We could not deliver your mail because it contains a Virus

... that was the answer when I tried to send a message to napulitano@yahoogroups.com - I was really wondering ... I work with Ubuntu, use a antivirus ... well ... it meant I had to scan my computer, so I did - no result, everything fine.

Then I tried to send the message with the yahoo.it web interface: same result, I was told I had a virus. That sounded really weird ...

Then I looked at my message, the subject was "Photos" because I wanted to thank people for sending me photos. And I thought ... let me send a test message. So I sent a message to the group using "Test" as subject. That one went through without any complaints.

Therefore the yahoo server considered my first e-mail(s) to have a virus because in the subject line I only used the word "Photo". Weird, right? ... So don't do what I did :-D

Naples' airport ... a very particular publicity

When on Sunday, 2nd November, I waited for the boarding to go to Barcelona, not having a book with me, I took some photos around and one is particular: the Italian mineral water producer Ferrarelle is creating publicity where each line of the publicity is written in a different language, in this case using "e 'o tiempo". It was the first time I saw Neapolitan taken to the level of all other European languages.

Thank you Ferrarelle!

(And yes, I don't mind giving a commercial company relevance if they do something like that).

Neapolitan reaches 1000 entries on OmegaWiki

This is a very short post - just to tell you that now there are more than 1000 words in Neapolitan language on OmegaWiki (and no, I did not add number 1000 since I am still hurrying after hundreds of things to do). Thanks to all who contributed to make the dictionary grow :-)

Articles with stable version for nap.wikipedia

Well, again this theme is on my mind ... stable versions ... on the Neapolitan wikipedia we have a very particular situation: only very few people are really able to write well and the others write "as they speak" often adopting the spelling of the Italian writing rules to Neapolitan or if they are Neapolitans who grew up in the states and are eventually of second or third generation you could even find some very particular words coined in the States (and well yes, that is still Neapolitan, just a different dialect of it), which of course does not work well. Even being many of them native speakers we have problems when it comes to written versions. Yes, there are rules, but Neapolitan is not taught at school nor you can easily find courses around where you can learn the language. Also when I write I always have to ask for proof reading by Carmine, well for me it is not even my mothertongue ... some people are frightened to write since they know they are not able to write correctly, but eventually they would write and start to contribute if they knew that the issue of having spelling errors in the end is not soooo big - this is something that can be sorted out.

What would be really helpful is a "stable version" function so that people can find proofread examples where they can rely on. This will help them to contribute on nap.wikipedia. For us it is not so much about having long pages with loads of contents - for us it is still on "getting people to write" in their native language.

Templates, the problem with the double quote and all that is too wiki specific is still too much for many ... I am also considering in not adding templates for cities etc. for the moment (for new pages) - it is confusing to people. I note that more and more when I talk with people who could become valid authors on nap.wikipedia. Most of those who write Neapolitan properly are of my generation or older and there are only few of them who really can dig into wiki syntax etc.

This means: we have to give them a really low entry level ... and we have to assure people who edit: there is a stable version where you cannot do any harm to, you can write, even if not 100% correct ... and you can then learn from the stable versions and the corrections made in your writings.


It is indeed a long process to get through all these problems ... and for now I don't see an end to it.