The Funicular Song    Over time, we've spoken about numerous funiculars, some of which I've surely forgotten about, but these come to mind: in Paris (Montmartre), Pittsburgh (two), Johnstown, Chattanooga (my first), Québec, Hong Kong (Peak Tram), Sankt Moritz (two), and NYC, where we found a pair of "inclined elevators" (= funiculars) underground (!) at the new 34th Street/Hudson Yards subway station. (NB: As for "inclined elevator", we found in addition that in French, a funiculaire can also be called an ascenseur incliné.) But it was only after just rethinking the visit to Italian-speaking Lugano and riding the funicolare at the rail station that a thought struck me. I checked, and it was true. There's a well-known song about riding funiculars, one that everyone knows, and everyone can at least sing the melody to. If I'd thought about it during the visit back in 2008, I might have sung the song to myself while riding it.

Maybe you've guessed what song it is, but I'd like to name the song now via a favorite anecdote. During our year studying in Mainz, Beverly and I also traveled during school breaks. We'd both been to Europe before, but not always to the same places. Thus we both went to Sweden, where she'd been, and during what must have been Easter week in 1962, we both went to Italy, where I had been back in 1957. When we got to Rome, Beverly was so elated on arrival that she wanted to burst out in song. Which is just what she did. While walking down the street from the station with our luggage, she started to sing the only Italian song she could think of, Funiculì, Funiculà—just the tune, no words, other than that signature phrase, also used as the title.

Of course at the time, neither of us realized it had to do with a funicular, despite the similarity to that word of the signature phrase. Despite the similarity, how could we know, since all English speakers had been deprived of such knowledge, and still are? We just thought, as I'm sure most people do, that that phrase consisted of nothing more than nonsense words, something like "tra-la-la-LEE, tra-la-la-LA." Not so, as I now learn.

And another point that might start some arguments. Is it really an Italian song, since Naples is politically part of Italy? Or is it, linguistically, a Neapolitan song, which is the language it was written in? Thus it all comes down to how you define "Italian", which leads us into some discussion before we get to the song itself, later in this posting.

In any case, we're going to take matters in proper sequence. We'll discuss the languages of Italy, then Neapolitan. We need to discuss Mount Vesuvius, and the genre called Neapolitan songs in general, then, to properly pronounce the words when we sing the chorus in Neapolitan, we'll see a few idiosyncrasies Neapolitan has. Some are shared with Italian, but something like the schwa sound starkly differentiates Neapolitan from Italian. We'll get to do an accurate sing-along of the chorus of Funiculì, Funiculà and explain why English speakers can't tell that it has anything to do with funiculars.

Language Perception    I'm sure many who picture an international map visualize a hodgepodge of languages, likely unaware of interconnections. Those of us deeply interested in language are glad to find people at least grouping languages, let's say in Europe, into their subfamilies. (It's also nice if people know our language family is Indo-European, the "Indo" part covering India as well as Europe.)

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People involved in language have to be pleased when we find people realizing that many languages (click on the map) in northwestern Europe—tho non-contiguous--are Germanic (green), descended from a common ancestor; that many languages in Eastern Europe—tho non-contiguous--are Slavic (gold), also descended from a common ancestor; and that many languages in southwestern Europe—tho non-contiguous--are Latinate (yellow), descended from the Late Latin of Rome. These IE subfamilies are the "Big Three".

But such a map is really simplistic, since, as we know, there are varieties of each language, referred to as dialects. But where's the dividing line? It's totally subjective. If someone is speaking a dialect of a language you know, if you understand most of it—subjectively—you consider it a dialect. If not, it might be another language. Which brings us to the touchy subject of nationalism. Most languages have developed a standard version of what people speak as the national language of a given country, forcing related languages spoken within or adjacent to the country to be referred to as dialects, some being more, some less, comprehensible. These other languages remain low in prestige and are considered a sign of being "uneducated" (Schwyzer Dütsch is an exception here, probably because it's within its own country.)

And so, linguists look differently at the language situation as shown on the above simplified map, with the result that there are far more languages than the man on the street imagines. Linguists realize this, tho governments may or may not grant official recognition to related languages, and politically might want to call them dialects. While what we say refers to all language groups, because our purpose here is to delve into the Neapolitan language as it appears in the song, we'll now restrict the discussion to just the Latinate Languages, then to the languages of Italy, and then down to just Neapolitan.

Latinate Languages    There is one truth we must keep in mind: languages exist in a continuum. Language A shares similarities with B, and B may relate to C, but not all linguists may agree as to the differences, or they may interpret them differently. Keep that in mind as we look at some maps.

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I like the linguistic breakdown of this map (click) showing the Latinate languages just within Europe, where they originated (Map by Servitje). It's excellent where colors and hues are used to show slight differences between adjacent languages. I have some selective notes on the map:
Look to the right, where we can see that there are several language subdivisions of the so-called "Eastern Romance" group in Romania/Moldova. Romanian is prime, yet we also see three tiny external groups, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment there. Actually the word "Eastern" indicates distance and tells a lot.
The Iberian peninsula shows a tripartite division between Portuguese/Galician in the west, Castilian Spanish in the center, and Catalan in the east. That Portugal is independent of Spain is an indication why Catalonia has been clamoring for independence from Spain as well.
It can be seen by the colors that Catalan forms a continuum with the languages of the south of France, Occitan and Arpitan, and Catalan is spoken to an extent on the French side as well, as we mentioned recently when talking about the Yellow Train. The south of France in turn varies from "French" in the north of France.

Languages of Italy    Moving to the center, we can point out that Sardinian stands alone as a Latinate language, in its own group. We can see that Romansh in Switzerland is related to local languages in northern Italy, such as Friulian.
We always hear about the differences between northern and southern Italy. One difference is economic, as the south is traditionally poorer, and has undergone much more emigration, notably in the late 19C-early 20C. Another is food. Because most emigrants were from the south, most people abroad picture southern Italian food as definitive "Italian food", notably pizza (pizza napolitana from Naples). That's why some restaurants abroad specify it if they serve northern Italian food, so that clients recognize the variation in culture. One item that comes to mind from the north is pesto (pesto alla genovese, from Genoa). But the map shows that the languages of northern Italy are called Gallo-Italic, hinting a continuum from the languages of France—which already showed a continuum from Spain. You certainly must see a flowing here across national borders.

The next subclassification of Latinate languages has an unfortunate historic name: Italo-Dalmatian. I call it unfortunate, since the Dalmatian language of Croatia became extinct in 1898, and tends to confuse the issue. However, the name gives a hint about the language split between north and south in Italy: the Gallo-Italic languages of the north reflect the west and Italo-Dalmatian languages of the center and south reflect the east, as we start thinking about Romanian again. As we look into the major languages within Italo-Dalmatian—that is, within Italy--we find these worth commenting on: Tuscan-Corsican-Italian, Neapolitan, Sicilian.

TUSCAN-CORSICAN-ITALIAN Tuscan is a set of Italo-Dalmatian varieties mainly spoken in Tuscany. Corsican, (in Corsica [now part of France] and northern Sardinia—see map) is a direct offshoot of medieval Tuscan. Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect, and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the works by such authors as Dante [Alighieri], Petrarch (Petrarca), Boccaccio, and Machiavelli. It would later become the official language of all the Italian states and of the Kingdom of Italy when it was formed. But just keep in mind that the home of "Italian" is Tuscany.

NEAPOLITAN & SICILIAN They are two separate languages, yet, as we realize the continuum we see, they show similarities to each other. Neapolitan is classified by Italian linguists as being alto-meridionale / Upper Southern, while Sicilian is meridionale estremo / Extreme Southern. As our map shows, in Calabria on the toe of the "boot", Calabrese is considered "calabro-sicilian". Showing again that not all linguists agree on various subdivisions, many include the "heel" as being Sicilian as well (see below).

The Neapolitan language is named after the Kingdom of Naples--here in 1454, with subdivisions--that once covered most of southern Italy, of which the city of Naples was the capital (Map by Cattette). Today, the city of Naples is the third largest in Italy, after Rome and Milan. Of course, the Neapolitan dialect within the capital city would have been of prominence. The Kingdom of Naples ruled southern Italy south of the Papal States between 1282 and 1816.

As Neapolitan is a language, it has its own dialects. These are the dialects of Neapolitan (Map by CortoFrancese), broken down into five subcategories, which are then further broken down. Category IV would include the City of Naples at IVb. Category I includes Abruzzo, III includes Puglia. (Someone forgot to color Vd purple.) But at the south end we find two things worth mentioning. This linguist agrees that what's spoken at the "heel" is related to Sicilian, but much more interestingly is category Ve. It faces the "toe" which is Calabria, whose language is considered related to Sicilian. But Ve is also called Calabrese, meaning that that variation of Neapolitan V is transitional to the Calabrese adjoining it, and we see very clearly the continuum in action.

Sicilian also has its dialects, and this map shows how they fall into three categories (Map by Andrea t88). We finally do see that the Salento peninsula (the "heel") is considered dialect group I, north, central, and south. We see again that Calabria in the "toe" is group II, and Sicily proper is III. I find of special interest that the volcanic Aeolian Islands (one is Stromboli [STROM.bo.li], one of the three active volcanoes in Italy, with Vesuvius and Etna) has its own dialect, Eoliano, IIIf. And so does the island of Pantelleria have its own dialect, Pantesco, IIIg. After seeing all the Neapolitan and Sicilian dialects, it's hard to argue that they themselves are "dialects" of Italian.

Neither Neapolitan nor Sicilian have official status, and are usually not taught anywhere, with rare exceptions. Before the fascist era, Sicilian was used in many Sicilian schools, but Mussolini insisted it be replaced by standard Italian.

Some local languages are more heavily used than others. This map (Map by Davius) shows the percentages of speakers of regional languages in the different regions of Italy in the early 1980s. While Venetian is strong in the north, looking across the south, you see the strength Sicilian shows, followed closely by Neapolitan.

But again, there's more than one way to interpret data. Another interesting way to divide the Latinate languages is the way this map does (Map by Gerhard Ernst). It's rather unusual to call "Romania" the entire area where Latin, the language of Rome ("Rome-Land"), had been spoken, but that's what it does. Start with the black areas, "Romania submersa" / submerged Romania, the area where Late Latin lost out to Germanic, Slavic, and other languages. That then puts the continuum of languages that we saw in Iberia, France, and northern Italy into Western category. We can more easily see with the missing areas why the rest of Italy and Romania fall into the Eastern category, and the lower part of Sardinia falls into the Southern category. Looking at this interpretation drawn with such bold strokes, we see that grouping in the West is separated from that in the East along a line within Italy between La Spezia on the east coast and Rimini on the west coast called the La Spezia-Rimini Line (no attribution). It runs just south of San Marino (shown with a dot, but not named), and separates northern Italian speech from southern, which includes Tuscany.

I can offer two gross differences between West and East: north and west of the line (with the exception of northern Italy, which I cannot explain) nouns usually take an S plural, while south of it, nouns change the final vowel, or add one. To express "year/years": SPAN: año/años; PORT: ano/anos; FREN: an/ans; CAT: any/anys, as opposed to ITAL: anno/anni and ROM: an/ani.
Another difference is with CE or CI; south of the line, the C=Ch in Italian and Romanian, where "sky" is ITAL: cielo; ROM: cer, while north and west of it, C=S as in FREN: ciel, SPAN: cielo; PORT: céu; CAT: cel.

And finally to this point on Latinate languages, another, slightly different interpretation that I really like is shown by this sketch (Image by El Bux). Study it for a moment and then we'll discuss it.
Start with the red dashed lines, which set apart from the large grouping the smaller Eastern Romance and Southern Romance groupings (here called Island Romance). The huge remainder they don't call just Western, but Italo-Western to cover a larger area. Now look at the dark black lines. The larger grouping is called Gallo-Iberian, which I think is a great way to put it. This then breaks down to Ibero-Romance in the west and Gallo-Romance further east, including into northern Italy. I'm intrigued by their including Catalan on the Gallic side, along with Occitan in the south of France. Moving east, we see the grouping for Romansh, and then the Gallo-Italic grouping for northern Italy (Liguria, Lombardy, et al).
Showing that not all language issues are settled, we see that Venetian is a lost stepchild, with linguists not being sure how to categorize it. But then we get down to the nitty-gritty. They stick to the term Italo-Dalmatian in order to include Istriot, spoken by about 400 people on the Istrian peninsula in Croatia. In fairness, it has to be included, but we can ignore it for our purposes. That leaves us in central and southern Italy with the subcategory of Italo-Romance, which is nicely parallel to the other subcategories of Ibero-Romance and Gallo-Romance. And just look at the three languages listed under our Italo-Romance category: Italian, Neapolitan, and Sicilian. And so we're just where we want to be.

So we can now answer—sort of—our original question, is the song Neapolitan or Italian? It depends on your outlook, and it's just like pizza.
Pizza as we know it is Italian-American (or Neapolitan-American), because of the changes made in the US to what had been a simple piece of flatbread with flavorings on top. I've seen signs in Italy offering either pizza napolitana or pizza americana. Remember when we said in the Marais in Paris (2018/9) that "pizza" is almost the same word as "pita", also a flatbread (add S to "pita" and get "pitsa", respelled as "pizza"). But giving fundamental credit to Italy, pizza is Neapolitan, yet people still think of it as more generally "Italian". It's the same with language. Linguistically, the song is written in Neapolitan, without any doubt. But politically, since the Neapolitan-speaking area is part of Italy, in that sense, the song is "Italian". Some things don't have easy answers, just answers with explanations.

Vesuvius    As we ease into details of Funiculì, Funiculà, aside from knowing it was composed in Neapolitan, we have to understand how it grew from the Naples region, and from a specific funicular. Surprising as it may seem, that funicular was built, in 1880, up the side of an active volcano, Mount Vesuvius, a feature that defines the entire Naples region, which we should now take a look at.

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The region surrounds the Golfo di Napoli, but instead of calling it a gulf, it's more usually called in English the Bay of Naples. Napoli itself is tucked into the northern curve, but it's obvious how Vesuvio (ve.ZU.vyo in Italian) dominates the entire landscape. It's even clearer how it does so on a physical map (Map by Morn the Gorn). In Neapolitan, the mountain is called 'O Vesuvio, the first word being the masculine definite article "the". It's also indicative of the importance and prominence of Vesuvius within the Naples area that it's also referred to as 'A muntagna (showing the feminine definite article). In other words, all you have to say is "the mountain" in Naples and everyone will know exactly which mountain you mean.

Vesuvius is about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and, as the map shows, a short distance from the shore, but enough for two coastal highways and rail lines to be able to pass. The way I like to describe it, Vesuvius is the "child" of an earlier volcano (Photo by Jeffmatt at English Wikipedia). It consists of a large cone, the one that was produced in the 79 CE eruption that took out Pompei and other towns. But that large cone, the taller elevation in the picture, sits within the remnants of an older, collapsed caldera, whose steep rim (once much higher) still partially encircles the cone, to the left. That older remaining rim is visible from a distance as a lower peak than the cone, which is called Mount Somma. For that reason, technically the complex is called Somma-Vesuvio. This is a NASA satellite view straight down on the summit where it can be seen that the cone of Vesuvius proper sits in a half-circle of the collapsed remnant of the original crater, now called Monte Somma, at the top.

In addition, other calderas around the world that have been partially filled in by new-cone volcanoes are also referred to as somma volcanoes. There are a number, and include massive Teide on Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands and, in the US, Mount Saint Helens in Washington. In the picture, note the now dangerously densely populated area around the complex.

Vesuvius has erupted numerous times, from prehistory into recent millennia. More recently, it erupted six times in the 18C, eight times in the 19C, and, in the 20C, in 1906, 1929, and 1944. None since "Pompei" has been as destructive as that one. This is a view of the complex from Pompei (Photo by Morn the Gorn). Since Somma is on the right, the opposite of the last view taken from Naples in the north, Pompei must be to the south—confirm that on our map.

Back to our map. The upper land area surrounding the bay continues beyond the city to two islands. The better known one is Ischia (is.KYA), and the smaller one is Procida (PRO.chi.da). I only point out Procida because it's mentioned within Funiculì, Funiculà, so keep it in mind.

But just at the western end of the city, beyond the center and the port, is the neighborhood of Santa Lucia where we stayed in 2003, on a point of land reaching out just a bit into the bay and giving excellent views. On our map, it would be at the bottom of that tiny peninsula under the D of "Piedigrotta". (Also remember the Neapolitan neighborhood of Piedigrotta further west, since it's a factor in our song.) Thus, our view of Vesuvius was to the east, even tho I kept imagining it to the south. I wrote: We are staying . . . at the Hotel Excelsior, just a century old, and in the Belle Époque style. . . The hotel stands exactly at the outermost point of the Santa Lucia mini-peninsula, so you have views both east and south, and can see everything. Out our window we see Napoli, the Gulf, and Vesuvius (Photo by Jan Luca and Magnus Manske) . . .. The picture is not exactly our view, but very close. We had dinner at the hotel: The restaurant is on the roof terrace. . . Later on, in a restaurant below, someone was playing "Funiculì, Funiculà" . . .. We loved hearing the song, but still didn't know it had anything to do with funiculars.

To the south of the bay is the Sorrento Peninsula, with Capri (KA.pri) at its end. We've driven around the peninsula, including the famous Amalfi drive. At the top of the peninsula you see Castellammare di Stabia. The name means Castle-by-the-Sea, and there are several locations by that name; this one is identified as being near the ancient Roman city of Stabia, in Latin, Stabiae. We mention this city because that's where Funiculì, Funiculà was written.

The area around Vesuvius became a national park in 1995. The summit is open to visitors, and there is a small network of paths around it that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends. The access by foot is to within 200 meters (660 ft) of the summit but that measurement is straight up; in reality, there is a much longer spiral walkway around the summit from the road to the crater.

Now look at this present-day aerial view of the cone (Photo by The Dronaut). Since the bay is on the right, this must be looking south, over Pompeii (hidden) to Castellammare di Stabia and the Sorrento Peninsula, but not quite as far out as Capri. Now take a deep breath and click to see the path to the summit in the foreground. I still cannot believe that in 1962 we walked that precipitous path. I can see why we didn't do it in 2003, and I still wouldn't want to hike it today. I do not know where the upper station of that 1880 funicular was—surely not this high. I can only assume it came to where the parking lot below is. But you can begin to imagine the excitement that let to writing the song.

We have two spectacular pictures that show a little mid-20C history, as well as a personal anecdote. The most recent eruption was in March 1944 during WWII, and that's the one that took out the funicular. This is a picture of soldiers of the US 5th Army observing the 1944 eruption of Vesuvius. I don't know where they're standing—on Mount Somma? It's possible that the camera compresses the view and makes them look closer than they really are. And this is the same 1944 view from Naples.

Now I sometimes research in other languages in Wikipedia, whether I know the language or not, because one can still find tidbits, and often pictures that aren't in other languages—and this is one instance of that. These pictures appear solely on the Italian Wikipedia page, and it seemed they wanted to keep them there. I love the statement made about them under Autore: Ignoto, probabile fotografo della V armata (chi altri potevano avere una pellicola a colori nel 1944 nell'Italia del sud?) / "Author: Unknown, probably a photographer of the 5th Army (who else could have had color film in 1944 in southern Italy?" That cultural point makes one appreciate that much more the quality of the shots.

The anecdote is this. Harry W., a close friend of the family, was in the US Army in Italy at the end of the war. Mail home was censored to make sure no one gave away strategic locations. But Harry was clever. In a letter home to his sister Olga (our "Aunt" Olga) he made a seemingly innocuous statement referring to my father that went something like this: "I can't tell you where I am, but give my regards to Al D.", and Olga and my family knew that D meant "Di" and that he was in Napoli. Now in 1944 I was only 4, but I remember this story being repeated a couple of times a few years later, when I was old enough to understand it. Thus I'm sure Harry witnessed the eruption. I only wish I'd talked to him more about it back in the day.

The Vesuvius Funicular    While I cannot imagine wanting to build a funicular on an active volcano, we've also see how close to its base houses have been built, so I suppose it's human nature to hope for the best. But the mountain is so in-your-face in Naples, that it's understandable that people would not only want to see the crater, but also want to see the view from the top. I've come across an 1858 drawing of people climbing Vesuvius called Salita al Vesuvio / Ascent of Vesuvius (click), which was drawn 22 years before the 1880 funicular was opened. It would seem to illustrate that the earliest ways up were simply on foot. It's also eye-opening in that we're not used to seeing this kind of clothing used for mountain climbing. In addition, it's just speculation, but it would seem that any roads or pathways that might have existed would have to have been too steep for horse carriages to ascend, so going by foot might have been the only way possible. If that is true, then the excitement about a new funicular to the top in 1880 becomes even more understandable.

It happened this way. Around 1870, a financier had the idea of building a funicular on the side of Vesuvius, which he financed, built, and finally opened in 1880. This view shows it and its lower station. I think you can (barely) spot the upper station, but it still isn't clear how close to the crater it was—maybe very! You can also spot some pedestrian pathways.

Pictures will follow in a moment, but we should visualize first how odd this funicular was. It was not what we know today, but instead a monorail system—or actually two monorail systems, because the two separate tracks were, as far as I can tell, not connected. We know that with most funiculars today, one car counterbalances the other, connected by a cable around a pulley at the top, so that one car is down while the other is up. It's possible to have a single-car system, but in that case, counterweights travel downhill below the tracks while the car moves uphill. But in the below pictures, I see no counterweight, so I can’t explain it.

Take a look at a picture of the carozza Etna/Etna car taken c1900 (20 years later, this was not the original car). It ran on the left monorail, which was a wooden sleeper running between the tracks with a single rail along the top. The car's principal double-flanged wheels were not under it, but a single wheel ran along the track in front and another behind. To hold the car straight while it did this "tightrope-walking balancing act" there were two angled rails on each side of the sleeper at its base for secondary wheels under the car to run along, keeping the car steady and upright. Cables carried on pulleys were fixed to the side of each car, but as I said, I do not know about the counterweights. Could they have run down the center between tracks? It's very hard to tell. (For the moment, picture singing Funiculì, Funiculà about this vehicle.)

It was very expensive to visit, since a round trip to the summit with guides from Naples involved a ride by horse carriage to the lower station, then the funicular ride. But by 1886, the company was in financial trouble and was taken over by a French company, which renewed the rolling stock.

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It was then that the new cars (as seen above) were introduced. They now seated eight and were named Vesuvio and Etna after Italy's two most famous volcanoes (leaving out poor Stromboli). As we see, Vesuvio ran on the right monorail (first link) and, as we know, Etna ran on the left. The cable winding house was at the bottom where power was provided by two 45-horsepower, high-pressure steam engines (one was a back-up) and coal-fired boilers. But coal became an expensive item, as it had to be brought up the mountain on horseback.

But the new management also had trouble both because of accessibility from Naples and because of labor problems with local guides about their fees, which resulted in violence, burning the lower station, and tearing up tracks. There was good business, but running costs and concession fees were too high, and by the 1887 season the line seemed likely to close. Then the son of Thomas Cook, John Mason Cook, provided money, and in 1888, bought the system. In 1889, he replaced the cars with new ten-seat cars, also named Vesuvio and Etna. He succeeded his father, who died in 1892, and came to a financial agreement with the guides. He also built the Hotel Eremo along the road towards the funicular. (I had to look that name up, but I should have known to put the H back: it's the Hermitage Hotel, an appropriate name for this landscape.)

With the 20C, things improved vastly with the coming of the new light railway in 1903, mostly adhesion railway, tho part of it had to be rack railway because of the terrain:

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Its Pugliano station was next to the Resina station (not named) on the main line passing Vesuvius (Napoli to Portici is the oldest rail line in Italy, dating from 1839). The new side route needed rack rails for its central stretch (see inset), stopped at the Observatory and Eremo, and ended at the lower station of the funicular—be sure to read the changes in altitude along the route. This rail connection doubled the number of visitors to Vesuvius, which was revolutionary, and would have overwhelmed the capacity of the original funicular, so the Cook company totally tore out the old funicular associated with the song and built a new, "normal" funicular. It had electric motors to replace the old, expensive steam engines, a new "normal" meter-gauge single track with a central passing loop, and cars with more seating. Thus, the 19C funicular of song was gone, replaced by a new one, which opened in September, 1904.

But, this was Vesuvius, and 18 months after the new funicular opened, the mountain spoke, with the eruption of 7-8 April 1906. The lower and upper stations, the equipment, the machinery, and two funicular cars were all destroyed. Everything was buried under an ash blanket of 20-30 m (66-98 ft).

Nevertheless, the 20C funicular was rebuilt and reopened in 1910. It remained in operation, and, during WWII, as of 1943, was controlled by the Allies. But then came the eruption of 1944, pictured above, where the funicular suffered irreparable damage, and was never rebuilt. (An attempt was made in recent decades but came to naught.) I suppose the lesson is obvious, never build a funicular on an active volcano. But it must have been fun while it lasted, and its original version gave us the song.

Neapolitan Songs    The opening of the Vesuvius funicular was surely a very popular and notable event, particularly in the Naples area, and in the same year it opened, 1880, the song Funiculì, Funiculà was composed and published in Castellamare di Stabia, just south of Vesuvius. The music was by composer Luigi Denza, who was born in Castellamare. The lyrics were by Peppino Turco, a journalist born in Naples. Turco frequented the thermal baths at Castellammare di Stabia every summer, and it's been suggested that maybe it was Turco who prompted Denza to compose the humorous song, possibly even as a joke, but also to be presented at the Piedigrotta Festival in Naples that year. Once written, it was performed for the first time publicly in Castellamare. We'll be looking into the song primarily because of the Neapolitan lyrics, but to get started, we can listen to just the melody via this instrumental version (3:26) on a very traditional Italian instrument, the mandolin.

The Neapolitan song became a formal institution in the 1830s due to an annual song-writing competition for the Festival of Piedigrotta, that neighborhood of Naples. Funiculì, Funiculà, written in 1880, fell right into the same time period as these others, and so Turco and Denza presented it at Piedigrotta that same year. It was an instant success and became immensely popular in Italy and abroad. The sheet music was published and sold over a million copies within a year. Four years later, in 1884, Denza moved permanently to London, where in 1888 he became a professor of singing a the Royal Academy of Music.

Funiculì, Funiculà became so popular and endemic to Italy that many people thought it was a traditional Italian melody and didn't realize that the composers were known and that the song was under copyright, which in Italy, like in many places, runs for the life of the author(s) plus 70 years. This resulted in some unusual, perhaps amusing, situations.

German composer Richard Strauss heard the song while on a tour of Italy in 1886, just six years after it was written. Even at that early date, the song was so popular he thought, as many did, that it was a traditional Neapolitan folk song and so he incorporated it into his tone poem for full orchestra called Aus Italien / "From Italy" as Part IV, Neapolitanisches Volksleben / "Neapolitan Daily Life". Here is Part IV, conducted by Riccardo Muti (8:40). You can see the similarity right from the opening notes. Denza filed a lawsuit against Strauss and won, and Strauss was forced to pay him a royalty fee!

Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov also mistook Funiculì, Funiculà for a traditional folk song and used it in his 1907 Неаполитанская песенка / Neapolitanskaya pesenka / Neapolitan Song (3:39). Again, you can hear the similarity right from the beginning. I have no news about any royalty problems in this case. (!)

Immigrants    When counting off immigrant generations, the Japanese have the terminology figured out, and you may have heard of a couple, or possibly all three, of the words they use for Japanese immigrants to the Americas. The first generation, born abroad, are the issei, based on ichi + sei, "one + generation" or Generation One. Their children, born in the new country, are nisei--ni is "two"--and their grandchildren are sansei--san is "three". But other immigrant groups don't have the three different generations counted off so neatly, different as they are in degrees of assimilation to the new culture.

The First Generation immigrant clings to the old culture as to language, customs, foods, which is perfectly understandable. In my case, my maternal grandparents were from the Russian Empire, actually Belarus, and the widowed grandmother on my father's side was from a town near Naples and spoke Neapolitan. They all spoke their native languages with my parents and spoke the most minimal English, which severely limited my communication with them.
The Second Generation, my parents, were American-born, native speakers of English, but learned the heritage language at home. Also quite typical, their knowledge was purely oral and they had no concept of written forms. A point of interest to me was this. Once, when quite young, I asked my father to "teach me Italian". He didn't know where to begin of course, but he also did make clear to me that what the family was speaking was napulitano, which I heard as "napulitan'. He did realize that they were not speaking what he referred to as alto italiano or "alt' italian' " / "high Italian". Understandably, he considered it a dialect of Italian and not a separate language, as is a common conception.
The Third Generation would then include me, my sisters, and cousins. With one exception mentioned below, this generation has little to no connection with the heritage language, and knows the heritage primarily thru traditions (I'm great at Russian folk dances!) and, certainly, food. Personally, when visiting my grandparents, the most language I picked up would have been the odd word or phrase here and there, and any language knowledge I have regarding Italian or Russian is the result of later academic study.

Idiosyncrasies of Neapolitan    In the past, I've spoken of the quirks of Neapolitan as I understood them from hearing my grandmother's speech, and to a very minor extent, my father's when he was speaking with her. Not all I said was as linguistically accurate as I'd would have liked, I've since found—mea culpa--as over time, I looked into the language more deeply. I want to mention now, more or less at random, some quirks of Neapolitan, but also of Italian, which is an easy reference to compare them to. Knowing some of these will help us to understand the humor behind the Funiculì, Funiculà catchphrase of the song and help us to easily sing along the entire chorus to several recordings of it that we'll present.

I've come across a number of things peculiar to Neapolitan. Some are just curiosities for people interested in language, while others pertain specifically to what we'll see in Funiculì, Funiculà.

Schwa    I'm now convinced that the major characteristic of Neapolitan is its extended use of schwa, so let's make sure we all know what that is. Of the numerous possible spoken vowels—English has at least 14—schwa is the neutral wallflower of the family, seemingly without any personality of its own. Some vowels are high in the mouth (I, Ü, U), others are mid (E, Ö, O) some are low (A). That last one is so low in the mouth and the mouth needs to open so far to say it that doctors use it when they tell us to "say AH" when they want to examine the throat. Some vowels are simultaneously fronted, that is, they're spoken toward the front of the mouth (I, Ü) others are back vowels (U).

Schwa on the other hand is a mid-central vowel, meaning it's not high, and not low; it's not front, it's not back, it's totally neutral, spoken in the center of the mouth. It has no personality. It doesn't want to exert itself by moving around the mouth, it just wants to take a nap and stay where it is. It's very common in English, and can be written using any of the written vowels, but most frequently is A. When you say "a sofa" each A is a grunted schwa: uh SO.fuh.

As to the origin of the word, in Biblical Hebrew, there were number of vowel symbols used below consonants. One of them was shva, which appears as two dots placed vertically below a consonant. At the time, it represented the "uh" vowel we're talking about, as seen here (Diagram by User:Netan'el).

Some languages use schwa frequently, others not at all. We'll look at some familiar ones that do, and that don't.
GERMAN: In the 19C, German linguists first used the name shva (spelled in German as Schwa, and adopted in English as "schwa", tho pronounced with an English W) to represent the "uh" sound as it appears in German. In his works on Bavarian dialects in the 1820s, Johann Andreas Schmeller invented the modern symbol to represent the schwa sound, a lower-case E, turned on its head: ə. I always wondered why that was chosen and now I see why. While schwa in English can be represented by any vowel (see below), in German, schwa is always spelled as an E, and apparently Schmeller wanted to differentiate that "weak E" from other E's. If I were to add the schwa symbol to our pronunciations, German bete would be BÉ.tə, bekommen would be bə.KO.mən, the names Heine and Goethe would be Heinə and Goethə (if not HAI.nə and GÖ.tə). And then many know the musical selection Einə Kleinə Nachtmusik.

FRENCH: When schwa is used in French, it's called e muet / "mute E". It's very volatile, and disappears easily. While "week" is semaine (sə.MEN), "the week" is la semaine (la.SMEN) with the schwa lost and the A carrying the syllable the schwa had carried earlier.
One other thing: in French, "brother" is frère (FRER) and "James" is Jacques (ZHAK). But as we all know, when singing the round Frère Jacques, it's pronounced FRE.rə ZHA.kə, so we see that in singing in French, we hear the original pronunciation of words with schwa that have lost the schwa in daily speech.

ENGLISH: Schwa appears throughout English. It mostly appears spelled as a, but actually can be spelled with any vowel letter—or not at all. In all these examples, earlier and following, I'm using the traditional spelling for the word, except that I'll use ə where it appears:

In əmong, schwa is spelled with an A: among
In brokən, schwa is spelled with an E: broken
In pencəl, schwa is spelled with an I: pencil
In meməry, schwa is spelled with an O: memory
In circəs, schwa is spelled with a U: circus
In səringe, schwa is spelled with a Y: syringe
In rhythəm, schwa is not spelled out at all: rhythm.

Another quirk of English is that when syllables lose their stress, they can also lose their regular vowel in favor of a schwa. Compare "a convict" with" to convict". KON.vikt has an O, but kən.VIKT loses that unstressed O in favor of schwa.
Schwa is used in all English articles—as long as they're unstressed, as usual. They're spelled "the, an, a" as in: thə boy; ən oak; ə car. I've read that schwa is the most common vowel in English, and based on the articles alone, that would seem to be true, not to mention all the other words that use it.
A last point for English: the frequent appearance of schwa in unstressed syllables causes woe for even a native speaker trying to spell accurately. How to spell "accessəble" or "acceptəble"? With an A or I? It's easy to slip up (accessible, acceptable). And what about "collectəble"? The answer involves shades of meaning, but usually in the US it's "collectible" with an I and in the UK it's "collectable" with an A. Schwa appears far more in English than people may realize.

SPANISH (vs PORTUGUESE & CATALAN): And some languages don't use schwa at all, such as Spanish or Italian. On the Iberian peninsula, "late" is spelled tarde in both Spanish and Portuguese, but Spanish says TAR.de (an almost-rhyme with "day"), while Portuguese says TAR.də (an almost-rhyme with "duh!"). And it's similar with Spanish versus Catalan. "Barcelona" in Spanish is bar.se.LO.na, all vowels pronounced clearly, but in Catalan it's bər.sə.LO.nə, with three schwas, one in each unstressed syllable. But then of course, English says bar.sə.LO.nə with two schwas, showing a problem English speakers learning Spanish (and other languages) have with learning to pronounce all Spanish vowels clearly.

ITALIAN (vs NEAPOLITAN [& SICILIAN]): And so we finally come around to Neapolitan, and we can compare it with Italian. Italian does not use schwa at all, and pronounces all vowels clearly, but Neapolitan is rife with schwas, which is perhaps its most distinguishing characteristic. In Neapolitan, unstressed E and O, as well as a final unstressed A, all appear as schwas.
When we spoke above about Mount Vesuvius, we said the Italian name was Vesuvio, pronounced ve.ZU.vyo, all vowels clearly pronounced as written, including the E (as in café). But the Neapolitan name we saw was 'O Vesuvio pronounced o və.SU.vyə (including the definite article, which NEVER appears as schwa). It has two schwas, making the word sound quite different.
There's one schwa in the English name for the volcano. Can you find it?
Vesuvius is vi.SU.vi.əs, where schwa is spelled as a U.

We've spoken about Neapolitan songs. I believe that most non-Neapolitan singers, especially including Italian ones, mispronounce the name of 'O sole mio, which is not an Italian phrase pronounced o.SO.le MI.o but is a Neapolitan phrase pronounced o SO.lə MI.ə. Say them both and you'll hear the difference, and when carried throughout the song can be quite perceptible. [I just had to check to see if I was right in thinking that perceptəble is spelled with an I.]
Try this experiment, as I just did. Go back to Pavarotti singing (albeit beautifully) 'O Sole Mio, and see if you can judge that he's singing Neapolitan with a thick Italian accent, avoiding every possible schwa. At 0:22, look at the text of the famous opening lines as he sings them. I estimate it should be more like this: Che bellə cosə na jurnatə ’e solə, / n’aria serenə doppə na tempestə! It's just another example of how Italian has overpowered Neapolitan (and Sicilian). In addition, in Torna a Surriento, the last word should be pronounced Surrientə if you want to keep it Neapolitan.

And then the song Santa Lucia has been totally devoured by Italian. It's usually not sung in Neapolitan at all, but in Italian. In any case, the neighborhood of Naples is pronounced Santə Luciə.

S Becomes ʃ ("Esh")    We have another symbol you may not recognize. Here's where it comes from. We've talked in the past (2011/22) about how the long S (ſ) was used in 17C-18C English as a variant of S, such as in "conſtitution", where it was nevertheless still pronounced as an S. A modified version of the long S, ʃ , whose name is "esh", is used in the phonetic alphabet to represent the SH sound, which is how I'll use it here, as in "ʃe sells seaʃells by the seaʃore."

It's typical of Neapolitan speech—I remember my grandmother doing this all the time—to alter S+consonant to ʃ+consonant—but only with certain voiceless consonants, such as SP, SF, and SK (spelled either SC or SQ) becoming ʃP, ʃF, ʃC, ʃQ. Thus "spaghetti" becomes ʃpagett', "spumoni" is ʃpumon', "biscotti" is biʃcott'. Telling someone in Italian to wait is aspetta, but in Neapolitan it becomes əʃpett'. We mentioned earlier the island in the Bay of Naples called Ischia (IS.kya), but Neapolitans say Iʃ.kyə (and in that pronunciation we recognize both esh and schwa).

Definite Articles    We've seen the definite articles used, and we can say a word about them. In Latinate languages, definite articles usually include an L: French le, la, les; Spanish el, la, los, las; Italian il/lo, la, le. However, Portuguese has lost the L: o, a, os, as.

Originally, Neapolitan definite articles also had an L: lo (masc), la (fem), li (pl), but the L has been mostly lost in modern Neapolitan. However, the lost L appears in written form as an apostrophe: 'o (masc), 'a (fem), 'e (pl—the I also became E). But these are only used before words starting with a consonant. Before a vowel, ALL THREE FORMS appear as ll', so the L remains, doubled, and with a following apostrophe: 'o vin / the wine; 'a pizz / the pizza; 'e fungij / the mushrooms (pl); ll'acqua / water (starts with a vowel).

As we said above, to a minor extent, we already knew a little about this without realizing it, because of the song 'O Sole Mio, whose first word isn't the interjection Oh!. We now know that 'o sole is "the sun", and the title is, slightly polished, "That Sun of Mine", praising a beautiful sunny day.

Long Consonants    This is true about both Italian and Neapolitan. In most languages, if you see a consonant doubled, it usually is quite meaningless, and is just a spelling variation: run/funny, gab/babble, jam/hammer. But in Italian and Neapolitan it's possible to have short and long consonants (my terminology), and they sound different. Here's a simple example in Italian. A cane is a dog, while a canna is a cane, with the plural canne. But they are not homonyms. Sure, you can see the spelled difference between cane and canne, but if you can't hear the difference, then you're not pronouncing the long consonant NN correctly. If an N takes one beat, than an NN takes 2-3 beats, and you can hear the difference. In phonetics, a long consonant can be written doubled (NN), or with a colon (N:). But here's the twist: if length falls on the consonant, it takes length away from the vowel. Look at these simplified phonetic spellings: ka:ne, kan:e. In other words, cane has a long vowel (A:) and canne has a long consonant (N:). For another example, compare fato (faːto) / "fate" with fatto (fatto) or (fat:o) "fact". (Also note caro/carro; pala/palla ["dear/cart; shovel/ball"].)

And there's another twist. Most examples of this you'll find in the middle of a word (never the end!). But sneakily, it also can happen at the beginning, when a tiny word ending in a vowel precedes. In Italian, "Pisa" has a short P, but da Pisa "from Pisa" has a long P, and is pronounced (dappisa) or (dap:isa). The first words of 'O Sole Mio", Che bella cosa / "What [a] beautiful thing", are pronounced (kebbella koza) or (keb:el:a koza), with a long B, not spelled out, also an internal long L, spelled out.

But this is where Italian and Neapolitan differ, in the spelling Neapolitan has no qualms about writing a long (double) consonant at the beginning of the word. The name of the language is napulitano, but, when using the article, as most languages other than English do (le français, el español, l'italiano, das Deutsche), it appears as 'o nnapulitano, with no fear of spelling out an initial double consonant that tells the truth. A few more examples: 'o tte, 'a bbirra, 'e cchiav, 'o llatt, 'o ccafè, 'o ppan, 'e ppere (the tea, beer, keys, milk, coffee, bread, pears).

O appears as U    My grandmother, who spoke little English, would call mozzarella (the Italian word) muzzarell', showing that where one might expect an O, Neapolitan might have a U. It would be pronounced mu.tsa.RE.llə, tho the schwa at the end would be so weak as to sometimes vanish. (For extra credit, why doesn't the U go to schwa?—It's a long word, and the first syllable has secondary stress, preserving the U.) Another instance is that Naples, Napoli in Italian with an O, is Napule in Neapolitan with a U. This is pronounced NA.pu.lə, or even NA.pə.lə. This last one is an almost-rhyme with how "Annapolis" is pronounced in English: [ə.]NA.pə.lə[s]. O to U will have a bit of importance in the song.

The Letter J    This is a question, not of grammar or pronunciation, but of spelling. Some languages add to their version of the Latin alphabet, such as Ö, Ü, Å, É, À, and other languages, including Italian, leave out letters they feel they don't need, often including J, K, W, X, Y, which these languages only use for foreign words, such as "Kennedy" or "Washington". We'll limit ourselves to the situation of J in Italian, then in Neapolitan.

We know that some languages spell the /Y/ sound as a Y (yes), and some as a J (ja). Actually, spelling it as an I is more common than one may think: the Spanish word pronounced BYEN is written bien, where a Y is spelled as an I. It's more prevalent than you may think.

Sure enough, modern Italian primarily spells the Y sound using I. The word pronounced i.tal.YA.no is written italiano; ve.ZU.vyo is written Vesuvio. Up until the early 1900s, J was also used between vowels as in Savoja (Savoy), and used initially for Y as in Jugoslavia, and Jacopo (Jacob). But these have slowly been eradicated in favor of Savoia, Iugoslavia, and Iacopo, altho the spelling Jugoslavia is still seen. The town near Ancona that's pronounced YE.zi is written either Jesi or Iesi.

But the point we're making here is that J is very common in Neapolitan spelling. We'll all soon be singing "Jammo, jammo, n'coppa jammo jà", and every one of the many J's will be a Y. (And every one of thos M's will be long as MM or M:.

Apocope    In phonology, apocope (ə.PA.kə.pi) is, most strictly speaking, a cutting away of the final vowel in a word, or even the entire final syllable. This can happen over time, as in Proto-Germanic *landa becoming modern English "land"; Latin mare becoming Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan mar / "sea"; Late Latin lupum becoming French loup / "wolf".

In most cases, apocope is obvious and almost automatic, especially with nouns, like auto from automobile, Rich from Richard, Jan from Janice, metro from metropolitan; in French resto from restaurant. But I find it interesting to point out some selected examples of how it can systematically happen in contemporary usage on perhaps what might be considered a more grammatical basis.

GERMAN German has numerous words that end in schwa (spelled E), and these schwa endings are in a slow process of apocopating en masse. There is irony here, since J.A. Schmeller (see above) in Germany was investigating the common use of schwa at the ends of German words when he invented the symbol and explained the concept.

In some cases, it just alters vocabulary. "Tired" is müde (two syllables), but is now very frequently just müd, tho sometimes written with a final apostrophe. "Evil, angry" is böse / bös. And in poetry, a final schwa can be dropped almost anywhere, tho then, always with an apostrophe.
In casual speech, "I have" is officially ich habe, but today most people usually just say ich hab, and that often follows thru with other first-person singular verbs.
Apocopation has caused a grammatical shift. The familiar imperative has traditionally been formed with a schwa: komme, but is now almost always just simply komm.
Another grammatical shift involves the "dative E" (a case used for indirect objects): dem Manne / dem Mann; zu Hause / zu Haus.

SPANISH Another interesting case is a language that has internalized a mandatory form, that is, a short form that regularly varies with its longer original. In Spanish (also Italian to some extent) a number of words apocopate regularly, in the first group below, only before a masculine singular noun:
uno / one, a(n): un gato / a cat
bueno / good: buen tiempo / good weather
malo / bad: mal tiempo / bad weather
primero / first: el primer presidente / the first president
tercero / third: el tercer premio / the third prize
alguno / some: algún día / someday
ninguno / no: ningún dinero / no money
santo / saint: San Francisco / Saint Francis
tanto / so much: tan rico / so rich

The following apocopate before any noun, as appropriate:
cualquiera / any: cualquier persona / any person
grande / big, great: una gran mujer / a great woman (but una mujer grande / a large woman)
ciento / (one) hundred: cien años / (a) hundred years
reciente / recent: un recién nacido / a newborn; un recién llegado a new arrival

Note two things here that will carry over to our study of Neapolitan:
It's not only a vowel at the end that apocopates, it's the entire final syllable in santo, tanto, grande, ciento, reciente
According to the language's rules of when a stress accent has to be written, note the added accents in the apocopated forms algún, ningún, recién.

ITALIAN I am not going to go deeply into elision and apocopation in Italian. Definite articles may elide: lo+amico yields l'amico; la + amica yields l'amica. As for indefinite articles, una + amica yields un'amica, however, while in some cases, uno remains as is, in others it apocopates to un. Numerous pronouns may apocopate with following vowels, such as ci + è yielding c'è (there is/are). Italian does many of the apocopations that Spanish does, and in a similar way, but we'll just repeat a few. To say "a good man", uno, buono apocopate: un buon uomo. To say "that handsome boy" quello, bello apocopate: quel bel ragazzo. But there are differences. Before a masculine noun, santo in Italian does apocopate one way before a consonant: San Giovanni, but another way before a vowel: Sant'Angelo, with an apostrophe. "A little [amount]" in Spanish is un poco. It's the same in Italian, except there, it very frequently apocopates to un po'--with the apostrophe.

But most interesting as we lead into Neapolitan is something about Italian I never knew until now. A number of end-stressed nouns, requiring a written accent mark, weren't always that way. The nouns for "city, liberty, virtue" are today città, libertà, virtù, but historically, they're all apocopated forms, having originally been cittade, libertade, virtute (compare the Spanish words ciudad, libertad, virtud). This is useful to know, because this kind of apocopation of whole final syllables, then requiring a written accent mark, runs rampant in Neapolitan.

NEAPOLITAN Italian has a rhythm to it that is syllable-timed, so vowel reduction (to schwa) does not occur, and dropping final syllables is rare. On the other hand, Neapolitan (and most likely, Sicilian) is more stress-timed, so that unstressed vowels are shortened and reduced (to schwa). Given this stress-timing, Neapolitan seems to have a love affair with the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable, which bodes death to the final one, which may drop away. Sometimes these final syllables are written, others appear with just an apostrophe. A prime example is the name of the language itself: officially napulitano, but usually pronounced with a schwa: napulitanə; which can itself disappear (due to lack of attention? loneliness?) and end up as napulitan', written with or without the apostrophe. The frequency of schwa appearing and the loss of final syllables are prime characteristics of Neapolitan.

Let me cite a number of examples of lost final syllables before we get to the song. The sequences below are "to sleep, sing, speak, come, have" in Spanish, French, Italian, Neapolitan:
dormir, dormir, dormire, dormì
cantar, chanter, cantare, cantà
[hablar], parler, parlare, parlà
venir, venir, venire, venì
tener, [avoir], [avere], tenè

Neapolitan in these cases (but not everywhere) has consistently lost anything beyond the penultimate vowel, which now needs to be written with an accent mark. I've put in brackets anything that doesn't illustrate the pattern. (However, just between us, that doesn't include Spanish hablar. In that case, what had been PA- like all the others, got voiced to BA-, then flipped around to AB-, then got a non-historic, silent H added to yield HAB- in hablar.)
Two more examples. Gennaro, can appear as Gennà, so, some September, when walking around the San Gennaro street food festival in New York's Little Italy, don't be surprised if someone refers to the festival as San Gennà.

The word guaglione is purely Neapolitan, not Italian. It describes a street-smart young man (the female version is guagliona). A well-known, prize-winning Neapolitan song by that name was an international hit in 1956. It was covered by many, including the great Aurelio Fierro and Connie Francis. You may think it's pronounced gwal.YO.ne, but good luck with that. Well, maybe so in the song where you might want to pronounce things extra carefully, but not in everyday speech.

In everyday speech, two things happen to the word. Initial G before two vowels goes silent, so we're now down to wal.YO.ne, which can be spelled "uaglione". Then the final syllable also disappears after the previous stress, so now we have wal.YO, which can be spelled "uagliò", with the necessary written accent mark. This is a very common expression recognized by Neapolitan-Americans as "wallyo" (wal.YO), when calling out to some kid. I have memories of being very small and my father introducing me to some of his friends, and their greeting me with "Hey, wallyo!" I now understand it as the equivalent of "Hey, big boy!" In other words, I was a guaglione!

In   In the song, we'll come across the Neapolitan word 'ncoppa, so let's clarify that in advance. First of all, "in" regularly loses its vowel before a consonant, is written 'n, and is prefixed to the next word, such as in this easy example, 'ncielo / "in the sky". This is already quite different from other languages, notably Italian.

We mentioned earlier that in Latin, caput was the word for "head", but by Late Latin, that word declined in favor of testa, accounting for the same word in Italian, and the French variation tête. (However, do note that the Neapolitan word is 'a cap.) But we can follow the travails of caput over time. In Latin it was neuter, but the neuter gender died out, so by Late Latin, it became capus, using the typical masculine ending (as in circus, status). The accusative form, used after "in", resulted in in capum, "on top". That, in turn developed into Neapolitan 'ncoppa, with the same meaning. It can also be spelled 'ncoppe, but in any case, both forms are pronounced with a schwa: 'ncoppə. A minor point is that the N can give voice to the K sound, spelled as C, resulting in 'ngoppə.

Take a look at this YouTube video illustrating both written and spoken Neapolitan (6:07).
Note that the very first Neapolitan word you hear is the name of the language, but this is your chance to listen carefully. While Napulitan is written, the native speaker at 0:02 actually says Napulitanə.
When he reaches spirito in the last line, listen to him pronounce it ʃpiritə, typically using both esh and schwa.
In the numbers, I hear him ending most with a schwa, tho only some are written with an E at the end. It just goes to show that spelling is not always accurate, and the high prevalence of schwa in Neapolitan.
I won't comment on the rest, but leave you to find what you may wish to find.

The Humor in the Song    Now that we have a solid basis for following Neapolitan, we're ready to look into Funiculì, Funiculà to catch the wordplay and other idiosyncrasies. Here's a main one. HERE/THERE The concepts of "here" and "there" in Italian (and Neapolitan, and Spanish) each appear in two varieties that I, at least, have seen nowhere else, where the variety ending in I is more precise and specific, and the variety ending in A is more general and vaguer. (The fact that several languages have this quirk means it was inherited by all from a previous language, possibly Late Latin.)
The pair of words in Italian that express "here" are qui (KWI), which is more specific, and qua (KWA), which is more general. To indicate that "you can eat well here", you'd say qui si mangia bene if you mean the restaurant you're sitting in when you say it, but qua si mangia bene if you mean the town you're visiting; qua is closer to the vague "around here" in English.
Similarly, to say "[over] there" you have both lì (more specific) and là (more general). If you want to say "put it over there", you'd say mettilo lì if you were pointing to, say, a table, but mettilo là if you were just waving your hand somewhere toward the other side of the room. Neapolitan does in these situations what Italian does.

I have to surmise that the word for "funicular", which in standard Italian is funicolare with an O, in Neapolitan, starts out as funiculare with a U, which as we've seen is a typical vowel change (cf Napoli ~ Napule). Now let's typical Neapolitan apocopation of the last syllable occur (plus a written accent mark), and we get funiculà. And lo and behold, what do we have but one of the two signature words of the song, also the title. We now see that it's not some sort of tra-la-la, it's the Neapolitan word for funicular!

Now how could the songwriters joke somewhat punningly about the funicular? Well, we've got the lì, là pair of words and already have one ending in –là. So they made up the one word that is indeed nonsense, funiculì, and use this signature pair of words to describe the two cars on the funicular: the car up there on the top of Vesuvius is "distantly, vaguely" the actual funiculà, so this one near us down at the base must be the funiculì! And when the system starts up, the cars change places, and the funiculà in the distance becomes the funiculì next to us, and vice versa. It's a very cute way of getting excited about how a funicular functions, in song.

You can't do it in English since it's an Italian punny phrase, but the spirit of the two words together is like saying "funicular up, funicular down" or "funicular ascending, funicular descending". A struggling attempt to do something similar in English might be "funicul-up, funicul-down"", or even "funicul-here, funicul-there". That doesn't work, but it does show the spirit of the original lyrics.

Learn just two more words and you can sing—and understand--the entire chorus in Neapolitan. There's one line that includes two new words: Jamme, jamme 'ncoppa, jamme jà!, and we can use Italian (and Spanish) to guide us.

"Let's go" in Italian is andiamo (an.DYA.mo), with all vowels clearly pronounced and with the Y written as an I, as usual. The corresponding word in Neapolitan can be written either jammo (if you want to use a historical, idealized O) or jamme (if you accept that it really ends in schwa). Either way it's pronounced (YAM.mə).

For the other word, we can look at two sources. In Italian, già (rhymes with jo[cular]) and in Spanish ya, both mean "already", but practically, are used to mean "now", just like saying "let's go already" really means "let's go now". So Neapolitan jà would mean the same thing. So the line Jamme, jamme 'ncoppa, jamme jà!is literally "Let's go, let's go, to [the] top let's go now!", but edited slightly for clarity, it's "Let's go, right now, let's go to the top!"

In a nutshell, it's about an excited, enthusiastic young man, a Neapolitan, who's taking his girlfriend to the new Vesuvius funicular in 1880. He already rode it last evening and so he tells her all about it. He's so enthusiastic about the experience that he proposes marriage at the end of the ride!

The Full Text    We'll first review a YouTube video of the whole text in Neapolitan (5:00)--hit CC if subtitles in English don't appear. Then later we can listen to all or part of other renditions. In any case, listen to the chorus and sing along with full comprehension.

At the start, it says "Language: Neapolitan", to make that fact quite clear. (The CC corrects "by" to "in".)
At 0:20, it's not Neapolitan to show the Colosseum in Rome here at the beginning.
At 0:21, the spelling jammo is used instead of jamme; 'ncoppa should start with an apostrophe, and both words end in a schwa.
At 0:38 we get the girlfriend's name, as follows. Giovanni can shorten to Nanni, with a diminutive in Nannino; Giovanna can shorten to Nanna, with a diminutive in Nannina. That's like Jane/Joan/Jeanne having diminutives in Janie/Joanie/Jeannie. Since nè is a term of endearment akin to "baby, dear, darling", I assume Nannina appears as Nanninè with the meaning "Nannina, baby".
At 1:45 it finally shows Vesuvius across the Bay of Naples, which is super-appropriate, just as the line refers to the "mountain". I also like the reference of going from the ground to the mountain: da la terra a la montagna, which is similar in Italian, but with two sets of long Ls: dalla, alla.
I love the youthful enthusiasm and hyperbole in the line at 1:56: Se vede Francia, Pròceta e la Spagna. We saw earlier the nearby island in the bay, Procida. Of course you can see it from Vesuvius! But he bubbles up with enthusiasm saying you can also see France, the next country to the west, and Spain, two countries to the west. His point is total hyperbole: You can see the whole world from our funiculà!
At 2:04 I like the reference to being pulled up by a cable. And we see that other word we saw before, 'ncielo, where the cable pulls you "into the sky".
[Between 2:53 to 3:25, an insertion about pizza appears. I have no idea why this otherwise fine video does this. Skip it. After that there's an equally out-of-place picture of Venice.]
At 3:54, the song talks about the car, having climbed to the top, reverses direction and comes down again.
At 4:17, his enthusiasm bubbles over to the point where he proposes to Nannina.

The Mess in English    So why do English speakers not know anything about this? That's because the most popular English version of the song (not a translation) was one done by one Edward Oxenford, a lyricist and translator of librettos. Now it happens often that lyrics, such as for school songs, are written "to the tune of [a famous song]". My school sang "Hail, Lincoln Junior High" to the tune of "Anchors Aweigh", and none of us were in the US Navy at the time. A particularly striking example of this sort of shift was when "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" was written to the tune of "God Save the King/Queen". Evidently new lyrics are easier to come up with than new music.

What Oxenford did was write a different text to "Funiculì, Funiculà" having nothing to do with funiculars. What he wrote often goes by the same title—which thus made NO sense—or was also known as "A Merry Life", for which this is the sheet music (click). Look at the top. He credits Denza for the music, but makes no mention of Turco for the lyrics. Of course not—these are not Turco's lyrics! He also makes the claim that what he's purveying is "From the Italian", which is an outright lie. The disclaimer at the top tells it all. He does make reference to the Vesuvius funicular, but then makes an anti-ethnic statement, bordering on racism, one perhaps popular with staid northern Europeans when viewing the more relaxed Mediterranean life: "It portrays the care-free life of the Italian idler." There was no idler! It was an excited kid taking his girlfriend for a ride on something new!

His opening lines portray an airhead of a beach bum: "Some think the world was made for fun and frolic, / And so do I! And so do I!" And later: "I love to spend my time in singing". And the chorus consists of "Harken", "Music sounds afar", "Joy is everywhere", and a plethora of tra-la-la's. And this drivel is what became traditional for English speakers. I would say that Oxenford in this case committed cultural homicide, cutting English speakers off from all the funicular fun. But at least now we know what's what, and we can sing the chorus in Neapolitan.

Various Renditions    All that's left now is to sample some further various renditions. First we'll hear it sung by the Italian tenor Andrea Boccelli. He was born in Tuscany, in Lajatico, southeast of Pisa (one of the few Italian place names to be spelled with a J in place of an I). He does a wonderful job, but do note he's singing Neapolitan words with an Italian accent. Just listen for all those clear vowels and few to no schwas. Here's Andrea Boccelli singing it in, of all places, the Colosseum (4:08). Proper credit is given for text and music at 0:05. Note that the song ends at 2:55.

This next rendition is a surprise (3;47), tho the surprise is given way with the opening credits. Listen first, then we'll talk about it.
This is the only rendition I've found that is not in Neapolitan, but in Icelandic instead! It's the Heimir Male Choir singing Funiculì Funiculà with soloist Ari Jóhann Sigurðsson (ð = TH in "this"). It's a great performance, but I don't know how true to the original text it is, and wonder why they sing funiculì three times before a single funiculà. I wonder if their translation has wandered from the funicular theme, as badly the English version has, or if it stayed closer to the original. On the other hand, I found online a singer from Íslenska óperan (the Iceland Opera) singing in Neapolitan.

I've also read that the lyrics have been translated into German—but how accurately? In my online search, I found this:

https://www.portanapoli.de/kultur/funiculi-funicola

Scroll down to find the Neapolitan Text with the German Text next to it. In the second paragraph you'll find the reference to being able to see Frankreich, Procida und Spanien. But it's a translation, and not necessarily to be sung as is.

The next rendition (2:50) might startle. It IS sung in Neapolitan, but it's sung by the Red Army Choir in Russia!

I love flashmobs, both orchestral and with singing, but have never experienced one personally. All "my" flashmobs I've seen on YouTube. And we'll end with three, in three different countries, but all sung in Neapolitan.

This is a mini-flashmob in Wien Hauptbahnhof / Vienna Main Station (6:05). We'll hear Neapolitan sung by German speakers. Tho only three tenors and a pianist perform, it has all the sudden spontaneity of an impromptu flashmob (watch the crowd being startled when the singing starts at 1:39). It's great street theater.

We now have a larger flashmob in a supermarket in Estonia (3:14), in its second-largest city after Tallinn, Tartu.

Finally we move across Eurasia to a shopping mall in Seoul (2:46), where we find Koreans singing in Neapolitan!