The first mathematics textbook printed in Moldavia. Elementi aritmetice arătate firești (Iași, 1795)

Abstract

The first mathematics textbook printed in Moldavia (Iași, 1795) was not sufficiently examined, although the translation offers us valuable information on the Italian influence on the Romanian language and a precious linguistic material as regards both the configuration of the Romanian literary language in Moldavia at the end of the 18th century and the constitution of mathematical terminology. The linguistic material excerpted reflects phonetic and morphologic norms specific of the author’s dialect, sometimes going beyond the criteria illustrated by the local tradition, especially in the morphosyntax field. The lack of a terminological tradition is to be observed in the high number of un-adapted terms, semantic loans and old terms. Amfilohie’s intense activity of translating from Italian (the scholar being a genuine forerunner of the Italianate movement in Moldavia) is proof of the depths of the cultural contacts with the western world, resulting in the intensification of the renewing of the Romanian vocabulary by assimilating Latin-Romance borrowings in general and Italian ones, in particular.