The multilingual appendix of Le ricchezze della lingua volgare (1543) by Francesco Alunno. A lexicographer’s “service list” and an intercomprehension tool

We stress the value of Le Ricchezze della lingua volgare (1543) as an accurate concordance of Boccaccio and focus on its multilingual appendix. The lists of “words used by Latins, Greeks, Provençals, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen, Goths and other nations of which we list only those which best conform to our vernacular Italian and were used by Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarca” cover about twenty pages in two columns. Alunno seems to adopt an Italian-centric perspective and a synchronic approach in compiling lists of Italian words which correspond to remarkably similar lexical items in Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, German and English. Alunno lists corresponding vernacular words for Romance languages, while for non-Romance languages he lists borrowings of Latin origin. Although Alunno lacked a strong philological awareness, he cannot be said to be naïve. His point of view was closer to that of a present-day cultivated practitioner of intercomprehension.