«Et il tutto resti inter nos»: Galileo Galilei tra italiano e latino

The paper studies the use by Galileo of the Italian and Latin languages as vehicles for scientific communication. After taking note of his preference for Italian and explaining the reasons behind this choice highlighted by scholars, the Author presents some additional reasons: the greater richness and clarity of the vulgar (an intrinsic characteristic enunciated by Galileo himself and confirmed by the comparison of passages translated by him from one language to the other), and the important precedent of the technical treatises by Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo’s father, in vernacular and in dialogue form. Worthy of note, in passing, is the usefulness of the "Portale Galileo" corpus for the study of the Galilean vocabulary (thanks to which, e.g., we can backdate the Italian noun "satellite" to 1612). The article points out, in conclusion, that the use of Latin, which is much less frequent than the use of Italian, is due to contingent reasons, but not to be considered unwelcome to Galileo or unsatisfactory (as in the "Discorsi … intorno a due nuove scienze").