Neapolitan: An Introductory Course. by Carmine Colacino ©1999 - All rights reserved

The noun and definite article.

Neapolitan nouns are masculine: ll’ommo (the man), or feminine: ‘a femmena (the woman), or neuter -- this is more limited and it is recognizable in the singular by the doubling of the first consonant in a word, e.g., ‘o ssale (the salt).

The definite article takes the following forms:

	masculine	feminine
singular	’o/ll’	’a/ll’
plural	’e/ll’	’e/ll’

Masculine and feminine plural (’e), in front of nouns beginning with a consonant, are often distinguishable because the feminine causes the doubling of that consonant, e.g., 'e nnonne (the grandmothers, feminine plural), while the masculine doesn't, e.g., ’e nonne (the grandfathers, masculine plural). In any case other characteristics may indicate if a noun is feminine or masculine, singular or plural. E.g., singular masculine ’o guaglione (the boy); ’a guagliona (the girl); ’e guagliune (the boys); ’e gguaglione (the girls).

(The neuter nouns are treated in the plural like the masculine ones, and therefore they don't keep the double consonant at the beginning).

The form with the apostroph is used before nouns beginning with a vowel.

Older forms, which is possible to find in old texts, and songs, are: lo (or sometimes even ’u, instead of ’o), la (instead of ’a), li (instead of ’e); in other varieties of Napolitan (e.g., Lucanian) it is possible to find lu or ’u instead of ’o, la instead of ’a, li or ’i instead of ’e, etc. Sometimes the forms used in front of a vowel can be found written with a single l (l‘).

The indefinite article.

This has the following forms:

	masculine	feminine
singular	nu /n‘	na/n‘

The form with the apostroph is used before nouns beginning with a vowel.

Sometimes, because of the influence of Italian it is possible to find the forms: ’nu e ’na instead because of the Italian indefinite articles uno and una. But there is no need to refer to the Neapolitan forms as modifications of the Italian ones.

Plurals.

Plurals are not indicated, usually, by a modification of the last letter in a word, as it is the case in Italian, or adding an s as in Spanish, French, Catalan, or English. As we have seen, the last vowel is generally pronunced indistinctly, then other ways are used to mark the plural. One way to determine if a word is singular or plural is to look at the article, or the word may have various modifications, like the doubling of the first consonant (feminine plural), seen above, or a change in a non-final consonant, e.g., ’o nepote/’e nepute (the nephew/the nephews), ’o signore/’e signure (the mister/the misters), ’o pesce/’e pisce (the fish/the fishes), etc. Another possibility is a change in the way the consonant in the final syllable is pronunced, e.g., ll‘amico/ll‘amice (the friend/the friends), ’o fungo/’e funge (the mushroom/the mushrooms), etc. There are other ways to mark the plural, even though less common, e.g., ’o rre/’e re (the king/the kings), ’a città/’e ccittà (the town/the towns), etc.

The verb to be.

Essere
(io) songo/so’	[('j) 'sog]	I am
(tu) sî	[tu 'si:]	you are (singular)
(isso/essa) è	[('iss/'ssa ']	he/she is
(nuje) simmo	[('nuj) simm]	we are
(vuje) site	[('vuj) 'si:t]	you are
(isse/esse) songo/so’	[('iss/'ss) sog]	they are

The subject pronoun in Neapolitan is frequently omitted, even when no other subject of the verb is expressed. This is possible because the part of the verb itself often conveys which person is indicated. Songo (or its shortened form so‘ ['so]) means I am (or they are), simmo means we are, and so on. When the pronoun is used it is to give emphasis or to avoid ambiguity.

Interrogation.

A question is expressed simply by intonation (a rising intonation)

e.g., site napulitane You are Neapolitans
site napulitane? Are you Neapolitans?

Punctuation.

Similar to English, with the following exceptions:

Sometimes a dash is used to indicate and mark off dialogue (but it is not used exactly like inverted commas in English, because it is usually used only at the beginning of dialogue).

Inverted commas, written ‘ ’ , “ ” or « », are used, however, for quotations and for monologues.

Capital letters are used less frequently in Neapolitan than in English. They are used for proper names of persons and places, but not for the related adjectives or nouns:

Napule Naples
napulitano Neapolitan, ’o napulitano Neapolitan [language] or Neapolitan [person]

Capitals are not used either, in Neapolitan, for the pronoun io (I), for the names of days or months, nor for titles, unless abbreviated:

’o primmo viernarí d‘aústo = the first Friday in August
’a signora Esposito = Mrs. Esposito
Sig. Esposito = Mr. Esposito