Writing and Printing

Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum

The Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (known in Vietnamese as Tự điển Việt-Bồ-La) is a trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary written by the French Jesuit lexicographer Alexandre de Rhodes after 12 years in Vietnam. It was published by the Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1651, upon Rhodes's visit to Europe, along with his catechism Phép giảng tám ngày. The dictionary has 8,000 Vietnamese entries with glosses in Portuguese and Latin. The dictionary established chữ Quốc ngữ, the Vietnamese alphabet, which was refined by later missionaries and eventually became the predominant writing system for Vietnamese. However, Christian publications in Vietnam continued to use either Latin or the traditional Vietnamese chữ Nôm for the next 200 years, instead of the simpler alphabetic Quốc ngữ. Quốc ngữ only gained predominance after the French invasion of 1858 and the establishment of French Indochina.

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See also

• ▸Bouyei language
• ▸Geography of Hong Kong
• ▸Detroit Public Library Main Branch

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