Glances from the back shop of a lexicographical project

The "Lessico Etimologico Italiano" is a lexicographical project conceived by Max Pfister (and now directed by Wolfgang Schweickard and Elton Prifti, University of Saarland) aiming to describe the history of Italo-romance vocabulary in all its dialectal varieties. A separate section is devoted to words of Germanic origin, which represent an interesting research field for scholars both of Romance and Germanic linguistics and philology. The majority of Germanic loanwords in Italian varieties were introduced by populations which ruled Italy (Goths, Lombards, Franks); further contacts with the German language still exist. With regard to the older layers of borrowings, we have to work with scattered data, often even unattested forms, reconstructed by the comparative method. Therefore the challenge of this kind of lexicographical work is mainly due to the scarcity of documentation for the old languages spoken by the gentes who entered the Italian peninsula and to the lack of language standardization of these Germanic varieties.