Neapolitan (Nnapulitano in Neapolitan and Napoletano in Italian ) is a Romance language spoken in the city of Naples (Neapolitan: Napule, Italian: Napoli), Italy and the surrounding areas of the Campania region. As of 1976, there were 7,047,399 native speakers (some recent estimates range as high as 7,800,000). There are many dialects of Neapolitan, and the language as a whole has often fallen victim of its status as a "language without prestige".

It is generally considered a Western Romance language, although some postulate a Southern Romance classification. There are notable grammatical differences from standard Italian in Neapolitan such as neutral nouns, no distinct plural articles, and unique plural formation. Its evolution has been similar to that of Italian and other Romance languages from 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) (eg.- vere (to see), care (to fall), Maronna (Madonna)). Neapolitan has many loanwords from Arabic and Spanish. 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).

Neapolitan has enjoyed a rich literary, musical and theatrical history (notably Giambattista Basile, Eduardo de Filippo, and Totò).

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.

Neapolitan is often conflated with Calabrian, the language of the region of Calabria, which is reported to be markedly different and has had an independent development and literary history.

For comparison, The Lord's Prayer is here reproduced in Neapolitan, Northern and Southern Calabrian and Italian.

External links

• Neapolitan glossary on Wiktionary
• Italian-Neapolitan searchable online dictionary
• French-Neapolitan downloadable and searchable online dictionary
• Library of Congress iso639 language code web page
• Neapolitan language introduction
• Neapolitan language and culture (in Italian)
• Accademia Napulitana
• Online weekly in Neapolitan
• Online clearinghouse for Neapolitan language materials and information (forming, wiki-based)