Neapolitan language

Neapolitan 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.
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

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

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 at the beginning of a word or between two vowels: e.g. doje or duje, meaning "two", is pronounced, and often spelled, as roje/''ruje; vedé as veré, and often spelled so; also cadé/caré and Madonna/Maronna. Another purported Oscan influence is the historical assimilation of the consonant cluster as, pronounced , along with the development of as ~, 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, Germanic languages and Greek. The language had never been standardised, and the word for tree has three different spellings:, and.
Neapolitan has enjoyed a rich literary, musical and theatrical history. 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 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	Neapolitan	Neapolitan	IPA
Our Father who art in heaven,	Padre Nostro, che sei nei cieli,	Pate nuoste ca staje 'n cielo,	Patë nuóstë ca stajë 'n ciélö,
hallowed be thy name	Sia santificato il tuo nome.	santificammo 'o nomme tuojo.	santificàmmö 'o nómmë tuójö.
Thy kingdom come,	Venga il tuo regno,	Faje veni' 'o regno tuojo,	Fajë vënì' 'o règnö tuójö,
Thy will be done,	Sia fatta la tua volontá,	sempe c'a vuluntà toja,	sèmpë c'a vuluntà tòjä,
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.
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,
and forgive us our trespasses	E rimetti a noi i nostri debiti	e liévace 'e riébbete	e liéväcë 'e riébbëtë
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.
and lead us not into temptation,	E non ci indurre in tentazione,	Nun ce fa' spanteca',	Nun cë fa' spantëcà',
but deliver us from evil.	Ma liberaci dal male.	e liévace 'o male 'a tuorno.	e liéväcë 'o malë 'a tuórnö.
Amen.	Amen.	Ammèn.	Ammèn.

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.
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. However, it is also possible to speak standard Italian with a "Neapolitan accent"; that is, by pronouncing un-stressed vowels as schwa or by pronouncing the letter s as instead of when the letter representing is in initial position followed by a consonant, but not when it is followed by a dental occlusive or 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, and , 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 e and o 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 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.

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