Southern Italian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Southern Italian
Italiano Meridionale
Spoken in  Italy
Region Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Marche, Molise.
Total speakers approx. 11 million
Language family Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-1 it
ISO 639-2 ita
ISO 639-3 itaItalian
Dialects[1][2][3][4]

Southern Italian (Dialetti italiani meridionali) is a group of Italo-Western Romance dialects spoken in Southern Lazio, Southern Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Basilicata, Apulia, and Northern Calabria. Part of a language continuum, they are all mutually intelligible and are often referred to as Neapolitan languages (based on Naples' historic role as capital of the region). According to Ethnologue, the dialects are grouped as Napoletano-Calabrese and are given the status of language.[5] Some consider the dialects simply as Italian dialects affected by a samnite substratum.

The following are considered Southern Italian dialects[6]:

Northern border of Southern Italian in magenta.[7]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Languages