It is edited by Nicola De Blasi and Francesco Montuori (Federico II University of Naples). Online publication is also planned.
The first volume of DESN – Dizionario Etimologico e Storico del Napoletano (Florence, Edizioni Cesati, pp. 685, euro 46), edited by historians of the Italian language Nicola De Blasi and Francesco Montuori, professors at the Federico II University of Naples, together with a working group that also includes some young scholars, is coming to bookstores.
This is an absolute novelty: the DESN is the first historical-etymological vocabulary of Neapolitan created with a scientific method.
The first volume collects 150 entries all related to the letter T. Each entry gives an account of the different uses, the most accredited etymology (but also those to be rejected), the adopted spellings. The DESN will then be progressively and entirely published online.
The project is the result of fifteen years of research: The DESN documents Neapolitan with testimonies from the many literary texts collected, starting from the texts of the fourteenth century such as the letter in Neapolitan by Boccaccio of 1339, passing through the gliommeri of the '400 by Jacopo Sannazaro, the great classics of the seventeenth century such as "Lo cunto de li cunti" by Basile and all the comedies of Scarpetta, Viviani, Eduardo, up to Salvatore Di Giacomo and the poetic tradition of the twentieth century, including contemporary poets such as Salvatore, Palomba, Raffaele Pisani and others. Sources of the Dictionary are also practical documents, dialect newspapers, writings on walls, songs, proverbs and sayings. Over a thousand sources have been fully collected in a digital library consulted and "interrogated" by the editors of the dictionary.
The Dictionary is historical, because it presents a motivated and detailed exposition of the meanings of each word from the fourteenth century to the present day, and it is etymological, because it reconstructs the origin of the words and the evolution of their meanings, placing them in relation to the other Romance languages: Italian, the dialects (especially those of central and southern Italy), the European languages.
DESNR
The history of Neapolitan is long and wide-ranging and touches on various textual typologies, from poems to songs, from fairy tales to proverbs. After having gathered almost two thousand sources and over one hundred dictionaries of Neapolitan and Campanian dialects, the group of scholars from Federico II coordinated by Nicola De Blasi and Francesco Montuori began compiling the Etymological and Historical Dictionary of Neapolitan (DESN) to capture and represent, through the history of dialectal lexicon, the interweaving of language and culture that have characterized the life of the city over time. The volume contains the first 152 entries of the DESN (from taballo “percussion instrument” to taluorno “prolonged lament”) and preliminarily collects some essays born during the editorial work: they give an idea of the work of excavation and arrangement that is necessary each time for a serious lexicographical study, to put together the documentation, define the dating, evaluate the etymological hypotheses and identify the most plausible one. The first section thus reconstructs the history of well-known and lesser-known words such as caucirogna, strèuzo, milo terragno, arrecettà, zeppola.
In the entries of the DESN, as in these fragments of the history of the Neapolitan lexicon, reconstructed with care, attention and study, the reader will find the memory of the words of the city and its inhabitants, told in the framework of the languages of Romance Europe and the Mediterranean.
Chronicles of Campania
The Neapolitan dialect that lives on in the streets: swear words and urban poetry
The Neapolitan dialect is much more than a language: it is a cultural heritage that pulsates in the streets, in the markets, in the alleys and…
