Neapolitan (autonym: napulitano; Italian: napoletano) is a Romance language spoken in the city and region of Naples, Campania (Neapolitan: Nàpule, Italian: Napoli); close dialects are spoken throughout most of southern Italy, including the Gaeta and Sora districts of southern Lazio, parts of Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, northern Calabria, and northern and central Apulia. As of 1976, there were 7,047,399 native speakers of this group of dialects (some recent estimates range as high as 7,800,000). For geographical, historical, and political reasons, "Neapolitan" is the name given to the Italiano meridionale-interno group of dialects in southern Italy, historically united around Naples during the reigns of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies. The many varieties of this language group include Neapolitan proper (spoken in the center city of Naples), Irpino, Cilentano, Laziale Meridionale, , Molisano, Dauno-Appenninico, Garganico, Apulo-Barese, Lucano Nord-Occidentale, Lucano Nord-Orientale, Lucano Centrale, Area Arcaica Lucano-Calabrese, and Calabrese Settentrionale. The language as a whole has often fallen victim of its status as a "language without prestige". Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language family. ... The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Italo-Western is the largest sub-group of Romance languages. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages, are a subfamily of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken by the common people evolving in different areas after the break-up of the Roman Empire. ... The Bay of Naples Naples (Italian: , Neapolitan: Nàpule, from Greek Νεάπολη < Νέα Πόλις Néa Pólis New City) is the largest city in southern Italy and capital of the Campania region and the Province of Naples. ... Campania is a region of Southern Italy, bordering on Lazio to the north-west, Molise to the north, Puglia to the north-east, Basilicata to the east, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. ... Lazio (Latium in Latin) is a regione of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Marche, Molise, Campania and the Tyrrhenian Sea. ... Abruzzo is a region of Southern Italy bordering Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east and the Adriatic Sea to the east. ... Molise is a region of central Italy, the second smallest of the regions. ... Basilicata is a region in the south of Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Puglia to the east, Calabria to the south, it has one short coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea and another of the Gulf of Taranto in the Ionian Sea to the south-east. ... Calabria (Latin: Bruttium or Brutium), is a region in southern Italy which occupies the toe of the Italian peninsula south of Naples. ... This article is about the Italian region. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ... Neapolitan (Nnapulitano in Neapolitan and Napoletano in Italian) is a Romance language spoken in the city and region of Naples, Campania (Neapolitan: Napule, Italian: Napoli), and in all or parts of the surrounding regions of Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Lazio, Marche, Molise, and Puglia in southern Italy. ... The Kingdom of Naples was born out of the division of the Kingdom of Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. ... The Two Sicilies The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Italian: il Regno delle Due Sicilie) was the new name that the Bourbon King Ferdinand IV of Naples bestowed upon his domain (including Southern Italy and the island of Sicily) after the end of the Napoleonic Era and the full restoration...

It is generally considered a western Romance language, although some postulate a southern Romance classification. There are some differences among the various dialects, but they are all mutually intelligible with Naples as the locus. Italian and Neapolitan are not wholly mutually comprehensible though with notable grammatical differences such as nouns in the neuter form and unique plural formation. Its evolution has been similar to that of Italian and other Romance languages from their roots in Vulgar Latin. It has also developed with a pre-Latin Oscan influence, which is noticeable in the pronunciation of the d sound as an r sound (rhotacism), but only when "d" is at the beginning of a word, or between two vowels (eg.- "doje" or "duje" (two, respectively feminine and masculine form), pronounced, and often spelled, as "roje"/"ruje", vedé (to see), pronounced as "veré", and often spelled so, same for cadé/caré (to fall), and Madonna/Maronna). Some think that the rhotacism is a more recent phenomenon, though. Other Oscan influence (more likely than the previous one) is considered the pronunciation of the group of consonants "nd" (of Latin) as "nn" (this generally is reflected in spelling more consistently) (eg.- "munno" (world, compare to Italian "mondo"), "quanno" (when, compare to Italian "quando"), etc.), and the pronunciation of the group of consonants "mb" (of Latin) as "mm" (eg.- tammuro (drum), cfr. Italian tamburo), also consistently reflected in spelling. Other effects of the Oscan substratum are postulated too. In addition, the language was also affected by the Greek language. Naples was largely Greek-speaking prior to the Eighth Century, and the Greek language remained dominant in much of Southern Italy for many further centuries before finally being fully supplanted by Italian dialects (see: Griko language for remnant traces of Greek on the Italian peninsula). There have never been any successful attempts to standardize the language (eg.- consulting three different dictionaries, one finds three different spellings for the word for tree, arbero, arvero and àvaro). Vulgar Latin, as in this political engraving at Pompeii, was the language of the ordinary people of the Roman Empire, distinct from the Classical Latin of literature. ... Oscan, the language of the Osci, is in the Sabellic branch of the Italic language family, which is a branch of Indo-European and includes Umbrian, Latin and Faliscan. ... Rhotacism may refer to several phenomena related to the usage of the consonant r (whether as an alveolar tap, alveolar trill, or the rarer uvular trill). ... Oscan, the language of the Osci, is in the Sabellic branch of the Italic language family, which is a branch of Indo-European and includes Umbrian, Latin and Faliscan. ... Greek (, IPA: — Hellenic) has a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest of any single language within the Indo-European family. ... Griko, sometimes spelled Grico, is a Modern Greek dialect which is spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region in southern Italy and Sicily, and it is otherwise known as the Grecanic language. ...

Neapolitan has enjoyed a rich literary, musical and theatrical history (notably Giambattista Basile, Eduardo de Filippo, Salvatore di Giacomo and Totò). Giambattista Basile (1566 or 1575–February 23, 1632) was an Italian poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector. ... Eduardo De Filippo was an actor, playwright, screenwriter, author and poet born May 24, 1900 in Naples, Italy and passed away on October 31, 1984 in Rome. ... Salvatore di Giacomo 1860-1934. ... Antonio De Curtis Totò was the stage name of Antonio de Curtis (born Antonio Clemente, February 15, 1898, Naples - April 15, 1967, Rome), a Neapolitan actor, writer, and songwriter. ...

The language has no legal status within Italy and thus may not be taught in state run schools. Efforts are being made to change this, including a bid in 2003 to have a Neapolitan curriculum offered at the Università Federico II in Naples. This attempt was defeated with the comment that Neapolitan was a "low-class" language. There are also ongoing legislative attempts at the national level to have it recognized as an official minority language of Italy. It is however an officially recognized ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee language with the language code of NAP. 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The University of Naples Federico II (Italian: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a university located in Naples, Italy. ... A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a country. ... The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from national standards bodies. ...

For comparison, The Lord's Prayer is here reproduced in the Neapolitan spoken in Naples and northern Calabria in contrast with the Sicilian variety of southern Calabrese, Italian and Latin. The Lords Prayer (sometimes known by its first two Latin words as the Pater Noster, in Greek as the , or the English equivalent Our Father) is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity. ... Sicilian (, Italian: ) is the Romance language spoken in Sicily and southern Italy. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

See also

• Neapolitan song

Naples has played an important and vibrant role over the centuries not just in the music of Italy, but in the general history of western European musical traditions. ...

External links

Neapolitan language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Neapolitan

• Ethnologue World linguistic classification
• Library of Congress iso639 language code
• Neapolitan language introduction
• Interactive Map of languages in Italy
• Accademia Napulitana
• Neapolitan on-line radio station
• Online weekly in Neapolitan
• Neapolitan glossary on Wiktionary
• Italian-Neapolitan searchable online dictionary
• Grammar primer and extensive vocabulary for the Neapolitan dialect of Torre del Greco
• French-Neapolitan downloadable and searchable online dictionary
• Neapolitan Wikiprimer
• Neapolitan language and culture (in Italian)