Neapolitan is a Romance language of the Italo-Dalmatian group spoken across much of mainland Southern Italy, except for southern Calabria and southern Apulia, and spoken in a small part of central Italy (the province of Ascoli Piceno in the Marche). It is named after the Kingdom of Naples that once covered most of the area, of which the city of Naples was the capital. On October 14, 2008, a law by the Region of Campania stated that Neapolitan was to be protected.

Romance languages are the continuation of Vulgar Latin, the popular and colloquial sociolect of Latin spoken by soldiers, settlers, and merchants of the Roman Empire, as distinguished from the classical form of the language spoken by the Roman upper classes, the form in which the language was generally written. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, made Latin the dominant native language in continental …