Neapolitan/Doubling

Doubling of Initial Consonants

In the Neapolitan Language, there are many words that will cause a doubling for the initial consonant. These are usually predictable, but you must memorize which words do and don't cause a doubling. Words that do, are shown below:

• A plural feminine adjective preceding a plural feminine word will cause a doubling (vecchie ffemmene)
• A singular neuter adjective preceding a singular neuter word will cause doubling (buono ppane)
• The feminine plural article 'e ('e ffemene)
• The neuter singular article 'o ('o ppane)
• The conjunctions e and né (pane e ccaso)
• The prepositions a, pe, and cu (a mme, pe tte)
• Negation nu (nu mmo)
• Indefinites ogne and cocche (ogne ccasa)
• Interragative and relative che (che ffemene!)
• accussí (accussí bbello)
• From the verb essere but not songo (so' ppazzo)
• chiu (chiu ppocco)
• The number tre (tre ffemene)
• chistu and chillu when referring to neuter nouns of indefinite quantities (chillu ppane)
• lloco
• From the verb stà (staje ssempe)
• From the verb puté (pô ssapé)