Talk:Neapolitan language

Refinement of stats needed

The number of speakers cited in the article is for the Napoletano-Calabrese group as a whole. What is the number of speakers for straight up Neapolitan? There are around 1,100,000 inhabitants of the city proper with another million in the immediately girding communities (2001 census). In terms of number of speakers, at what point does the dialectical continuum flow so far out as to lose its Neapolitan-ness as such? E. abu Filumena

NEAPOLITAN LANGUAGE IS ONLY SPOKEN IN CAMPANIA REGION.

The Italic languages are these: -GALLO-ITALIAN: Venetian, Romagnolo, Emilian, Lombard, Piedmontese, Ligurian, Friulian -MEDIAN-ITALIAN: course, standard italian, Roman dialect, Umbrian, Tuscan -SOUTH-ITALIAN: Neapolitan, Apulian, Lucanian and Abruzzese -EXTREME SOUTH ITALIAN: sicilian, Calabrian, Salentine -SARDIANIAN In Italy these are the linguistic groups, the Neapolitan is not spoken in Puglia, Abruzzo and Basilicata, only in the Campania region. I'm Apulian and I do not speak Neapolitan, I speak Apulian. They are two distinct languages but belonging to the same family.

Why "English pronunciation guidelines"? for napoletano?

Why is this text in this article: 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.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:13, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Deleted. Erinius (talk) 22:18, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Review of the name "Neopolitian"

There has been much discussion on the names of the language(s) of Southern Italy. This stems partly from the confusion between regional variants of Standard Italian spoken in the area that has been "Southernized" to appear more like an older, more indigenous language, and the regional and local pride that inhabitants of the Mezzogiorno contain that prescribes whatever vernacular they speak a unique name (eg the inhabitants of Torre Del Greco calling their vernacular "Torrese".) From a linguistic perspective, the name "Neopolitian" for the language spoken mostly south of Rome is a reference to the historical Kingdom of Naples that contained the entirety of continental Southern Italy. However, this can cause offense to speakers of this language outside of Campania and even those Campanians who live outside of Naples itself because they are not, in the geographic or cultural sense, true "Neopolitians." I recommend that the current name "Neopolitian" be kept for this article since it is used by certain linguistic groupings, albeit with the note that the language can also be known as "Intermediate Southern Italian" and having all references to the aforementioned name re-direct to this article. JF1128 (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

True that the label napoletano for the languages spoken mostly south of Rome is a reference to the historical Kingdom of Naples that contained the entirety of continental Southern Italy. From a linguistic perspective, however, the label can be described somewhat euphemistically as inaccurate, given that for Italians the designation napoletano signifies 'characteristic of Naples', 'originating in Naples', etc. That's also the normal usage in linguistics: napoletano/Neapolitan refers to the language of Naples (and, at most, immediate surroundings). A brief paragraph on the obsolescent socio-political usage of the label suffices in this article. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 03:28, 5 May 2026 (UTC)