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11698-023-00271-2
  49. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/italy/education-statistics/it-literacy-rate-adult--of-people-aged-15-and-above
  50. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/yangyou/files/language_labor_ideology20180327.pdf
  51. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331529677_The_vanishing_languages_of_Italy_diglossia_bilingualism_and_shift
  52. https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/7/4/312
  53. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2024.2317965
  54. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01434632.2024.2317965
  55. https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/linguistics/2012_Hasychak.pdf
  56. https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/5259/
  57. https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-750
  58. https://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/romance-linguistics/assets/uploads/paoli/Booklet_P&P_right.pdf
  59. https://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1389_steddy_3.pdf
  60. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394923054_Phonetic_Features_of_Neapolitan_and_Campania_Regional_Italian_in_Migrants%27_Speech
  61. https://psychoprosody.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/white-payne-mattys-2009.pdf
  62. http://elies.rediris.es/Language_Design/LD-SI-2/34_RUSSO-BARRY.pdf
  63. https://www.isca-archive.org/speechprosody_2022/crocco22_speechprosody.pdf
  64. https://speechling.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-italian-accents-sicilian-and-4-other-regions/
  65. https://www.omniglot.com/writing/neapolitan.php
  66. https://www.academia.edu/34133022/The_Social_and_Political_Status_of_the_Neapolitan_Language_Past_and_Present
  67. https://aclanthology.org/2024.tacl-1.2.pdf
  68. https://www.linguapax.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Accademia-Napoletana-EN.pdf
  69. https://universaldependencies.org/nap/index.html
  70. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Neapolitan/articles
  71. https://linguistics.stonybrook.edu/faculty/lori.repetti/files/Repetti%202020.pdf
  72. https://medium.com/language-lab/day-30-of-learning-neapolitan-in-15-minutes-a-day-f470737bd7f0
  73. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199677108.003.0016
  74. https://dailyitalianwords.com/italian-vs-neapolitan-what-are-the-differences/
  75. https://crooksville.k12.oh.us/HomePages/virtual-library/T68760/VerboEssereInNapoletano.pdf
  76. https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-485
  77. https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/4822/
  78. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Neapolitan-VedraiNeapolitan-Vedrai-il-NAno-DOpo-Will-you-see-the-dwarf_fig3_235977442
  79. https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/download/v10-n4-paradis/360-pdf-en/3267
  80. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=gc_etds
  81. https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-485
  82. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262951008_On_niente_optional_negative_concord_in_Old_Italian
  83. https://journals.openedition.org/corpus/2408
  84. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337458426_The_causative_construction_in_the_dialects_of_southern_Italy_and_the_phonologysyntax_interface
  85. https://iris.unive.it/retrieve/a0f0a026-eb32-4387-8946-5276ee1fcb08/Beninc%25C3%25A0%2526CinqueRomanceClitics%2526SelectiveClClimbing.pdf
  86. https://www.academia.edu/34167040/NEAPOLITAN_LANGUAGE_NAPULITANO_AN_ACADEMY_FOR_A_WORLD_HERITAGE
  87. https://archive.org/stream/etymologicaldict00diezuoft/etymologicaldict00diezuoft_djvu.txt
  88. https://rabbitique.com/profile/nap/guaglione
  89. https://playaling.com/connections-between-arabic-and-italian/
  90. https://larsbrownworth.com/blog/2012/04/21/what-language-did-the-normans-of-sicily-speak/
  91. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001458580904300207
  92. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/camorra
  93. https://www.italianpod101.com/blog/2021/05/13/english-loanwords-in-italian/
  94. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/camorra
  95. https://neapolitandialectoftheworld.home.blog/2020/05/04/guappo-from-spanish-guapo/
  96. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13449d.htm
  97. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/21279/
  98. https://fairytalefridays.substack.com/p/giambattista-basile-fairy-tale-godfather
  99. https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004251830/B9789004251830_021.pdf
  100. http://www.naplesldm.com/dialectlit.php
  101. https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1178
  102. https://www.visitnaples.eu/en/neapolitanity/tales-of-naples/the-history-behind-5-of-the-best-neapolitan-songs
  103. http://www.naplesldm.com/napsongtexts.php
  104. https://wonderfulitaly.eu/en/magazine/entertainment/the-best-neapolitan-songs-for-your-holiday-in-napoli-5610
  105. https://www.earlymusicworld.com/neapolitan-comic-opera
  106. https://movery.it/en/giovanni-battista-pergolesi-composer/
  107. https://www.last.fm/music/Pino%2BDaniele/%2Bwiki
  108. https://www.iitaly.org/magazine/focus/art-culture/article/remembering-pino-daniele
  109. https://wepa.unima.org/en/pulcinella/
  110. https://www.italyonthisday.com/2023/03/eduardo-scarpetta-actor-and-playwright.html
  111. http://www.naplesldm.com/scarpetta.php
  112. https://www.amazon.com/Neapolitan-Proverbs-Phrasings-Proverbi-napoletani/dp/1543196640
  113. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/verbal-folklore-in-contemporary-southern-italy-a-notsodistant-mirror-of-cultural-and-environmental-change/7AA2F365C5ABAB4A432CDE62AB694E8E
  114. https://medium.com/sunlanguagetheories/dabbling-diary-1-learning-neapolitan-from-30-hours-of-tv-8e64cecfb7db
  115. https://www.quora.com/In-the-TV-series-Gomorrah-do-the-actors-speak-Italian-or-Neapolitan
  116. https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa03/status_quaestionis/article/download/14574/14170/28157
  117. https://www.scribd.com/document/718961731/FilmTranslation-AComparativeAnalysisofEnglishSubtitlesinGomorrahGarrone2008
  118. http://www.naplesldm.com/toto.php
  119. https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/tongue-tied-no-more-deciphering-neapolitan-dialect
  120. https://www.tiktok.com/discover/neapolitan-language
  121. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQIw_c-6_SI
  122. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6T45G54L24
  123. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1077457/frequency-of-dialect-use-by-age-group-in-italy/
  124. https://www.quora.com/How-popular-is-the-Neapolitan-language-or-dialect-in-usage-as-main-language-at-home-in-Naples-and-the-surrounding-areas
  125. https://www.eurotrad.com/en/magazine/minority-languages-italy/
  126. https://zinglanguages.com/languages-of-italy/
  127. https://irpiniastories.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/the-languages-of-campania/
  128. https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
  129. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/italy-new-measures-promote-linguistic-integration-immigrant-students-2024-08-23_en
  130. https://www.quora.com/Why-don-t-Sicilian-and-Neapolitan-have-a-standardized-form-and-does-this-cause-any-issues
  131. https://italiancharities.org/neopolitan-language-course/
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.