Re: (hist) Chu Viet Nam (Vietnam-Portugal)

[ThuanQ Tran <thuanqt@yahoo.com>]

Great write-up.  Thanks.

--- hoang tran le <h9852272@idefix.wu-wien.ac.at> wrote:
> Toi moi doc bai nay ve Chu+* nghia~  Vie^.t Nam, 
> forward lai co bac nao nha ta quan tam doc cung hay
> hay. 
> 
> Cheers, Vu Xuan Quang
> ---------------------------------
> 
> Subject:      Relations between Vietnam and Portugal
> in the 17th century
> 
> 
> Arts and Literary E-Magazine (Va(n Ho.c Nghe^.
> Thua^.t) 463, 13/8/99
> 
> Pham Van Huong
> 
> University of Bordeaux 1; 351 Cours Liberation,
> 33405 Talence, France
> Fax: 33 556 848402. E-mail:
> huong@morgane.lsmc.u-bordeaux.fr
> 
> Since the beginning of the 16th century, the
> relations between most
> European countries and the Far East intensify
> everywhere according to
> an unchangeable chronological diagram: the arrival
> of Christian
> missionaries, then of cannons and some merchants.
> 
> The relations between Vietnam and Portugal are of a
> very different
> character. In the dawn of the 17th century, the
> contact between
> Portugal, that was called "Lusitania", and Vietnam
> only lasted about
> thirty years, but this brief meeting let some very
> deep prints.
> 
> THE VIETNAMESE WRITING
> 
> Well that since nearly two thousand years, Vietnam
> received a strong
> influence of the Han culture coming from the North,
> especially during
> the period spreading from the third century BC to
> the 9th century of
> this era, Vietnamese people always had their own
> writing: the chu-nom,
> an ensemble of idiogrammes reassembling the Chinese
> characters and
> signs permitting to describe Vietnamese sounds and
> words, words that
> don't have root in the Chinese terminology. These
> merely Vietnamese
> words represent nearly fifty percent of the
> vocabulary, the other half
> being the sino-vietnamese terms of Chinese origin.
> Let's take the
> "Sai-gon" word for example. This term comes from the
> sino-vietnamese
> word "Tāy-co^'ng" that wants to say western
> tributary offering, the
> land reserved by Vietnam to the emperor of China to
> shelter the
> undesirable individuals of the Chinese court. This
> term pronounces
> itself "Sai-kun" in Cantonese and by Bay-kaun in
> Cham language. Whereas
> the Chinese district of Saigon is called "Cho-lon",
> a merely Vietnamese
> name that wants to say big-market.
> 
> In the years 1614-1624, Vietnam received the visit
> of Francisco de
> PINA, a Portuguese missionary of the Jesus' Company.
> This father learns
> languages of the Far East very quickly, in
> particular the Vietnamese,
> the Chinese and the Japanese. He teaches in turn, in
> Macao and in
> Vietnam, the Vietnamese to the other missionaries
> anxious to establish
> their ministry in the last country. F. de PINA will
> pass the end of his
> life in Vietnam and dies in a typhon at the large of
> Danang.
> 
> Among his disciples in Vietnamese language, are
> Gaspar do Amaral, born
> in 1591in Vizieu, Portugal, and Antonii BARBOSA born
> in 1595, all these
> two Jesuit missionaries having finished their
> theological studies in
> Coļmbra and in Evora, Portugal. Joins himself to
> them, another Jesuit
> missionary born in Avignon, France, named Alexander
> RHODES as it can be
> seen on his manuscripted letters, before his
> engagement to the Far
> East. This one named himself with particle of
> nobility Alexander de
> RHODES on his return, before passing the last left
> of his life in
> Lebanon and there to die.
> 
> During their stay in Vietnam, do Amaral and Barbosa,
> with the aid of
> local Vietnamese followers, undertook an immense
> work while using the
> Latin alphabet, transcribing phonetically the
> Vietnamese terms and
> share the task to write the first dictionaries. G.
> do Amaral is in
> charge of the Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary
> and A. Barbosa the
> Portuguese-Vietnamese-Latin dictionary.
> 
> The modern Vietnamese writing was then born and
> carried the name of chu
> quoc ngu, literally "writing of the national
> language". After more than
> fifteen living years and intensive work, these two
> missionaries leave
> Vietnam and go to Macao. From this city, they
> continue to furrow seas
> for works of the Jesuit mission. A typhon (derived
> from the chinese
> taļ-phong that wants to say big wind, writen in
> English) carries them
> two away in depths of the China sea, at the large of
> Macao one day of
> February 1646.
> 
> These missionaries let in Macao their manuscripts
> before their wreck.
> The Dictionaries of Amaral and Barbosa are known and
> are used by all,
> in particular by Alexander Rhodes. The last lived at
> the Mission in
> Macao after the death of Amaral and Barbosa.
> 
> Some years later Alexander Rhodes goes to Rome and
> publishes in 1654 a
> Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary under the
> name of Alexander de
> Rhodes. Let's recall that this last is of French
> origin from Avignon.
> He also signs seven other books but none of these
> books does carry the
> mark of the Portuguese language well that it was the
> language of
> travelers of the time.
> 
> I put in doubt the knowledge of this individual with
> regard to the
> Vietnamese latin writing, the chu quoc-ngu. Already
> on the cover of
> this dictionary, in the title of the book, the Annam
> word - probably
> one of the rare words of Vietnamese consonance that
> he wrote - appears
> with a mistake, Annnam. And inside this dictionary,
> the Vietnamese
> writing carries the merely Portuguese marks, which
> are not easily
> adopted by someone of another country. The u vowel
> pronounces itself
> "oo", the nh pronounces itself ng in French....
> Terms designating days
> of the week also have a Portuguese origin; Monday
> for example
> translates itself in Vietnamese as thu hai, the
> second; Tuesday
> translates itself as thu ba, the third. Only in
> Portuguese, Monday
> designates itself by feria segundo and Tuesday by
> feria tertio and so
> on... In all other languages, French, English,...
> Monday counts itself
> as "first" day of the week, Tuesday the "second" day
> etc... This
> reference to the Holy Writings is particular to
> Portugal, and by way of
> consequence, to the Vietnamese writing.
> 
> Father Manual Teixera, a Portuguese Jesuit
> missionary of 84 years just
> as I met him in Macao, made me part of his deep
> conviction that Rhodes
> signed a dictionary that he never wrote.
> 
> It would be certainly the same conviction that
> motivated the Catholic
> Portuguese Church to refuse to Rhodes a second
> mission in the Southeast
> Asia when Rhodes solicited this organism, after the
> publication of the
> famous dictionary. Let's recall that at that time,
> the Portuguese
> Church was in charge of evangilization missions in
> the Far East.
> 
=== message truncated ===

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