Neapolitan language

Neapolitan (autonym: 'o nnapulitano [o nːapuliˈtɑːnə]; 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 almost the entirety of the area. On 14 October 2008, a law by the Region of Campania acknowledged that Neapolitan was to be protected.^[1]

Neapolitan
napulitano
Native to	Italy
Region	Abruzzo Apulia Basilicata Calabria Campania Lazio Marche Molise
Ethnicity	Mezzogiorno Italians
Native speakers	around 7.5 million (2025)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latinic Romance Italo-Western Italo-Dalmatian Italo-Romance Intermediate Southern Italian Neapolitan
Dialects	Arianese Barese Benevento Irpinian Molisan Southern Latian Tarantino Vastese Cosentian
Language codes
ISO 639-2	nap
ISO 639-3	nap
Glottolog	neap1235  Continental Southern Italian sout3126  South Lucanian = (Vd) Lausberg
Southern Italo-Romance languages
Neapolitan as part of the European Romance languages[image reference needed]

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 instead refer to the specific variety natively spoken in 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.^[2][3]

A Neapolitan native speaker recorded in Italy

Classification and standardization

Giambattista Basile (1566–1632), who composed the first known collection of fairy tales with the name of Lo cunto de li cunti, that includes the earliest written versions of famous stories like the Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Cinderella, entirely in the Neapolitan language

Neapolitan is a Romance language that is classified as belonging to the Intermediate Southern Italian group of Italo-Romance. There are considerable differences among the various dialects, but they often show high levels of mutual intellegibility. Mutual intellegibility with different branches altogether can instead be more problematic, depending on individual exposure and linguistic factors.

More specifically, closeness to Italian, linguistically part of Tuscan, is still somewhat sharp. There are notable grammatical differences, such as Neapolitan showing an uncountable class of its own, or Italian having a richer system of conjugation for its verbs, together with complex historical phonological developments, which often obscure the cognacy of lexical items, but cross-communication can usually happen without much difficulty.

Its evolution has been similar to that of Italian and other Romance languages from their shared origin in Vulgar Latin, but in addition to this base, it clearly reflects other influxes, both by later superstrata and previous substrata, such as the Oscan language. One possibly inherited feature from Oscan might be the rhotacism of /d/ into /r/ at the beginning of a word or in between vowels: e.g. Neapolitan diece (Italian dieci, meaning "ten") is pronounced and often spelled as riece; Neapolitan pede (Italian piede, meaning "foot") is likewise pronounced and often spelled pere. Another supposedly inherited feature might be the assimilation of voiced stops into the preceding nasals that Oscan showed whenever such consonant clusters occurred: e.g. [nd] turning into [nː] as in Neapolitan onna (Italian onda, meaning "wave"); [mb] turning into [mː] as in Neapolitan chiummo (Italian piombo, meaning "lead"), both of which are much more consistently reflected in spelling. Other effects of the Oscan substratum on modern Neapolitan are postulated, but these claims are highly controversial among scholars.

Neapolitan also has a significant superstratum that consists of all the influences by other Romance languages (Aragonese, Catalan, Occitan and Franco-Provençal above all), but also by the Germanic languages, and especially by the Greek language. Because of the prestige that standard Italian started to have throughout the Italian peninsula already from the 12th to 13th centuries, Neapolitan never had a true chance to be fully standardized, and as a result there exist terms in Neapolitan showing multiple forms, such as the word for tree which can take four different spellings: arbero, arvero, arbolo, arvolo.

Neapolitan has enjoyed a rich literary, theatrical, cinematographic, and also musical history (notably Giambattista Basile, Eduardo Scarpetta, Eduardo De Filippo, Salvatore Di Giacomo Ferdinando Russo and Totò). Thanks to this important heritage, together with the work of artists like Renato Carosone in the 1950s, and Pino Daniele from the 1970s and 1980s onwards, Neapolitan is still widely in use today for popular music not only around the area of Naples, but it has increasingly gained acceptance even at the national scale.

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

Here is an IPA pronunciation table of Neapolitan as 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,code: ita promoted to code: it	Pate nuosto ca staje 'n cielo,	Patë nuóstö ca stajë 'n ciélö,	[ˈpɑːtə ˈnwostə ka ˈstɑːjə nˈdʒjeːlə]
hallowed be thy name	Sia santificato il tuo nome.code: ita promoted to code: it	santificammo 'o nomme tujo.	santificammö 'o nòmmë tujö.	[sandifiˈkammə o ˈnɔmmə ˈtuːjə]
Thy kingdom come,	Venga il tuo regno,code: ita promoted to code: it	Faje vinì 'o rigno tujo,	Fajë vinì 'o rignö tujö,	[ˈfɑːjə viˈni o ˈriɲɲə ˈtuːjə]
Thy will be done,	Sia fatta la tua volontá,code: ita promoted to code: it	sempe c'a vuluntà toja,	sèmpë c'a vuluntà tójä,	[ˈsɛmbə ˈkɑː vulunˈda ˈtoːjə]
on earth as it is in heaven.	Come in cielo, così in terra.code: ita promoted to code: it	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,code: ita promoted to code: it	Fance avé 'o ppane tutte 'e juorne,	Fancë avé 'o ppanë tuttë 'e juórnë,	[ˈfandʒə aˈve o pˈpɑːnə ˈtuttə e ˈjwornə]
and forgive us our trespasses	E rimetti a noi i nostri debiticode: ita promoted to code: it	e lèvance 'e diébbete	e lèväncë 'e diébbëtë	[ɛ lˈlɛːvəndʒə e ˈrjebbətə]
as we forgive those who trespass against us,	Come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori.code: ita promoted to code: it	commo nuje 'e livammo all'ate.	commö nujë 'e livammö all'atë.	[ˈkommə ˈnuːjə e liˈvammə alˈlɑːtə]
and lead us not into temptation,	E non ci indurre in tentazione,code: ita promoted to code: it	No nce fà spanticà,	Nö ncë fà spanticà,	[nə ndʒə ˈfa ʃpandiˈka]
but deliver us from evil.	Ma liberaci dal male.code: ita promoted to code: it	ma lèvance 'o mmale 'a tuorno.	ma lèväncë 'o mmalë 'a tuórnö.	[ma ˈlɛːvəndʒə o mˈmɑːlə a ˈtwornə]
Amen.	Amen.code: ita promoted to code: it	Ammèn.	Ammèn.	[amˈmɛnn(ə)]

Orthography and phonology

Neapolitan orthography consists of 22 Latin letters. Much like what happens for Italian, it does not contain k/w/x/y, although these letters might be found in foreign words. Yet unlike Italian, it does employ j, which overall reflects a higher incidence of this sound. 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 varieties share a high degree of their vocabulary with standard Italian, the official language of Italy, several differences in pronunciation can make the connection almost unrecognizable: one of such distinguishing features is undoubtably the Neapolitan weakening of unstressed vowels into schwa (the sound that a takes in about). Nonetheless, the majority of Neapolitan speakers is used to speak the proscribed national language for communication, even if they very often pronounce standard Italian with a distinctive local accent: for example, another typical characteristic which is more consistently transferred from Neapolitan into Italian is the palatalization of [s] (like the s in sip) into [ʃ] (like the sh in ship), which occurs whenever /s/ occurs in an initial position followed by a consonant (yet the set of consonants triggering this phonological shift changes from dialect to dialect).

The grammar is what mostly sets Neapolitan apart from Italian. For instance, the gender and number of a word are expressed through a system of metaphony in the stressed vowel, since the final vowels in the suffix are no longer distinguished (e.g. Neapolitan luongo [ˈlwoŋːə], longa [ˈlɔŋːə]; Italian lungo, lunga; masc. "long", fem. "long"; Neapolitan franzese [franˈdzeːsə], franzise [franˈdziːsə]; Italian francese, francesi; sing. "French", pl. "French").

Neapolitan seems to have had a significant influence on the intonation of Rioplatense Spanish, which is spoken in a major portion of Argentina, in addition to the entire country of Uruguay, but also on that of the Paulistano dialect from in and around the area of São Paulo in Brazil, even though such varieties received substantial influxes from other regional Italian languages as well.

Vowels

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

^{[citation needed]}

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
			central	sibilant
Nasal		m	n			ɲ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡s	t͡ʃ		k
	voiced	b	d		d͡ʒ		ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f		s	ʃ
	voiced	v				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][4]	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;[Is it a tap or a short trill?] 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

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

Sample of a Neapolitan text at the Scampìa carnival.

Definite articles

Before a word beginning with a consonant:

	Singular	Plural	Uncountable
Masculine	'o	'e	'o C:
Feminine	'a	'e C:	'a

C: indicates that the initial consonant of the following word is geminated if followed by a vowel. The reason why they are traditionally spelled with a preceding apostrophe ' is to indicate the elision of the initial sound /l/. All these definite articles are always pronounced distinctly.

The definite article becomes ll' before a word beginning with a vowel, which is invariable for all genders, and for all numbers.

In general, because of the systemic vowels' reduction process, which doesn't allow for an immediate words' gender identification, the tendency in Neapolitan is to specify articles before nouns even in isolation, at least more frequently than what happens in Italian, and more similarly to what happens for instance in French.

Indefinite articles

For all genders and all positions

	Masculine	Feminine
Before words beginning with a consonant	no	na
Before words beginning with a vowel	n'

These articles can be practically regarded as contracted forms deriving from the numerical pronouns meaning "one", which are uno/una/un', with elision of u in the unstressed initial position. Such development ultimately explains why in these articles, although it always happens to precede either o or a or the following initial vowel, n never undergoes gemination even after words triggering it, as in dimane è n'ato juorno instead of dimane è *nn'ato juorno ("tomorrow is another day").

Verbal conjugation

Neapolitan verbs shows four finite moods: indicative, imperative, conditional and subjunctive, the last of which has near completely died out (at least in the speech of Naples), and three non-finite modes: infinitive, gerund and participle. Each mood exhibits an active voice and a passive voice. Only èssere (Eng. "to be", It. essere) can function as an auxiliary verb for both voices. On the contrary, (h)avé (Eng. "to have", It. avere) can only be employed in the active form, whereas venì (Eng. "to come", It. venire) only in the passive one.

Thus, if the verb is transitive and can hence be conjugated in both the active and passive, then (h)avé will be used for the former and èssere/venì will be interchangeably used for the latter, while if the verb is intransitive and can hence be conjugated just in the active, then (h)avé/èssere will be interchangeably used for it.

Neapolitan

Te

aggio

purtato

ô

spitale.

Te aggio purtato ô spitale.

You I-have brought to-the hospital.

I have brought you to the hospital.

Neapolitan

Fuje/Vinette

purtato

â

casa.

Fuje/Vinette purtato â casa.

I-was/I-came brought to-the house.

I was brought home.

Neapolitan

Ajiere

aggio/so'

juto

a

Caserta.

Ajiere aggio/so' juto a Caserta.

Yesterday I-have/I-am gone to Caserta.

Yesterday I went to Caserta.

Doubled initial consonants

In Neapolitan, the initial consonant of a word, which would normally be pronounced as a singleton sound, can sometimes be doubled as well. This process is referred to as syntactic gemination. It more broadly occurs across all Italo-Romance groups and even in the unrelated Finnish language.

Gemination is triggered only by a specific set of words, mainly evolving from Latin monosyllabic parts of speech, as well as from the Proto-Romance derivatives constructed from them, ultimately ending in a consonant sound, which would later be dropped after causing fortition of the following initial consonant (e.g. tre (g)guagliune, "three boys", with Neap. tre being inherited from Lat. TRĒScode: lat promoted to code: la ). Gemination is instead blocked when a pausa occurs right after the trigger word (e.g. datimmenne tre, guagliù!, "give me three of them, boys!", with guagliù being apocopated for guagliune). In case the following terms begin in consonant clusters, the phenomenon only occurs if they happen to be sequences of an obstruent and a liquid consonant (e.g. tre (c)crape, "three goats"), while it doesn't if they instead show any other consonant combination (e.g. tre spate, "three swords").

This gemination happens at the phonological level in pronunciation, but the doubling of consonants is not always reflected in spelling; many Neapolitan editions still mark such syntactic gemination in writing however, resulting in many terms spelled with initial double consonants: the expression meaning "I am crazy" may therefore be spelled either je so' pazzo, or alternatively je so' ppazzo (regardless of its spelling, pronunciation always exhibits syntactic gemination). In both Italian and Finnish, syntactic gemination is never reflected in the standard orthography.

Words that trigger doubling in pronunciation

Viola Carofalo wearing a T-shirt with Neapolitan je so' pazzo ("I am crazy.")

• The conjunctions e and nè but not o (e.g. pane e (c)caso; nè (p)pane nè (c)caso; but pane o caso)
• The prepositions a, pe/pi, co/cu (e.g. a (m)me; pe (t)te; co (v)vuje)
• The negation no/nu, short for non/nun (e.g. no ddìcere niente!)
• The indefinites ogne, cocche (e.g. ogne (c)cosa; cocche (v)vota)
• Interrogative che and relative che but not ca (e.g. che (p)piense? che (f)femmena! che (c)capa!)
• tre (e.g. tre (c)criature)
• accussí (e.g. accussí (b)buono)
• chiú (e.g. chiú (g)grossa)
• From the verb "essere", so'; sî; è but not songo (e.g. je so' (p)pazzo; tu sî (f)frate a isso; chella è (m)maritata; chille so' (t)tutte cafune but chille songo tutte cafune)
• The masculine uncountable definite article 'o (e.g. 'o (c)caso)
• The masculine uncountable pronoun 'o (e.g. 'o (t)tiene 'o (p)pane?)
• The feminine plural definite article 'e (e.g. 'e (m)mane)
• The feminine plural pronoun 'e (e.g. 'e (t)tazze 'e (r)rinchie tu?)
• Demonstrative adjectives chisto and chillo whenever they refer to uncountable nouns in indefinite quantities (e.g. chisto (c)caso; chillo (p)pane)
• The locative lloco (e.g. lloco (s)sotta)
• From the verb stà: sto' (e.g. sto' (p)parlanno)
• Special case Spiritu (S)Santo

See also

• Languages portal
• Italy portal

• Languages of Italy
• Vulgar Latin
• Oscan language
• Sicilian language
• Central Italian