Latin-Friulian Grammar fragments and Exercises of Friulian-Latin translation

The ‘Translation Exercises’ are undoubtedly a very interesting typology of text for the constant comparison of the Latin forms and structures with the corresponding vernacular ones, and for this same reason they turn out to be one of the sources of major moment, together with a plenty of accounting and administrative papers, for the study of the Friulian language of the origins. It is here particularly dealt with a large series of brief vernacular texts (81, precisely) that had to be translated into Latin by notary-students of Cividale as an assigned schoolwork of the time. Less known than these ‘Translation Exercises’, the text of the ‘Grammar Fragments’

is perhaps less interesting as to the linguistic material it offers in the Romance perspective, but it allows to better understand the milieu where teachers and students of the notarial school of Cividale worked, and helps in any case formulate further comparisons between the two linguistic registers used at the time for writing. This small grammar treatise is attributed to «magister Petrus famosus grammaticae professor q. Michaelis de la Motta», witnessed in documents of Cividale from 1360 to 1393.