RHODES (Alexandre de). Dictionarium annamiticum lusitanum et - Lot 188

RHODES (Alexandre de). Dictionarium annamiticum lusitanum et latinum Romæ, typis et sumptibus ejusdem sacrae congregationis, 1651. In-4, (6)-900 col.-(1 bl.)-(5)-(176)-31p., contemporary soft vellum with flaps, smooth spine, renewed brown calf title-piece, crowned numeral stamped at foot, gilt place and date (spine greyed out, book I replaced with adhesive in margin, browned ff. russ.) Uncommon first edition of this dictionary containing some 8,000 Annamite entries, with their translation into Portuguese and Latin: dedication, notice to the reader, (8 p.), the dictionary itself on 2 columns numbered from 1 to 900, 182 unnumbered pages which include the errata, an Index latini sermonis and in fine a 31 p. fascicule bearing the title: Linguae annamiticae seu tunchinensis brevis declaratio. Some leaves in the body of the work are blank. Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660) was admitted to the Jesuits in 1612, and set sail for the East Indies in the spring of 1619. He went first to Goa and then to Macao. Prevented from entering Japan by persecution, he was sent to Cochinchina in 1624; within a few months, he had mastered enough Annamese to preach in the language. A linguist and polyglot pedagogue, he perfected the first phonetic and romanized transcription of the Vietnamese language, and eventually gave Vietnam its own script: qu?c ng? (official national script in 1945). After six stays in Vietnam between 1624 and 1645, he had this trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary published in Rome by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (Sommervogel VI, 1718). Provenance: Guelfe de Lailhacar (armorial bookplate and gilded numeral on spine).