User:Jamala

Neapolitan is a language spoken in South Italy, it's also called South Italian Language, and it can be considered a dishomogeneous cluster of several dialects without a standard.

Map of Neapolitan Language (without alloglot communities)

The area where the language with its dialects are spoken has not a proper name, for this reason it has been called by the name of the most recent state existed in the area, the Kingdom of Naples (1282-1816), that covered approximately the same area of the language (with some important exceptions).

So, Neapolitan Language is NOT the language of the city of Naples, but it's the language of South Italy (for this reason is also called South Italian Language). For this reason, Naples dialect is only one of the several dialects of this language.

Here in Wiktionary there are some lemmas of the Neapolitan Language, but they're wrong, infact they are only about the dialect of Naples.

The dialect of Naples is NOT the standardized dialect of this language, is simply one of the several dialects, with its own features and characteristics.

To do list:

• To add IPA for Neapolitan in general /phonemic/ and for its main dialects (at least Naples, Central Apulia, Eastern Abruzzo) [phonetic]
• To correct the spelling of some words
• To delete Tarantino lemmas from wiktionary and include them as variation of Neapolitan lemmas, as for other varieties named before

Example

Since there is not a standard, there can't be a truly valid phonemic transcription valid for all regional varieties.

But a comparative approach is still possible.

Let's take the word "fuoco", a lemma taken from Classical Neapolitan. "fuoco" in this case has a metaphonetic diphtong [wo]. Regarding the final vowel, it's a [o]/[u]/[ə]. Old Neapolitan (of Naples) had [o]/[u], now it's [ə]/[ɐ] but [u] it's still retained in some contexts. But in many other regional varieties [o]/[u] it's still used, as in Inner Campania, Avellino, Cilento, Northern Calabria.

Also the diphtong [wo] can be realized in a plethora of different ways. In Campania it's mostly [uə], in Bari/Taranto [we], in Tavoliere and Ionic Northern Calabria [wo]>[uə]<[u:].

So, if written <-o> in the ending of the word can be realized as [o]/[u]/[ə]/[ɐ] depending on the context of the sentence, the regional varieties or the historical period, I think we could use /o/ as a good phonemic trascription for it.

Same for the diphtong <uo>, it's /wo/ and then could be a plethora of phonetic regional realiztion.

• fuoco (classical Naples ortography for the lemma as found in literature or vocabularies)
  • /fwoko/ (phonemic transcription of it)
    • [fuəkɐ] (modern Naples)
    • [fwekə] (Bari, Taranto)
    • [fu:kə] (Tavoliere, Northern Calabria)

This approach can be useful for all those words that, even as classical Neapolitan lemmas, are broadly valid for a large amount of other regional varieties.

But still, there are two problems:

• regional varieties that have different lemmas or different regional phonemic varieties of the lemma (e.g. dialects without metaphony, dialects with non-diphtongized metaphony, archaic vocalisms in Area Lausberg)
• sometimes the classical neapolitan lemma it's not able to broadly cover the other varieties (I think of sciummo.

Taking again "fuoco"

the situation is something like that (with examples of phonetic variations for each phonemic reconstructed lemma)

• */'fɔ:ko/ (reconstructed phonemic for non-metaphonized varieties)
  • ['fɔ:ko] (Maratea)
  • ['fɔ:kə] (Pescara, Potenza)
  • ['fo:kə] (Chieti) (due to isochrony)
  • ['faukə] (Peschici)
• */'fo:ko/ (reconstructed phonemic for metaphonized varieties without diphtong)
  • ['fo:ku] (Morcone)
  • ['fo:kə] (Avezzano, South Lazio, Inner Campania, Gargano)
• */'fwoko/ (reconstructed phonemic of metaphonized and diphtongized varieties)
  • ['fwoko] (Old Naples, Avellino)
  • ['fwoku] (Inner Campania)
  • ['fwokə] (Ascoli Piceno, broadly Molise, broadly Campania)
  • ['fwekə] (Bari, Taranto)
  • ['fuəkɐ] (modern Naples)
  • ['fu:kə] (Tavoliere, Ionic Northern Calabria)
  • ['fu:ku] (Force, Tirrenic Northen Calabria)