Napoletano-Calabrese

Napoletano-Calabrese (Neapolitan-Calabrian) is a language spoken in the Southern Italian regions of Campania and Calabria. It is largely considered a Western Romance language with some postulating a Southern Romance classification. It has limited intelligibility with Standard Italian. Neapolitan and Calabrian are very different from one another as well and have many dialects unto themselves. The language still exhibits the neutral gender from Latin and has many borrowings from both Spanish and Arabic. It is believed to have retained some pre-Latin Oscan grammatical structures. There is a large literature. As of 1976 there were 7,047,399 native speakers (some recent estimates range as high as 7,800,000).

Neapolitan-Calabrian 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-Calabrian curriculum offered at the Università Umberto II in Naples. This attempt was defeated with the comment that Neapolitan-Calabrian 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.

Searchable online Neapolitan-Calabrese to Italian dictionary- [1]

Online weekly in Napoletano-Calabrese- [1]