Neapolitan language
Neapolitan (autonym: (o n)napulitano [(o
n)napulitn]; Italian: napoletano) is the language
of much of southern continental Italy, including the city
of Naples.[4][5][6] It is not named after the city but rather
the Kingdom of Naples, which once covered most of the
area and of which Naples was the capital. On October
14, 2008, a law by the Region of Campania stated that
Neapolitan was to be protected.[7]
Neapolitan was originally derived from Latin, but later
inuenced by the Spanish, French, and Arabs.
Neapolitan has had a signicant inuence on the intona-
tion of Rioplatense Spanish, of the Buenos Aires region
of Argentina, and the whole of Uruguay.[8]
1 Distribution
The Neapolitan dialects are distributed throughout most
of continental southern Italy, historically united during
the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Si-
cilies, specically southern Lazio (Gaeta and Sora dis-
tricts), southern Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata,
Campania (Naples), northern and central Apulia, and
northernmost Calabria. The dialects are part of a var-
ied dialect continuum, so the varieties in southern Lazio,
Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Lucania and Calabria
can typically be recognizable as regional groups of di-
alects. In western Abruzzo and Lazio the dialects give
way to Central Italian dialects such as Romanesco. In
central Calabria and southern Apulia, the dialects give
way to the Sicilian language. Largely due to massive
southern Italian migration in the 20th century, there are
also numbers of speakers in Italian diaspora communities
in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina
and Venezuela. However, in the United States traditional
Neapolitan has had considerable contact with English,
and is signicantly dierent from contemporary Neapoli-
tan spoken in Naples. English words are often used
in place of Neapolitan words, especially among second-
generation speakers.
The following dialects constitute Neapolitan; numbers re-
fer to the map:[9]
1. Abruzzese and Southern Marchigiano:
Ia. Southern Marchigiano (Ascoli Pi-
ceno).
Ib. Teramano (province of Teramo;
northern province of Pescara: Atri,
1
Abruzzo).
Ic. Abruzzese Eastern Adriatico (South-
ern province of Pescara: Penne,
Francavilla al Mare; province of Chieti).
Id. Western Abruzzese (southern part of
province of L'Aquila: Pescina, Sulmona,
Pescasseroli, Roccaraso).
2. Molisan (Molise)
3. Apulian (Pugliese):
IIIa. Dauno (western province of Fog-
gia: Foggia, Bovino).
IIIb. Garganico (eastern province of
Foggia: Gargano).
IIIc. Barese (province of Bari; west-
ern province of Taranto, and part of the
western province of Brindisi).
4. Campanian (Campania),
IVa. Southern Laziale (southern part
of province of Frosinone: Sora, Lazio,
Cassino; southern part of Province of
Latina: Gaeta, Formia).
IVb. Naples dialect (Neapolitan proper:
Naples and the Gulf of Naples).
IVc. Irpino (province of Avellino).
IVd. Cilentano (southern part of
province of Salerno: Vallo della Luca-
nia).
5. Lucanian and Northern Calabrian:
Va. Northwestern Lucanian (northern
province of Potenza: Potenza, Mel).
Vb. Northeastern Lucanian (province of
Matera: Matera).
Vc. Central Lucanian (province
of Potenza: Lagonegro, Pisticci,
Laurenzana).
Vd. Southern Lucanian. The Lausberg
Area"; archaic forms of Lucanian with
Sardinian vocalism (described in Laus-
berg 1939). It lies between Calabria and
Basilicata (Chiaromonte, Oriolo).
Ve. Cosentino (province of Cosenza:
Rossano, Diamante, Castrovillari). With
transitional dialects to south of Cosenza,
where they give way to Sicilian group di-
alects.
2 3 ALPHABET AND PRONUNCIATION

The southernmost regions of Italymost of Calabria and compare to Italian "quando"), etc.), along with the devel-
southern Apulia, as well as Sicilyare home to Sicilian opment of /mb/ as /mm/ (e.g.- tammuro (drum), cfr. Ital-
rather than Neapolitan. ian tamburo), also consistently reected in spelling. Other
eects of the Oscan substratum are postulated too, al-
though substratum claims are highly controversial. In ad-
2 Classication dition, the language was also aected by the Greek lan-
guage. There have never been any successful attempts
to standardize the language (e.g. consulting three dier-
ent dictionaries, one nds three dierent spellings for the
word for tree, arbero, arvero and varo).
Neapolitan has enjoyed a rich literary, musical and the-
atrical history (notably Giambattista Basile, Eduardo De
Filippo, Salvatore di Giacomo and Tot). 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 ocial status within Italy and is not
taught in schools. The Universit Federico II in Naples
oers (from 2003) courses in Campanian Dialectology at
the faculty of Sociology, whose actual aim is not teach-
ing students to speak the language, but studying its his-
tory, usage, literature and social role. There are also on-
going legislative attempts at the national level to have it
recognized as an ocial minority language of Italy. It is
however a recognized ISO 639 Joint Advisory Commit-
tee language with the language code of nap.
For comparison, The Lords Prayer (here as in the
Catholic catechism) is reproduced in the Neapolitan spo-
ken in Naples and in a northern Calabrian dialect, in con-
Giambattista Basile (15661632), author of a collection of fairy trast with a variety of southern Calabrian (part of Sicilian
tales in Neapolitan that includes the earliest known versions of language), Italian and Latin.
Rapunzel and Cinderella

Neapolitan is generally considered Italo-Dalmatian. 3 Alphabet and pronunciation

There are notable dierences among the various dialects,
but they are all generally mutually intelligible. The Italian
language and Neapolitan are of variable mutual com-
prehensibility, depending on factors both aective and
linguistic. There are notable grammatical dierences
such as nouns in the neuter form and unique plural for-
mation, and historical phonological developments that
often obscure the cognacy of lexical items. Its evolu-
tion has been similar to that of Italian and other Ro-
mance languages from their roots in Vulgar Latin. It
may reect a pre-Latin Oscan inuence in the pronun-
ciation of the d sound as an r sound (rhotacism), but
only when d is at the beginning of a word, or be-
tween two vowels (e.g.- doje or duje (two, respec-
tively feminine and masculine form), pronounced, and
often spelled, as roje"/"ruje, ved (to see), pronounced
as ver", and often spelled so, same for cad/car (to
fall), and Madonna/Maronna). Another purported Os-
can inuence is historical assimilation of the consonant
cluster /nd/ as /nn/, pronounced [n] (this generally is
reected in spelling more consistently) (e.g. "munno"
('world', compare to Italian "mondo"), "quanno" ('when',
The Neapolitan alphabet, like the Italian alphabet, is al-
most the same as the English alphabet except that it con-
sists of only 22 letters. It does not contain k, w, x, or y
even though these letters might be found in some foreign
words. The English pronunciation guidelines that follow
are based on General American pronunciation and the
values used may not be applicable 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 ocial language of Italy, dierences in pro-
nunciation often make the connection unrecognizable to
those without knowledge of Neapolitan. The most strik-
ing phonological dierence is the Neapolitan weakening
of unstressed vowels into schwa (schwa is pronounced
like the a in about or the u in upon). 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 but by
4.2 Indenite articles 3

otherwise using only entirely standard words and gram- Although both forms can be found, the ll form is by far
matical forms. This is not Neapolitan proper, but a mere the most common.
dierence in Italian pronunciation. It is well to note that in Neapolitan the gender of a noun is
Therefore, while pronunciation presents the strongest not easily determined by the article, so other means must
barrier to comprehension, the grammar of Neapolitan is be used. In the case of o which can be either masculine
what sets it apart from Italian. In Neapolitan, for exam- singular or neuter singular (there is no neuter plural in
ple, the gender and number of a word is expressed by Neapolitan), when it is neuter the initial consonant of the
a change in the accented vowel, whereas in Italian it is noun is doubled. As an example, the name of a language
expressed by a change in the nal vowel (e.g. luongo, in Neapolitan is always neuter, so if we see o nnapulitano
longa; Italian lungo, lunga; masc. long, fem. long). we know it refers to the Neapolitan language, whereas o
These and other morpho-syntactic dierences distinguish napulitano would refer to a Neapolitan man.
the Neapolitan language from the Italian language and the Likewise, since e can be either masculine plural or fem-
Neapolitan accent. inine plural, when it is feminine plural, the initial conso-
nant of the noun is doubled. As an example, lets consider
a lista which in Neapolitan is feminine singular for list.
3.1 Vowels In the plural it becomes e lliste.
There can also be problems with nouns whose singu-
While there are only ve graphic vowels in Neapolitan,
lar form ends in e. Since plural nouns usually end in e
phonemically, there are seven. The vowels e and o can
whether masculine or feminine, the masculine plural is
be either "closed" or "open" and the pronunciation is dif-
often formed by orthographically changing the spelling.
ferent for the two. The grave accent (, , ) is used to
As an example, lets consider the word guaglione (which
denote open vowels, and the acute accent (, , , ) is
means boy, or girl in the feminine form):
used to denote closed vowels. However, accent marks are
not used in the actual spelling of words except when they More will be said about these orthographically changing
occur on the nal syllable of a word, such as Tot, arriv, nouns in the section on Neapolitan nouns.
or pecch and when they appear here in other positions it A couple of notes about consonant doubling:
is only to demonstrate where the stress, or accent, falls in
some words.
Doubling is a function of the article (and certain
other words), and these same words may be seen in
3.2 Consonants other contexts without the consonant doubled. More
will be said about this in the section on consonant
doubling.
3.3 Digraphs and trigraphs

The following clusters are always geminated vowel- Doubling only occurs when the consonant is fol-
internally. lowed by a vowel. If it is followed by another con-
sonant, such as in the word spagnuolo (Spanish), no
doubling occurs.

4 Grammar
4.2 Indenite articles
4.1 Denite articles
The Neapolitan indenite articles, corresponding to the
The Neapolitan denite articles (corresponding to the En- English a or an, are presented in the following table:
glish word the) are La (feminine singular), Lo (mas-
culine singular) and Li (plural for both), but in reality
these forms will probably only be found in older litera-
ture (along with Lu and even El), of which there is much
4.3 Verbal conjugation
to be found. Modern Neapolitan uses, almost entirely,
shortened forms of these articles which are: In Neapolitan there are four nite modes: indicative, sub-
junctive, conditional and imperative, and three non-nite
Before a word beginning with a consonant: modes: innitive, gerund and participle. Each mode
These denite articles are always pronounced distinctly. has an active and a passive form. The only auxiliary
verbs used in the active form is Av" (en. to have, it.
Before a word beginning with a vowel: avere), which contrasts with Italian in which the intran-
l or ll for both masculine and feminine; for both singular sitive verbs take essere for their auxiliary. For example,
and plural. we have:
4 6
4.4 Doubled initial consonants
In Neapolitan, many times the initial consonant of a word
is doubled. This is apparent both in written as well as
spoken Neapolitan.
All feminine plural nouns, when preceded by the
feminine plural denite article, e, or by any fem-
inine plural adjective, have their initial consonant
doubled.
All neuter singular nouns, when preceded by the
neuter singular denite article, o, or by a neuter sin-
gular 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 word that follows.
However, when there is a pause after the trigger word,
the doubling does not occur (e.g. Tu s gguaglione, [You
are a boy] where s is a trigger word causing doubling of
the initial consonant in guaglione but in the phrase De do
s, guagli? [Where are you from, boy?] no doubling oc-
curs). Neither does doubling occur when the initial con-
sonant is followed by another consonant (e.g. o ttaliano
[the Italian language], but o spagnuolo [the Spanish lan-
guage], where o is the neuter denite article).
4.4.1 Words that trigger doubling
The conjunctions e and n but not o (e.g. pane e
ccaso; n ppane n ccaso; but pane o caso)
The prepositions a, pe, cu (e.g. a mme; pe tte; cu
vvuje)
The negation nu, short for nun/nunn (e.g. nu ddicere
niente)
The indenites ogne, cocche (e.g. ogne ccasa; coc-
che ccosa)
Interrogative che and relative che but not ca (e.g.
Che ppiensa? Che emmena! Che ccapa!)
accuss (e.g. accuss ttuosto)
From the verb essere, so; s; but not songo (e.g.
je so ppazzo; tu s esso; chillo ccafone; chilli so
ccafune but chilli songo cafune)
cchi (e.g. cchi ppoco)
The number tre (e.g. tre ssegge)
The neuter denite article o (e.g. o ppane, but nu
poco e pane)
The neuter pronoun o (e.g. o ttiene o ppane?)
REFERENCES
Demonstrative adjectives chistu and chillu which
refer to neuter nouns in indenite quantities (e.g.
chistu erro; chillu ppane ) but not in denite quan-
tities (e.g. Chistu erro; chillu pane)
The feminine plural denite article e (e.g. e ssegge;
e gguaglione)
The plural feminine pronoun e (e gguaglione e cchi-
amme tu?)
The plural masculine pronoun e preceding a verb,
but not a noun (e guagliune e cchiamme tu?)
The locative lloco (e.g. lloco ssotto)
From the verb st: sto (e.g. sto pparlanno)
From the verb put: pu; p (e.g. ; isso p ssap)
Special case Spiritu Ssanto
5 See also
Languages of Italy
Sicilian language
Calabrian languages
6 References
[1] Neapolitan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
[2] Hammarstrm, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath,
Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). Neapolitan.
Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science
of Human History.
[3] Hammarstrm, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath,
Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). South Lucanian.
Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science
of Human History.
[4] Minahan, James (2002). Encyclopedia of the Stateless Na-
tions: L-R. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-
313-32111-5., page 1348
[5] J.-P. Cavaill; Le napolitain : une langue majoritaire mi-
nore. 09 mars 2007.
[6] The Guardian for the list of languages in the Unesco site.
[7] Tutela del dialetto, primo via libera al Ddl campano
(Bill to protect dialect green lighted) from Il Denaro,
economic journal of South Italy, 15 October 2008 Re
Franceschiello. L'ultimo sovrano delle Due Sicilie
[8] Colantoni, Laura, and Jorge Gurlekian. Convergence and
intonation: historical evidence from Buenos Aires Span-
ish, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Volume 7, Is-
sue 02, August 2004, pp. 107119, Cambridge Journals
Online
 5

[9] Carta dei Dialetti d'Italia (Mapping of dialects of Italy) by

Giovan Battista Pellegrini, 1977 (in Italian)

[10] Canepari, Luciano (2005), Italia (PDF), Manuale di fo-

netica, Lincom Europa, pp. 282283, ISBN 3-89586-
456-0 (in Italian)

7 Additional sources
Iandolo, Carlo. A lengua e Pulecenella, Di Mauro
Franco, Italy; 1 Oct 2001; ISBN 978-8885263710
(in Italian)
De Blasi, Nicola and Luigi Imperatore. Il napole-
tano parlato e scritto. Con note di grammatica stor-
ica ; Dante & Descartes, Italy; 2nd edition, 1 July
2001; ISBN 978-8888142050 (in Italian)
http://termcoord.eu/2014/07/
neapolitan-great-cultural-heritage/

8 External links
Neapolitan recognized by UNESCO (in Italian)

Websters Online Dictionary NeapolitanEnglish

Interactive Map of languages in Italy

Neapolitan on-line radio station

Neapolitan glossary on Wiktionary

Italian-Neapolitan searchable online dictionary

Neapolitan basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatis-

tical Database

Grammar primer and extensive vocabulary for the

Neapolitan dialect of Torre del Greco

Neapolitan language and culture (in Italian)

Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian. By Francesco
Cangemi. Berlin: Language Science Press. 187pp.
Free download
6 9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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