The main goal of this research is to highlight the relevance of the Portuguese language as a lingua franca and a metalanguage for the description of non-European languages, namely Japanese, in the Portuguese colonization context and missionary activities in the East. In order to achieve this purpose, we present three topics: the first is related to the moment when Portuguese became the vehicular language for the first translations of several Amerindian, African, and Asian languages, unknown by Europeans, until the age of expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; in a second topic, we approach the Jesuit epistolography concerning Japan in order to understand the process of acquiring and describing this language; the third is a brief analysis of the
El objetivo principal de este trabajo es resaltar la relevancia de la lengua portuguesa como lengua franca y metalenguaje de descripción de otras lenguas non-europeas, en particular el Japonés, en el contexto de la colonización portuguesa y la evangelización de las personas en el Oriente. Para lograr este objetivo, presentamos tres temas para su desarrollo: un tema está relacionado con el momento en que el portugués se convirtió en el idioma vehicular de las primeras traducciones de varias lenguas amerindias, africanas y asiáticas, desconocidas para los europeos hasta la época de expansión en los siglos
The Portuguese language in the modern period has been studied from the perspective of the companion language of the Empire. Many of this production has been studied by prominent researchers, mostly in the two past decades, such as, v.g.,
E desta feyção nos obrigarão a que ainda agora trabalhemos em aprender e apurar o seu esqueçendo nos do nosso não façamos assy mas tornemos sobre nos agora que he tempo e somos senhores porque milhor he que ensinemos a Guine ca que sejamos ensinados de Roma: ainda que ella agora teuera toda sua valia e preço. E não desconfiemos da nossa lingua porque os homẽs fazem a lingua e não a lingoa os homẽs. ( [And that way they will make us learn their language and forget ours; let us not do it that way but let us teach better here in Guinea than to be taught from Rome: even now it has its value and price. Let us not mistrust our language because men create the language / and not the other way around.]
The maxim of Nebrija continued to be appropriated in Portugal by João de Barros. Grammarian and chronicler, João de Barros gave a preview of the language and its permanence in Africa and the East in
As armas e padrões portugueses, postos em África e na Ásia, e em tantas mil ilhas fora da repartição das três partes da Terra, materiais são e pode-os o tempo gastar; pêro não gastará doutrina, costumes, linguagem que os Portugueses nestas terras deixarem. ( [The Portuguese weapons and standards, brought into Africa and Asia, and on so many islands outside the division of the three parts of the Earth, and the materials, may disappear with time; but it will not weaken the doctrine, customs, language that the Portuguese leave in these lands.]
Also, in the
This civilizing enterprise, at its beginning, was overseen by the Portuguese Crown. Cláudio Pinheiro mentions that in the first conquests of North Africa there were highly trained professionals, with “cartógrafos, navegadores, pilotos, além de 17 especialistas em línguas – quatro africanos peritos em idiomas da costa ocidental africana, três portugueses falantes de línguas Banto e árabe, e outros dez degredados, usados como intérpretes.” (
However, the Portuguese Crown soon declined much of its responsibility in this civilizing enterprise. This intercultural phenomenon was only possible through the missionaries. The importance of missions in the dissemination/learning of languages and in the creation of interlinguistic texts is mainly due to the need for dissemination of the Christian faith, or, as
From the efforts of learning languages and their teaching to novices, the first grammars were born, and the literacy or transcription of their writing in the Latin alphabet. Some of these languages were known only through orality. The arrival of typography, first to Goa (1556) and then to Macau (1584-1588) and Japan (1591), stimulated the publication and proliferation of teaching manuals, booklets, dictionaries, catechisms, grammars, dictionaries, letters, etc. The arrival of typography to these people was not the initiative of the Portuguese royal power: it was driven by the dynamic generated by missions in the dissemination of the Christian faith (
And it was in this way that the Portuguese discoveries in the East provided a true meeting of civilizations and cultures, helped by the Portuguese language. As Silva says,
Como se sabe, houve duas condições fundamentais para que esse encontro se pudesse realizar: primeiro foi que as terras e nações, onde as várias culturas floresciam, se conhecessem e isso fizeram os navegantes descobridores desde a Africa meridional, à índia, ao Vietnam, à China, ao Japão, às Molucas. Mas depois, para que houvesse diálogo frutuoso e perene, começou outro empreendimento menos espectacular mas também difícil e complementar: o estudo e aprofundamento científico e literário das diversas ou diversíssimas línguas desses povos. Sem o conhecimento das línguas desses povos não se podia dialogar. Constituiu um aspecto indeclinável, no qual os portugueses se evidenciaram como verdadeiros pioneiros. ( [As is well-known, there were two fundamental conditions for this meeting to be held: first was that the lands and nations, where the various cultures flourished, knew each other and this made the discoverers from South Africa, India, Vietnam, China, Japan, the Moluccas. But then, in the event of fruitful and perennial dialogue, another less spectacular but also difficult and complementary undertaking began: the study and scientific and literary deepening of the various or diverse languages of these people. Without the knowledge of the languages of these people, one could not dialogue. It was an inevitable aspect, in which the Portuguese were shown as true pioneers.]
This was one of the most relevant aspects of the work of missionaries, especially the Jesuit missionaries, but also those of other religious orders: that of learning the languages of the people found by the Portuguese and teaching Portuguese to these new people. This achievement is the greatest internationalization ever of the Portuguese language (PL).
To illustrate all this intercultural meeting in which the PL served as a metalanguage for the description of many of the languages of the East; PL was as well the lingua franca in the East by seeing the impressive set of dictionaries, vocabularies, and glossaries elaborated based on the texts of David Lopes and Luís de Matos, Barbosa Machado, Inocêncio Silva, Simão Cardoso, Cunha Rivara, Céu Fonseca, Toru Maruyama, Verdelho, and Zwartjes (
The learning of Japanese assumes a privileged place in the strategies of evangelization by allowing an effective dialogue with the people to be conquered. The desire to attract an ever-growing population led missionaries to create schools for the education of children while transmitting the rudiments of the Christian doctrine.
According to
A aprendizagem da língua japonesa, na perspectiva das suas múltiplas utilizações (a comunicação, o ensino, a tradução), conduz a uma atenta observação do sistema complexo que ela constitui, além de que a visão de fora (estrangeiros provenientes de uma diferente família linguística) permitirá uma abordagem contrastiva que terá poucas hipóteses de se repetir. É assim que encontramos muitas observações sobre as diferenças entre escrita e fala no japonês, ou as distintas formas de falar de homens e mulheres, ainda que escrevam da mesma maneira, ou o modo como o japonês falado na capital e nos palácios divergia do seu uso nas províncias onde vivia a generalidade da população. A compreensão destes fenómenos enforma as obras linguísticas elaboradas pelos missionários, a que se junta a reflexão sobre as dificuldades de transcrever o material linguístico de um alfabeto para outro, isto é, de um sistema de escrita ideográfica para um sistema alfabético. [Learning Japanese, from the perspective of its multiple uses (communication, teaching, translation), leads to careful observation of its complex system, and the outside view (foreigners from a different linguistic family) allows a contrasting approach that will have little chance of repeating itself. This is how we find many observations of the differences between the oral and written aspects of the Japanese language; the different ways of speaking among men and women, although they wrote in the same way; or the way Japanese is spoken in the capital and in the palaces, that diverged from its use in the provinces, where the generality of the population lived. The understanding of these phenomena forms the linguistic works elaborated by the missionaries, which is added to reflection on the difficulties of transcribing the linguistic material from one alphabet to another ― that is, from an ideographic writing system to an alphabetic system.]
The letters sent to Portugal and Spain, especially by Jesuit missionaries, are very important historical documents to understand the knowledge that missionaries had of the languages found in the East, among other important events. In fact, in the prologue to the edition of the
De entre estas cartas, a zona mais privilegiada pela imprensa era o Japão e, por esta razão, passaram a ser conhecidas como cartas do Japão, com tiragens muito significativas para a época. As edições de 1570 tiveram uma tiragem de mil exemplares cada, número que nos pode levar a pensar que as tiragens nem sempre seriam tão pequenas quanto poderíamos supor. (Garcia 1997: 13) [Among these letters, the area most privileged by the press was Japan and, for this reason, they came to be known as letters from Japan, with significant printings for the time. The editions of 1570 had a circulation of a thousand copies each, a number that may lead us to think that the printings would not always be as small as we might assume.]
Among these letters, there is a set that presents information about the Japanese language. Father Baltasar Gago describes the origin of Japanese letters:
Neste tempo não tinhão letras: este princípio avera dous mil e duzentos annos. Dahi a muito tempo vierão as letras da China, que com dificuldade se aprendem, e o primeiro livro veo da China. Daqui tomarão huns caracteres e maneira de letra, com que se entendem muito mais facilmente que com as letras da China ( [During that period, they did not have letters: we would have to wait around two thousand two hundred years. Then, the Chinese letters, being very hard to learn, appeared, as well as the first book, which was also Chinese. From that moment on, the Chinese started using some characters and handwriting with which they understood each other much easier than with the former letters.]
Father Lourenço Mexia, in 1584, offers a detailed description of the Japanese language:
A lingoa he a mais grave, e copiosa que creo ha, porque em muitas cousas excede a grega, e latina, tem infinidade de vocabulos, e modos pera declarar a mesma cousa, e tem tanto que fazer em se aprender, que não somente os nossos que ha mais de vinte anos que la andão, mas os naturaes aprendem cousas novas. Tem outra cousa (que creo que se não acha em nenhuma lingoa) que se aprende a Reithorica e boa criação cõ ella. Não pode ninguem saber Japão que não saiba logo como ha de falar aos grandes, e aos pequenos, altos e baixos e o decoro que se ha de guardar com todos, e tem particulares verbos e nomes e modos de falar pera huns, e outros. Ja os nossos têm feito arte da Gramática e Calepino, ou Vocabulário, e começarão o Nisolio, ou tesauro. A lingoagem da escritura he mui diferente da pratica e assi huma, como a outra he mui varia, e abundante e cõ ser tão abundante em poucas palavras cõprendem muito. A letra he cousa infinita, nem se acha pessoa que a saiba toda, porque tem duas maneiras de A b c, e cada hum de mais de corenta letras, e cada letra tem muitas figuras: e alem disto tem letra de figuras como os Chins, que he cousa que nunca se acaba de aprender. E afora estas figuras tem outras proprias pera as mesmas cousas. Tem no escrever muito engenho, e artifício porque o que se não pode explicar na lingoa se declara na letra. ( [This language is the greatest and most abundant I believe to exist because, in many aspects, it exceeds the Greek and Latin ones for it has a never-ending number of words and ways to refer the same things; plus, it implies such huge effort in learning that not only our brothers who have been living there for over twenty years, but even the native speakers are continuously learning new things. Moreover, this language has one other characteristic (which I find unique and exclusive and cannot be found in any other) which is that one can learn rhetoric and politeness through its structures. There is no soul who knows how to speak Japanese and does not immediately know how to address themselves both to the rich and the poor, and to high society and low society. Furthermore, the speakers are also aware of the decorum to be used with every one of those members of the society, since this is accomplished thanks to the fact that there are specific verbs, nouns, and ways of speaking for each of those social classes. Bearing such things in mind, our people (the priests) have been working on the art of grammar and vocabulary (or Calepino) and have also started arranging the Nisolio (or thesaurus). The language used in writing is very different from the one used in everyday speech; however, the first and the second are so rich and abundant that a few words can express a great number of meanings. As to alphabet letters, they are never-ending and one cannot find any single native speaker who knows them all because for every letter ― a, b, c ― there are over forty versions, and each letter has a lot of symbols or figures. For instance, the symbols referring to the Chins are infinite. And moreover, the variety of symbols, one can be speaking about the same things and choose different symbols that are synonyms. This way of writing must be ingenious and artful because what cannot be explained through the semantics of language must be shown by means of alphabetical letters.]
Language learning was of particular importance in achieving the desired objective, the conversion of Japanese people. In this regard, Luís Dalmeida said in November 1559: "We are all well, praise the Lord, and we practice learning the language to help these Christians" (
Brother João Fernandez de Bungo corroborates this intention:
Tambem ensina as letras de Japaõ aos filhos dos Christãos, porque antes as aprendião nos mosteiros dos seus Bonzos, onde depois de aprenderem ficavão filhos do demonio, polos muitos maos costumes e vicios que os Bõzos ensinão aos moços que tem em seus mosteiros: e por impedir este mal ordenou o padre que todos os filhos dos christãos viessem aqui a casa aprender suas mesmas letras, pera que juntamente com ellas bebessem a Doutrina Christã. ( [He also teaches Japanese lettering to the children of these Christians, because they used to first learn them in the bonzes’ monasteries, which turned these young men into children of the devil due to the bad moral behavior, customs, and habits that the bonzes taught the novices they raised in their monasteries: and so to prevent such evil, he ordered the priest that all children of the Christians would come there to learn the already mentioned lettering and through it they would receive the Christian faith.]
There are reports of priests who were completely fluent in Japanese:
Antre os irmãos que vieram a Japão, da lingoa nenhum chegou ao irmão João Frz, nem me parece que o haverá por muitos que venhão. Mas este mancebo que anda comigo tem tanta graça no que diz, que rouba os corações daqueles com quem fala: tera agora vinte e dous anos, tem muita parte da sagrada escritura na memória. ( [Among the brothers who came to Japan, no one has (or will) excelled Brother John Frz. Nevertheless, this young man who accompanies me has such grace in what he says that he steals the hearts of those he speaks to: he must now be twenty-two years old and bears in his memory a great amount of the Holy Scripture.] O irmão João Fernandez, porque sabe bem a língua de Japão se occupa em ensinar aos baptizados. ( [Brother João Fernandez, as he knows the Japanese language so well, has been spending his time teaching the baptized ones.]
Also, some grammar compendiums and vocabulary books appear in the
Por em Japão até agora não aver arte conforme a ordem que tem a latina por onde se padecia detrimento no aprender da lingoa, determinou o irmão João Fernandez (por então ter algum vagar, e desposição pera se ocupar nisso) de a fazer com suas conjugações, praeteritos, sintaxi e mais regras necessárias cõ dous vocabulos por ordem do alfabeto hum que começa em Portugues, e outro na mesma lingoa. Gastou em compor isto seis ou sete meses, até que pela bondade de Deos lhe deu fim, não perdendo nada de suas pregações e exercícios costumados, que foi huma das mais necessárias cousas que cá se avião mister, pera com a língoa se poder fazer fruito nas almas. ( [Because in Japan, so far, there seems to have been no art like the Latin one, which has led us to have great difficulty learning Japanese, Brother João Fernandez has decided (having always been free and willing to do so) to learn the art of this language as follows: he has taken the conjugations, verb tenses, syntax and further linguistic rules and has analyzed them in bilingual terms of comparison. In other words, the grammar rules have been applied to the Portuguese word / Japanese correspondent word pair. It took him six or seven months to do it until the moment God’s will put an end to it. Having achieved such purpose, our brother did not forget his religious mission since he maintained his preaching and usual tasks, which were the things these people were in most need of so the language would have its fruits in these people’s souls.]
In addition to mentioning this problem in the
Luís Fróis himself, in collaboration with João Fernandes, also began in 1563:
(...) huma traça da primeira arte que se fez em Japão, ordenando suas conjugações e sintaxis, e hum pedaço de vocabulario, mas como ainda era novo na terra e tinha tão pouca noticia da lingua, não foi mais que huma previa despozissão, que depois podesse dar luz à Arte e vocabulario, que se fez dahi a perto de vinte anos. ( [... a draft of the first art documents ever made in Japan, by organizing all the conjugations, and syntax, and a short list of vocabulary. However, because I had recently arrived in that land and had little information about the language, that draft was no more than a primary raw material that could eventually give birth to Art and vocabulary, which were to be achieved only about twenty years later.]
Father Gaspar Coelho, in his annual letter of 1582, refers to books of the same genre but does not specify his authorship: “The Art of Japanese has been improved this year, and we hold lists of vocabulary and some treatises in Japanese.” (
According to Barbosa Machado, of all the authors mentioned in the letters, there is only an indication of books in Japanese by three authors: Father Balthazar Gago, Duarte da Silva, and Gaspar Vilela. Father Balthazar Gago declared to have written “in Japanese the treatise which clearly shows the great difference that there is between the law of Christ and that of Japan" (
Among the best-known works of this interculturality, three stand out:
If the dictionary and vocabulary are major works of Eurasian lexicography, the best-known of all works published in Japan by Portuguese missionaries is the
João Rodrigues still has the merit of clarifying many problems about the Japanese language, being the only source to know the pronunciation of Japanese words at that time, due to ignoring the phonetic correspondence of Chinese characters that Japanese uses and that have since evolved and whose pronunciation has been changed (
In volume I of this work, João Rodrigues deals with nouns, pronouns, and verbs. In the chapter on verbs, Rodrigues presents a work that can be considered unprecedented, not only at that time but also in the modern grammars of the Japanese language. The fact that Rodrigues defined the various tenses of a verb, applying to them the complicated system of conjugation of Portuguese verbs, deserves great admiration from the Japanese reader. An essentially anti-grammatical language, Japanese is now spoken, written, and read by about 130 million people, with no one, with rare exceptions, being able to structure a grammar as did Father João Rodrigues almost four centuries ago, as Doi (1976) mentions in the introduction of the facsimile edition.
In the context of conjugations, from the personal infinitive to the present imperative, Rodrigues attributes to the Japanese language the appropriate use of each conjugated verb, distinguishing them only by means of suffixes. Doi draws the reader's attention to the variations in meaning resulting from the classification, sometimes in the present of the indicative, sometimes in the imperfect future of the conjunctive, or even in the conditional, in which the grammatical deficiency imposes on the spoken language a differentiation of sound, therefore distinct from the written language.
In the second part of his
In the chapter on the practical application of the rules, the explanations offered by João Rodrigues are even more detailed. Here, several etymological problems are raised, referencing the history of Japan's relations with China and Mongolia. This chapter refers to the Chinese characters integrated into the Japanese language, perfected with the invention of
Regarding auxiliary particles, whose variety and abundance are perhaps unique in the history of human civilization, Rodrigues reveals a deep knowledge, with examples based on the literary archives that were scarce at that time.
The author also dedicates a long chapter to the proper names of emperors, feudal lords, and high dignitaries of the shogunate and to localities related to Western activities in Japan. He also cites the designations of the imperial era, comparing them with the years of the Christian calendar. This exhaustive work has the value of acting as an introduction to the geography and history of Japan.
In the third part, Rodrigues goes beyond the objectives of grammar and discusses about style, using more than twelve pages with rules and etiquette on writing letters. He also adds a brief but detailed treatise on weights, measures, and number systems, as well as a table of conversions.
Na parte final, envereda pela História e apresenta uma longa lista dos imperadores japoneses, expondo ainda a origem do budismo, confucionismo e taoísmo na China e sugerindo que os chineses seriam descendentes das tribos de Israel, teoria que desenvolverá na sua História. Nesta longa exposição, nomeia ainda os lendários deuses e deusas que aparecem nas antigas crónicas japonesas como Nihongi e Kojiki e, por fim, inclui uma cronologia comparativa, com início em Adão e termo no nascimento de Cristo. ( [In the final part, he goes through history and presents a long list of Japanese emperors, also exposing the origin of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism in China and suggesting that the Chinese would be descendants of the tribes of Israel, a theory that will develop in its history. In this long exhibition, he also names the legendary gods and goddesses that appear in ancient Japanese chronicles such as Nihongi and Kojiki and, finally, includes a comparative chronology, beginning with Adam and ending with the birth of Christ.]
In linguistic and communication terms, we cannot fail to mention Rodrigues'treatment of "particles" in his
(...) em quanto particula se pospoem às rayzes de todas as particulas que se ajuntão a os verbos, assi honorativas, como humiliativas, como tambem às que signifycão fazer, sem alterar nada sua significação. Vt, [As for particles, they add the radicals of all particles, which they connect to verbs. This is the case for honorific as well as humiliative particles, which means to do without changing its meaning, as in
Rodrigues also examines the most usual address forms used by Japanese people in writing styles, such as in religious texts (
Podemos dizer que no vso em que agora anda tem sentido, de [
Rodrigues believed that the most common address forms or honorable degree particles were ‑
He hũa voz que parece significar como entre nos, [ Estas duas vozes significam propriamente [
However, the main address form, used only to speak to the king, was
Yei, id est, Chocu. Estas particulas seruem soomente pera el rey, e significam o mesmo rey. id est. Vŏ, e se antepoem aos nomes do Coye. Vt, Yeiran, id est, Vio el Rey, Yeican, id est, Guiocan, Lolucu El Rey, Yeirio, id est, Yeixin, id est, Micocoro, o coraçam del Rey [...]. (Rodrigues 1604–1608: 160v) [
João Rodrigues also had already described, e.g., the (postponed) particle ‑
Vye. Esta particula significa superior supremo, et cetera. Como quando dizemos Vye, id est, Vye sama […] He vsada por particula de honra falando de molheres, e se pospoem aos nomes das pessoas que honra. Vt, Fauavye, A Senhora mãy. Vovye, a senhora da casa, ou mulher do Tono. (Rodrigues 1604-1608: 159v) [
Similarly, -
Goien, Go. A primeira particula destas duas serue soomente pera molheres, e as honra a modo de, Sama. por respeito das pessoas nobres a quem pertencem as taes molheres. Vt Fauagoien, Foioquegoienm Toquinagoien. (Rodrigues 1604-1608: 160 v) [
As we had the opportunity to demonstrate, in specific research on the first grammatical encoding of Japanese Politeness, “Rodrigues describes female particles used only by the lower to higher status women and not the reverse, as Ide does, and he does not know how the seventeenth-century younger generation spoke, as Clarke describes for the contemporary era.” (
After an introductory note where we present a non-exhaustive bibliographical review on the paper’s subject, we have listed in the second chapter a wide range of data on the Portuguese language and the participation Portuguese had in the description of the languages of Asia, from a historiographical perspective. We also have highlighted the efforts done by the crown and its inability to continue this enterprise, with the religious orders and, in particular, the Jesuits taking the reins of the most extraordinary civilizational encounter provided by the Portuguese language.
Through some Jesuit epistolography, we have seen the herculean work carried out by missionaries, especially the Jesuits but also other religious orders, to learn the languages of the people found by the Portuguese and teach Portuguese to these new people, as well as describing the Japanese language. We finished the work with some linguistic reflection on the extraordinary grammar by João Rodrigues, who exerted a considerable influence on the Japanese language that would have been even greater had it not been for the prohibition of Christianity and the extinction of typography in 1614. His work was the first, and for a long time the only, attempt at scientific study of the Japanese language, and was the main source of the first Euro-Japanese grammatical works published in the mid-nineteenth century. The work shows an innovative aspect by including particles in the parts of speech due to the influence of contemporary philological studies in Japan. Even today, grammarians call particles to the words that do not integrate into any of the word classes. Rodrigues had already seen the pragmatic-conversational value in some particles, depending on their “good use”, the “right”, “correct”, “proper speaking,” and their “misuse”, “informal and improper” (
In effect, Rodrigues was one of the most original grammarians and deserves to be classified as the father of Japanese linguistics studies, as
This research project was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), through the Center for Studies in Letters (CEL), reference no. UIDP/00707/2020, Portugal. A preliminary version of this paper was published in Portuguese (