AGATE

The Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana (VSI) (Vocabulary of the dialects of Italian-speaking Switzerland) was founded in 1907 on the initiative of Carlo Salvioni and joins the similar works dedicated to the other three linguistic regions of the Confederation, the Schweizerisches Idiotikon, the Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande, and the Dicziunari rumantsch grischun, with the aim of documenting, preserving and analysing the dialectal heritage that was already in rapid change or even disappearing at the time.
After more than four decades dedicated to the collection and ordering of materials and faced with many difficulties, especially those resulting from the two wars, the work began its publication in 1952. Currently there are 93 dossiers given to the press.

The VSI is an encyclopaedic work, which combines linguistic interest, and more particularly lexical interest, with ethnographic and folkloric interest. The area investigated is that of the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, thus including the Ticino and the Italian-speaking valleys of the Grisons. The main source is the paper archive resulting from the original surveys carried out in the first decades of the last century, to which are added a large quantity of heterogeneous materials, ranging from occasional manuscripts, to more or less systematic collections of specialists or profane enthusiasts of the subject, to countless publications dedicated to the local reality, to field recordings.