Nippo Jisho

The Vocabulario da Lingoa de IAPAM com Adeclaração em Portugues ( Vocabulary of the Japanese language with Portuguese Explanations), in Japan as Nippo Jisho (日 葡 辞书, Japanese- Portuguese dictionary ) is known, one in 1603 by the the Society of Jesus in Nagasaki printed groundbreaking dictionary.

Compilation and Publication

Unlike the shops of merchants who got along with a minimum of vocabulary, knowledge of the language played in the European missionaries in Japan a very important role, which is why with the Society of Jesus soon after landing of the pioneer Francis Xavier in 1549 language studies began. Probably designed by Fr personal glossaries of words and phrases, which they shared, improved and new arrivals set available. As far as can be seen from the correspondence, it worked in 1581 Funai ( Oita today ) and in 1585 the Seminary of Arima (now Minami- Shimabara ) on a Japanese- Portuguese glossary. After the arrival of European printing press in 1591 it was then able to print Japanese text into Latin letters.

1595 appeared a Latin - Portuguese- Japanese dictionary, where you had expanded the famous dictionary of the Italian lexicographers Ambrogio Calepino to Japanese translations. Between 1604 and 1608 then a groundbreaking Grammar Arte da Lingoa de IAPAM has been printed, which had created João Rodrigues, an eminent expert on the language and culture. Most likely it was Rodrigues ( ca.1561/62-1633 ), who held the lead in the compilation of the Japanese- Portuguese dictionary. Preparations in which Japanese Christians were involved, went on for many years. 1603 was the band in Nagasaki, the main base of the Jesuits in Japan, printed, and the following year a " Supplement " extended.

The print run of the first issue of 1603 is not known. Many of the escalating volumes fell in those years of persecution of Christianity to the victim. Today only four copies known. 1630 a Spanish version was published in Manila, and in the 19th century, Leon Pagès published a French edition. The Japanese translation of 1980 is useful in the search for Chinese characters. The edition of 1603 appeared in 1960 in the Japanese publishing Iwanami Shoten as facsimile printing, another reproduction was the publisher Benseisha in the years 1973 and 1975 out.

Content

The " Vocabvlario because Lingoa de IAPAM " includes 32 293 tags that were transliterated into Latin letters and in accordance with the then Portuguese conventions listed in alphabetical order. Regional differences between the space and the Kyushu region around Kyoto were considered as well as differences between the colloquial and literary language. Women's language, child language, vulgar forms and Buddhist terms are also marked as such.

While many travelers to Japan end of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Engelbert Kaempfer and Carl Peter Thunberg simply states held their phonetic impressions in Latin letters in the recording of Japanese words, considered the Jesuits in their transliteration of the morphological structure and the syllabary characters of the Japanese and developed long before the today's popular system of James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911), a structured and quickly learnable system. It reflects phonetic peculiarities of the Japanese language and means for language historians of great value. Today and Japanese lexicons and dictionaries use the " Vocabulario " as a reference tool for first-time evidence of certain words.

Editions

• Vocabvlario because Lingoa de IAPAM com Adeclaração em Portugues ... feito por algvns Padres e Companhia de Jesus IRMÃOS since. Nangasaqui: Companhia de Jesus, 1603.
• Vocabvlario de Iapon declarado primero en portvgves por los Padres de la Compania de IESVS de Aquel reyno, y agora en castellano en el Colegio de Santo Tomas de Manila. De Manila por Tomas Pinpin, y Iacinto Magauriua: Ano de 1630th
• Léon Pagès: Dictionnaire francais - japonais traduit Dictionnaire du japonais - portugais composé par les Mission Aires de la Compagnie de Jésus. Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1868 (online MDZ Munich = Google Books).
• Doi, Tadao / Morita, Takeshi / Chonan, Minoru: Nippo Jisho Hōyaku. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1980.