Giorgio Casacchia AN OLD CHINESE-ITALIAN DICTIONARY 1. Introduction In 1906, the Italian publisher Antonio Vallardi, at that time at the beginning of his bright career as a specialised publisher of dictionaries, put forth in Naples an interesting lexicographical work by G.B. Salerno, a Chinese language graduate of the Royal Institute of Oriental Studies of Naples, printed in the original manuscript form. The title of the book was Saggio d'un primo dizionario cinese-italiano secondo il principio della naturale evoluzione della scrittura, con varie illustrazioni [A first tentative Chinese-Italian Dictionary, according to the principle of the natural evolution of the writing system, with illustrations]; the book is preserved in two copies in the library of the Istituto Universitario Orientale. Inside, there were 27+3 Chinese characters chosen among those belonging to the Kangxi radical n° LXXX, e mu <mother>, or at least have in in their structure, followed by a tentative etymological explanation, the reading in the French spelling, and an Italian translation. The 27 characters, in the author's arrangement [roughly phonemic], were the following: 1. mu e radical 80 2. mu m " 38 3. mu iH.i " 64 4. mu W " 93 5. mu/wu /JJfE " 172 Giorgio Casacchia 6. wu f~ 9 7. wu fa " 9 8. wu '1'IlJ: " 61 -:1= 9. ai £fJ: " 80 10.du " 80 l1.wu m• " 80 12.mei fij " 80 13.mei m " 75 14.mei rI " 140 15.mei fflj " 104 16.mei IJij " 130 17.mei ~ " 167 IS.mei ill " 164 19.mei fit " 119 20.mei 11 173 21.min ~ 66 22.hui ~ " 149 23.hui iDI " 176 24.hui ~ " 61 25.yu IWrt " 130 26.cu JlJ& " 80 27.cu ~ " 80 In a following section of the book, three more characters were merely listed: 1. hui iit~ radical 25 2. fj with neither pronunciation nor radical 3. IS with neither pronunciation nor radical Now let's see what the author has to say about the above-listed characters. 1) The first character, if): mou [pinyin mu], means <mother> because is a "breast", derived from fr: nu, with two more dots indicating nipples. 50 .