HOW PRONUNCIATION CHANGES—NEOPOLITAN DIALECT.

HOW PRONUNCIATION CHANGES—NEOPOLITAN DIALECT. Kids, your grandmother’s Neopolitan dialect provides a good example of what John McWhorter says is the typical way that pronunciation in a language tends to change over time. McWhorter uses the example of the Italian word “cappicola”, which is pronounced in Sicilian Italian as if it were “gabagul.” He explains that in dialects, “k” sounds often become “g” sounds so that the two “c” sounds in “cappicola” are pronounced as “g.” And “p” sounds become “b” sounds. And vowel sounds that are not accented drop away so the final “a” sound disappears. The same process operates with the Neopolitan dialect your grandmother spoke. I posted here about how I was a “Muddy-gan”—an “American” to your grandmother. The first vowel is not accented and drops away. The lightly stressed second vowel is replaced with the schwa sound (“uh”). It’s not only in Italian dialects that this kind of thing happens. In my own Midwestern dialect, I replace many vowels with the schwa sound.