Neapolitan Alphabet & Letters

Neapolitan (napulitano, in Italian napoletano) is the Romance language of Naples and Campania, written in the Latin alphabet. It has no official spelling standard; writers follow a literary tradition that runs from Giambattista Basile in the 1600s through the poet Salvatore Di Giacomo to the playwright Eduardo De Filippo, and the same word can be spelled a little differently from one book or song sheet to the next.

The letters are the 21 of Italian, A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T U V Z, plus J j, which traditional Neapolitan spelling keeps for the y sound at the start of a word or between vowels: jammo (let’s go), as in the chorus of Funiculì, funiculà. K, W, X and Y turn up only in foreign names and words, as in Italian, so they are left out of the grid here.

What makes a text look Neapolitan at a glance is not a special letter but the marks: grave and acute accents on stressed vowels (cchiù, accussì, pecché, Totò) and apostrophes at the start of words (’o sole, ’a pizza, ’e ccase). This page collects all of them in capitals and small letters, ready to copy.

Neapolitan accents and sounds: à è é ì ò ó ù

As in Italian, an accent marks stress, mostly on a final syllable: accussì (like this, so), cchiù (more), pecché (why, because), caffè. A, i and u take the grave accent (à ì ù); e and o can take either, and in careful writing the grave marks the open vowel (è ò, as in è, is) and the acute the closed one (é ó, as in pecché). Some writers simply use the grave everywhere. Capitals keep their accents: È, not E’.

Accents also mark the clipped forms people use to call someone: guaglione (boy, young man) becomes guagliò! when you shout to him, and nicknames end the same way, like Totò, the stage name of the great Neapolitan comic actor Antonio de Curtis.

Spelling hides one big feature of the pronunciation: unstressed vowels, especially at the end of a word, fade to a neutral sound like the a in English about, yet they are still written as full vowels. Napule (Naples) sounds roughly like NAH-poo-luh, and mulignane (eggplants) ends in the same murmur. That is why Italian-American food words such as mozzarell and gabagool seem to drop their last vowel.

Double consonants are written where they are heard, even at the start of a word: cchiù (more), and after the plural feminine article ’e, which doubles the next consonant: ’a casa (the house) but ’e ccase (the houses).

The Neapolitan apostrophe: ’o, ’a, ’e and ’ncoppa

Neapolitan drops the first sound of many short words and writes an apostrophe where it fell: the articles ’o (the, masculine, from older lo), ’a (the, feminine), ’e (the, plural, and also of), ’nu and ’na (a, an) in some spellings, and words such as ’ncoppa (up, on top). The apostrophe matters: a means to, ’a means the; e means and, ’e means the or of, as in na tazzulella ’e cafè (a little cup of coffee).

The correct mark is the apostrophe ’ (the same character as the right single quotation mark), or a plain straight ' on keyboards that have nothing else. The trap is the opening quote ‘: word processors with smart quotes see an apostrophe at the start of a word and turn ’o into ‘o, which is wrong. Copy ’ from this page, or type it directly (see below).

For quotations Neapolitan follows Italian, with angle quotes « » in print and curly quotes “ ” for quotes inside quotes or in everyday writing.

How to type Neapolitan letters and the apostrophe

Italian keyboard: à è ì ò ù have their own keys and Shift + è gives é; there is no key for ó or for the accented capitals, which is why so many people write E’ instead of È. Windows Alt codes (hold Alt, type on the number pad): à 0224, è 0232, é 0233, ì 0236, ò 0242, ó 0243, ù 0249, À 0192, È 0200, É 0201, Ì 0204, Ò 0210, Ó 0211, Ù 0217, ’ 0146, « 0171, » 0187, € 0128.

United States-International layout: type ` then a vowel for à è ì ò ù and ' then a vowel for é ó. The catch for Neapolitan is that the same ' key followed by o or a gives ó and á, so ’o comes out as ó: type ', then Space, then the letter. Mac: Option + ` then a vowel for the grave, Option + E then a vowel for the acute, or hold a letter and pick from the pop-up; Option + Shift + ] types the curly apostrophe ’. Phones: long-press a vowel for its accents, and long-press the ' key for ’.

In HTML write à, è, é, ì, ò, ó, ù, and ’ for the apostrophe. Or copy any letter from the grid on this page.

Where Neapolitan is spoken, and Neapolitan vs Italian

Neapolitan is spoken in Naples and across Campania, and closely related southern dialects stretch through southern Lazio, Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, much of Apulia and northern Calabria; linguists often group them all as Neapolitan or Southern Italian. CLDR estimates around 590,000 speakers, all counted in Italy 🇮🇹; other estimates that count the whole southern group run into the millions. Emigrants carried it to the United States, Argentina and beyond, which is where many Italian-American words come from. Campania pays in euros: 20 €, or 20,00 € in Italian style.

Is Neapolitan a language or a dialect? In Italy it is usually called a dialetto, because Italian is the official language, but it did not grow out of Italian: both developed from Latin side by side, and Neapolitan has its own grammar, sounds and centuries of literature. Speakers of standard Italian often struggle with fast Neapolitan, which is why the television adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, largely in Neapolitan, was shown in Italy with Italian subtitles.

Compare it with our Italian Accents & Letters, its southern neighbour Sicilian, and the northern Ligurian Alphabet & Letters and Lombard Alphabet & Letters; for flags, food and landmarks of the whole country see Italy Emoji & Symbols.

Naples also has emoji of its own: 🍕 for the pizza, whose art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo UNESCO added to its intangible heritage list in 2017, ☕ for the espresso at the bar, 🍋 for the lemons of Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast, 🌋 for Vesuvius, 🌶️ as the usual stand-in for the red lucky horn, the curniciello, 🎭 for Pulcinella, ☀️ 🎶 for ’O sole mio, and 💙 ⚽ 🫏 for SSC Napoli, the azzurri, whose mascot is a donkey, ’o ciuccio.