Indo-European · ISO 639-3 nap
Neapolitan Language napulitano
Neapolitan is an Indo-European language spoken by about 7.5 million people in 1 country. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Neapolitan is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Neapolitan
About the Neapolitan language
Neapolitan (napulitano) is spoken by about 7.5 million people, which makes it the 147th most spoken language in the world — just behind Standard Moroccan Tamazight (7.8 million) and ahead of Makhuwa (7.4 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Southern Italian Romance group within the Italic branch.
Where is Neapolitan spoken?
Neapolitan is used in 1 country. The largest communities live in Italy (591,359).
Neapolitan is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Neapolitan is written in the Latin script. Glottolog classifies it as threatened, meaning fewer children learn it than in the past.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Sicilian, Italian, Venetian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 nap.
Frequently asked questions about Neapolitan
How many people speak Neapolitan?
Where is Neapolitan spoken?
What language family does Neapolitan belong to?
What is Neapolitan called in Neapolitan?
Is Neapolitan an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.