Neapolitan language

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Neapolitan language" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs attention from an expert in Italy or languages. The specific problem is: Verification and expansion are needed, especially using sources that may not be well-known to non-experts. WikiProject Italy or WikiProject Languages may be able to help recruit an expert. (September 2019) It has been suggested that this article be split into articles titled Neapolitan language, Southern Italian dialects and Neapolitan dialect. (Discuss) (December 2020) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Italian. (October 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Italian article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Italian Wikipedia article at [[:it:Lingua napoletana]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|it|Lingua napoletana}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Neapolitan
napulitano
Native to	Italy
Region	Campania
Ethnicity	Mezzogiorno Italians
Native speakers	5.7 million (2002)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latinic Romance Italo-Western Italo-Dalmatian Italo-Romance Intermediate Southern Italian Neapolitan
Dialects	Arianese Barese Benevento Cilentan Irpinian Molisan Tarantino Southern Latian Vastese Castelmezzano Cosentian
Language codes
ISO 639-2	nap
ISO 639-3	nap
Glottolog	neap1235  Continental Southern Italian sout3126  South Lucanian = (Vd) Lausberg
Southern Italo-Romance languages
Neapolitan as part of the European Romance languages[image reference needed]

Neapolitan (autonym: ('o n)napulitano [(o n)napuliˈtɑːnə]; Italian: napoletano) 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.^[2]

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.^[3][4]