So Nonna's words don't get lost

Who I am

I'm Ciro Simone Irmici, from San Severo, in the province of Foggia: a software developer and AI specialist. I built Nonnese myself, starting from the dialect of my hometown, the first bell tower on the map. I also make other sites, like Honest Toolkit and Bestiepedia; all my work is on my website.

Why Nonnese

Dialects are spoken less and less: according to Istat, in 2024 38% of Italians used dialect with their family, but only 9.6% spoke mainly dialect at home, down from 32% in 1988. Meanwhile, anyone looking up a word finds lists with no source and machine translators that make things up. Nonnese does the opposite: every word says where it comes from, has a badge that says how sure it is, and people from each town, the keepers, check it.

How it's built

I built it with the help of artificial intelligence, and I say so openly: AI helps me write the code and search free sources (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, old dictionaries, the sites of people who study dialects). But AI invents no words: each one has its written source, and the ones without a source we ask you about. We do use AI to write some example sentences in dialect, to show how a word is used: the page says so, and they stay «to be checked» until a keeper confirms them. I'm not a linguist: that's why the keepers have the last word.

What it doesn't do

No selling your data, no account, no ads. It's not a machine translator, and it doesn't claim to always be right: if a word is wrong, tell us from its page.

Write to me

For mistakes, ideas, words to tell, or to bring your town onto the map: [email protected]. I'll reply myself. You can also find me on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Updated on 20 October 2026. The Italian version is the reference text.