Lezione graduate di lingua inglese: compilate da Alfonso Arbib-Costa...Con una appendice contenente 1. un dizionario italiano-inglese ed inglese-italiano 2. un manuale di conversazione italiano-inglese 3. una lista completa di verbi irregolari inglesi [Graded Lessons of the English Language: compiled by Alfonso Arbib-Costa] New York: Francesco Tocci, Ed., 1906.
Title
Lezione graduate di lingua inglese: compilate da Alfonso Arbib-Costa...Con una appendice contenente 1. un dizionario italiano-inglese ed inglese-italiano 2. un manuale di conversazione italiano-inglese 3. una lista completa di verbi irregolari inglesi [Graded Lessons of the English Language: compiled by Alfonso Arbib-Costa] New York: Francesco Tocci, Ed., 1906.
Description
Arbib-Costa (b. Livorno, 1882; active, New York, 1900–1930), professor of romance languages at the College of the City of New York, wrote texts designed to help students of English and Italian.
First published in 1906 by Francesco Tocci at his Emporium Press in New York, Lezioni graduate was written in Italian to teach English to Italians without a teacher, and was reprinted for decades afterwards by Tocci’s later venture with Antonio De Martino and others, the Italian Book Company - Società Libraria Italiana, the most important of all the Italian language publishers in America.
Arbib-Costa’s Lezioni graduate was, like Pecorini’s Grammatica-enciclopedia italiana-inglese, De Gaudenzi’s Nuovissima grammatica accelerata, and others, among the mainstays of the Italian language publishers for a simple reason. They were designed for Italian immigrants who as Pecorini had in his preface clearly described as the “middle class of Italian workers in the United States,” those who “while not having followed, in Italy, studies beyond elementary school, nevertheless had a knowledge of the Italian language that makes them able to appreciate a good and practical grammar [for learning English].”
The motivation that these publishers had was the same one that - four centuries before, in Italy - led the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius to publish Greek grammars and dictionaries at the same time he brought out long forgotten texts in Greek. It was a time when even few scholars, most of whose scholastic endeavors were in Latin, not Greek. A good businessman, as Aldus scholar G. Scott Clemons has noted, Aldus recognized when began his operations in the 1490s his audience would need Greek grammars and dictionaries if they were going to buy his Greek-language books.
So the Italian American publishers realized, and indeed, the grammars and dictionaries ostensibly to teach English, but really also to teach Italian to immigrants with little school training in the old country the language skills they would need before they bought Italian books, newspapers and magazines. This was especially critical for immigrants whose social culture in Italy had remained largely one of oral transmission. In America, the immigrants would have to improve their Italian enough to learn English especially if they wished to do so "without a teacher."
Note Emporium Press | F. Tocci | 520 Broadway on verso of title page.
First published in 1906 by Francesco Tocci at his Emporium Press in New York, Lezioni graduate was written in Italian to teach English to Italians without a teacher, and was reprinted for decades afterwards by Tocci’s later venture with Antonio De Martino and others, the Italian Book Company - Società Libraria Italiana, the most important of all the Italian language publishers in America.
Arbib-Costa’s Lezioni graduate was, like Pecorini’s Grammatica-enciclopedia italiana-inglese, De Gaudenzi’s Nuovissima grammatica accelerata, and others, among the mainstays of the Italian language publishers for a simple reason. They were designed for Italian immigrants who as Pecorini had in his preface clearly described as the “middle class of Italian workers in the United States,” those who “while not having followed, in Italy, studies beyond elementary school, nevertheless had a knowledge of the Italian language that makes them able to appreciate a good and practical grammar [for learning English].”
The motivation that these publishers had was the same one that - four centuries before, in Italy - led the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius to publish Greek grammars and dictionaries at the same time he brought out long forgotten texts in Greek. It was a time when even few scholars, most of whose scholastic endeavors were in Latin, not Greek. A good businessman, as Aldus scholar G. Scott Clemons has noted, Aldus recognized when began his operations in the 1490s his audience would need Greek grammars and dictionaries if they were going to buy his Greek-language books.
So the Italian American publishers realized, and indeed, the grammars and dictionaries ostensibly to teach English, but really also to teach Italian to immigrants with little school training in the old country the language skills they would need before they bought Italian books, newspapers and magazines. This was especially critical for immigrants whose social culture in Italy had remained largely one of oral transmission. In America, the immigrants would have to improve their Italian enough to learn English especially if they wished to do so "without a teacher."
Note Emporium Press | F. Tocci | 520 Broadway on verso of title page.
Creator
Alfonso Arbib-Costa
Publisher
Francesco Tocci, Ed.
Date
1906
Format
19x14cm; 302 p.
Citation
Alfonso Arbib-Costa, “Lezione graduate di lingua inglese: compilate da Alfonso Arbib-Costa...Con una appendice contenente 1. un dizionario italiano-inglese ed inglese-italiano 2. un manuale di conversazione italiano-inglese 3. una lista completa di verbi irregolari inglesi [Graded Lessons of the English Language: compiled by Alfonso Arbib-Costa] New York: Francesco Tocci, Ed., 1906.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 18, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/456.
Comments