Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

English for Italians 

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ALTIERI, Ferdinando. GRAMATICA INGLESE PER GL'ITALIANI che contiene Un esatto e facil metodo per apprendere questa Lingua... In questa nuova Edizione molto accresciuta, migliorata, e con diligenza corretta. In Livorno: Presso Gio. Paolo Fantechi e Compagni, MDCCLIX [1759]. SOLD

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8vo, pp. 336; woodcut vignette on title, head-piece and initial to p.5; sporadic notes in ink in a contemporary hand, small wormhole to edge of a few leaves, not affecting text, and very light browning to first few leaves, but otherwise clean and crisp; in contemporary vellum, title in ink on spine; sprinked edges; one gathering slightly loose, and some light wear and marking to vellum, but still an attractive copy.

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Expanded edition of this rare (despite the many editions it went through) guide to English grammar for Italian speakers, written by the London-based Italian lexicographer and language teacher Ferdinando Altieri.

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Altieri is best known for the substantial Italian-English dictionary published by Innys in 1726-7, but was the author of several grammatical primers aimed both at teaching Italian to the English and, as here, the reverse, which largely followed the same pattern. Opening with a guide to pronunciation and the alphabet, the guide continues with descriptions of the parts of speech, comparatives, personal pronouns, verbs and their conjugation, tenses, participles, conjunctions, interjections, difficult spellings, and finally a number of dialogues, exercises, and proverbs. The basis of the text originally appeared in 1728, as the second part of A new grammar, Italian-English and English-Italian, but in that work, published as it was in London, the English grammar was much more cursory. In these Italian printings (a Venice edition appeared in 1750, followed by Livorno editions in 1754 and the present one) the explanatory text which Altieri offered anglophone learners of Italian is here adapted for Italians learning English, to augment the earlier rather rudimentary account. 

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This edition not in OCLC, which records a copy of the 1750 Venice edition at Barcelona and of the 1754 Livorno edition at the Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Roma. 

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[ref: 2628 ]