drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4916 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 1 of 20 21 November 2011 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
Hello! everyone, Recently I was thinking that it would be cool to be able to fluently understand an Italian dialect, not
necessarily be able to speak one. So, I chose Neapolitan XD my family isn't from Naples, they're from Tuscany, but
despite what the northerners say, I think the dialects are very interesting. So, this brings me to my original
question...
Where can I learn neapolitan? Or at least learn to understand it. I know a few people who can speak it, but they're
like my parents friends and it would be weird to constantly ask them language related questions.
If any of you have any resources that would be awesome! or better yet if any of you have any videos or movies in
which Neapolitan is spoken that would be awesome
thanks!
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xander.XVII Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5058 days ago 189 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC1 Studies: French
| Message 2 of 20 21 November 2011 at 9:14pm | IP Logged |
Firstly you really need to be fluent or, at least, good at Italian, otherwise it will be very hard to understand, because Napolitan as
many dialects is mainly based on Italian.
Secondly, as far as I'm concerned, it would be better for you to stay over there in order to hear it in colloquial and daily
speaking, moreover you ought to consider that terms, notably in dialects, often change.
Napolitan is quite famous as dialect, so I do not think it will be impossible to find some website with grammar news (even
Wikipedia perhaps),however I guess it will be far harder to find a book about Napolitan grammar and vocabulary.
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RatoDePorão Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4855 days ago 15 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French, Italian Studies: German
| Message 3 of 20 22 November 2011 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
Could anybody, please, correct me? I'd always thought Neapolitan (and the other Italian languages (dialects?)) was a language and not a dialect of Italian
I'd love to find stuff to do with those languages, I've recently found some articles on Wikipedia and could follow along quite well :D It's so funny when you recognize the similaritires between languages (Italian and those languages of Italy...German and Bavarian)
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newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6383 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 20 22 November 2011 at 5:39am | IP Logged |
Pino Daniele sings nice songs in napolitano. You can also find his lyrics on line. They are reasonably understandable if you know some Italian, though I don't know if he sings in the "pure" dialect or not.
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5338 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 5 of 20 22 November 2011 at 7:59am | IP Logged |
I have a dictionary "Napolitano-Italiano", but I have never seen any book to actually learn the language. I think you need to got there to learn it. Since I have met people who only spoke "napolitano" and did not speak Italian, I would say they are far enough away to call them different languages, but I suppose Italian authorities would use the word dialects. Does anyone know what independent linguists say?
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 6 of 20 22 November 2011 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Does anyone know what independent linguists say? |
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Yes. They say "There's no linguistic basis to the different terms 'dialect' and 'language'. From a linguistic standpoint it's the same thing." So whether they are "dialects", "languages" or both, that's a question of politics, or convenience, but not linguistics.
There's a great term, "topolect", invented to bypass this entire quagmire and enable people to actually talk about these sprachbunds without tripping over terminology. "Topolect" simply means "The way people speak in a specific place", without regards to politics or intelligibility or what have you. It was invented for the Chinese topolects, but I don't see any reason not to use it with Italian as well.
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5338 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 7 of 20 22 November 2011 at 10:33am | IP Logged |
I know the traditional quip about "a language being a dialect with an army" but are there really no objective criteria at all? Percentage of differences in vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar, for instance? No wonder people here on this forum speak about the Romance languages being dialects of eachother.
Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 22 November 2011 at 2:52pm
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OCCASVS Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6647 days ago 134 posts - 140 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, English, French, Polish
| Message 8 of 20 22 November 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
xander.XVII wrote:
Napolitan as
many dialects is mainly based on Italian. |
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It isn't. Neapolitan is just a dialect in the Southern Italian continuum.
RatoDePorão wrote:
Could anybody, please, correct me? I'd always thought Neapolitan (and the other Italian languages (dialects?)) was a language and not a dialect of Italian |
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Exactly, if by Neapolitan you mean the Southern Italian continuum ;) But saying that it's a dialect of Italian means corrupting our history and (linguistical) identity :)
newyorkeric wrote:
Pino Daniele sings nice songs in napolitano. You can also find his lyrics on line. They are reasonably understandable if you know some Italian, though I don't know if he sings in the "pure" dialect or not.
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He sings in a corrupted mix of Neapolitan and Italian.
Anyway, I'm not aware of resources for getting some passive knowledge of this language/dialect. You may try to find your way through grammars and dictionaries.
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