Neapolitan language

Neapolitan (autonym: ; Template:Langx) is a Romance language of the 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.

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.

Distribution

File:WIKITONGUES- Foffo speaking Neapolitan.webm

A Neapolitan speaker, recorded in Italy

File:Maria Flora nella canzone 'O pisciavinolo - 1895.jpg

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. 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. English words are often used in place of Neapolitan words, especially among second-generation speakers. 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.

Classification

File:Giambattista Basile.jpg

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. Another purported Oscan influence is the historical assimilation of the consonant cluster as , pronounced (this is generally reflected in spelling more consistently: Template:Wikt-lang vs Italian Template:Wikt-lang "world"; Template:Wikt-lang vs Italian Template:Wikt-lang "when"), along with the development of as ~ (Template:Wikt-lang vs Italian Template:Wikt-lang "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: Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang.

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	Neapolitan (standard)	Neapolitan (diacritics)Template:Efn	IPA
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

Alphabet and pronunciation

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 phonological difference is the Neapolitan weakening of unstressed vowels into schwa (schwa is pronounced like the a in about or the u in upon).Template:Efn 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 Template:IPAblink (like the sh in ship) instead of Template:IPAblink (like the s in sea or the ss in pass) when the letter representing Template:IPAslink is in initial position followed by a consonant, but not when it is followed by a dental occlusive Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink (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, 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 Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink (e.g. luongo , longa ; 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.

Vowels

While there are only five graphic vowels in Neapolitan, phonemically, there are eight. Stressed vowels and can be either "closed" or "open" and the pronunciation is different for the two. The grave accent (, , ) is used to denote open vowels, and the acute accent (, , , ) is used to denote closed vowels, with alternative and . 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 , , or , 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. "you are").

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
High-mid	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Low-mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Low		Template:IPA link

Letter	IPA	Pronunciation guide
	Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAblink Template:IPAslink	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
	Template:IPAslink Template:IPAslink	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
	Template:IPAslink Template:IPAslink	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
	Template:IPAslink Template:IPAslink	i is always closed and is pronounced like the ee in meet when it is initial, or preceding another vowel
	Template:IPAslink Template:IPAslink	u is always closed and is pronounced like the oo in boot when it is initial, or preceding another vowel

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
			central	sibilant
Nasal		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link		(Template:IPA link)	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link
Lateral			Template:IPA link
Approximant		Template:IPA link				Template:IPA link
Trill/Tap			Template:IPA link ~ Template:IPA link

Letter	IPA	Pronunciation guide
p	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as the p in English spill (not as the p in pill, which is aspirated) voiced after m
b	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as in English, always geminated when preceded by another vowel
t	Template:IPAslink	dental version of the English t as in stop (not as the t in top, which is aspirated) voiced after n
d	Template:IPAslink	dental version of the English d
c	Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink Template:IPAslink Template:IPAblink	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	,	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	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as in English
v	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as in English
s	Template:IPAslink Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink	pronounced the same as in English sound unless it comes before a consonant other than pronounced as ds in lads after n pronounced as English z before d or after n
	Template:IPAblink	pronounced sh when followed by a voiceless consonant (except ) zh when followed by a voiced consonant (except )
z	Template:IPAslink	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	Template:IPAslink	referred to as a semi-consonant, is pronounced like English y as in yet
l	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as in English
m	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as in English
n	Template:IPAslink	pronounced the same as in English; if followed by a consonant, it variously changes its point of articulation
r	Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAblink	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		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		pronounced like the cks in backs 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	Template:IPAslink	palatal version of the ni in the English onion
gl(i)	Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAblink	palatal version of the lli in the English million, most commonly realized like a strong version of y in the English yes.
sc	Template:IPAslink	when followed by e or i it is pronounced as the sh in the English ship

Grammar

File:Carnevale Scampia 01.jpg

Neapolitan text at the Scampìa Carnival; note the definite article .

Definite articles

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

Before a word beginning with a consonant:

	Singular	Plural
Masculine
Feminine		C:
Neuter	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, or are used for both masculine and feminine, singular and plural. Although both forms can be found, the 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 , 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 we know it refers to the Neapolitan language, whereas would refer to a Neapolitan man.

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

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

	Singular	Plural
Masculine
Feminine

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

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
Before words beginning with a vowel

Verbal conjugation

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 Template:Wikt-lang (Eng. "to have", It. ), which contrasts with Italian, in which the intransitive and reflexive verbs take for their auxiliary. For example, we have:

Neapolitan

Italian

Doubled initial consonants

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, , or any feminine plural adjective, have their initial consonant doubled.
• All neuter singular nouns, when preceded by the neuter singular definite article, , 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. , "You are a boy", where is a "trigger" word causing doubling of the initial consonant in , but in the phrase "Where are you from, boy?", no doubling occurs. Neither does doubling occur when the initial consonant is followed by another consonant (other than or ), e.g. "the Italian language", but "the Spanish language", where 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, ("I am crazy") may also be spelled (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

File:Viola Carofalo.jpg

Viola Carofalo wearing a T-shirt with Neapolitan ("I am crazy.")

• The conjunctions and but not (e.g. ; ; but )
• The prepositions , , (e.g. ; ; )
• The negation , short for (e.g. )
• The indefinites , (e.g. ; )
• Interrogative and relative but not (e.g. )
• (e.g. )
• From the verb "", ; ; but not (e.g. ; ; ; but )
• (e.g. )
• The number (e.g. )
• The neuter definite article (e.g. , but )
• The neuter pronoun (e.g. )
• Demonstrative adjectives and which refer to neuter nouns in indefinite quantities (e.g. ; ) but not in definite quantities (e.g. ; )
• The feminine plural definite article (e.g. ; )
• The plural feminine pronoun , e.g.,
• The plural masculine pronoun preceding a verb, but not when is an article; in , the first is an article, so it does not trigger doubling; the second does trigger doubling because it is a masculine plural pronoun.
• The locative (e.g. )
• From the verb : (e.g. )
• From the verb : ; (e.g. )
• Special case

See also

• Languages of Italy
• Oscan language
• Sicilian language

Additional sources

• 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:

External links

• Neapolitan recognized by UNESCO Template:In lang
• Websters Online Dictionary Neapolitan–English
• 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 Lexicostatistical Database
• Template:Usurped
• Neapolitan language and culture Template:In lang
• Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian by Francesco Cangemi. Berlin: Language Science Press. pp. 187 Free download.
• Consegnato il primo Certificato Europeo di Lingua Napoletana Template:In lang
• Salvatore Argenziano. Il Dialetto Napoletano- Appunti di Grafia e Grammatica Template:In lang