The essay investigates G.B. Ramusio’s language in his letters to Pietro Bembo (1537-38)
preserved in the Ms. Ambrosianus D 335 inf. and recently published by A. Del Ben. This corpus is the
largest known amount of autograph texts written by the Venetian and gives a rare insight into
the tangled web of correspondents and into the fast communication links that lead to Venice from
various sources. Compared to Ramusio’s dissertations and introductions to the exploration accounts
published in the first volume of his Navigationi et viaggi (editio princeps 1550), these texts are quite
more colloquial: the linguistic analysis shows all the features of a lower register and lets many local
words and phrasemes appear to the surface of the page.
