Neapolitan (autonym: ; ) is a Romance language of the Italo-Dalmatian group spoken across much of mainland Southern Italy (except for southern Calabria and southern Apulia), and spoken in a small part of Central Italy (the province of Ascoli Piceno in the Marche). It is named after the Kingdom of Naples, which once covered most of the area, since the city of Naples was its capital. On 14 October 2008, a law by the Region of Campania stated that Neapolitan was to be protected. The term "Neapolitan language" is used broadly in this article to refer to the group of closely-related Romance dialects found in southern continental Italy, as described above. However, as the term itself implies, in contexts ranging from colloquial speech to academic linguistics, Neapolitan, napulitano or napoletano may refer instead to the specific Romance varieties spoken natively in Naples and the immediately surrounding Naples metropolitan area. Distribution In the broad view adopted here, the Neapolitan dialects are distributed throughout most of continental southern Italy, historically united during the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, specifically southern Lazio (Gaeta and Sora districts), southern Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, Campania (Naples), northern and central Apulia, and northernmost Calabria. The dialects are part of a varied dialect continuum, so the varieties in southern Lazio, Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Apulia, Lucania and Calabria can typically be recognizable as regional groups of dialects. In western Abruzzo and Lazio, the dialects give way to Central Italian dialects such as Romanesco. The dialects in central Calabria and southern Apulia give way to the Sicilian language. Largely due to massive Southern Italian migration in the late 19th century and 20th century, there are also a number of Neapolitan speakers in Italian diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, and Venezuela. However, in the United States, traditional Neapolitan has had considerable contact with English and the Sicilian languages spoken by Sicilian and Calabrian immigrants living alongside Neapolitan-speaking immigrants and so the Neapolitan in the US is now significantly different from the contemporary Neapolitan spoken in Naples. English words are often used in place of Neapolitan words, especially among second-generation speakers. On the other hand, the effect of Standard Italian on Neapolitan in Italy has been similar because of the increasing displacement of Neapolitan by Standard Italian in daily speech. The following dialects constitute Neapolitan; numbers refer to the map: