2023 Volume 19 Issue 2 Pages 1-19
“羅葡日辞書” (1595, originally titled “Dictionarium Latino-Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum”) was published in Japan by the Society of Jesus. The Latin entry words were based on the Latin dictionary “Calepinus,” and the interpretation was given in Portuguese and Japanese. “羅葡日辞書” has long been known as a lexical resource for medieval and early modern Japanese, but its use in research on the history of Japanese vocabulary has been limited as there are no Japanese translations of Latin and Portuguese.
I extracted approximately 100 unknown words from the Japanese vocabulary in “羅葡日辞書,” translated them with reference to Portuguese, and identified their meanings. Because these vocabularies include words related to grammatical and phonological studies as well as lexical studies, multiple studies can be derived from these vocabularies. Moreover, since the analysis of the Portuguese in “羅葡日辞書” is inadequate, I would like to advance it through international joint research with Portuguese and Brazilian researchers.
The Japanese transitions in “羅葡日辞書” often include both Kango (Chinese compound words) and Wago (native Japanese words). As explained in the legend of the book, this feature results from the abundance of the Japanese vocabulary, but it is a noteworthy feature that there are many compound Wago words in unknown words. This is because the interpretation is provided by new compounding Japanese words with a high degree of transparency in meaning to identify Kango homonyms that are difficult to properly identify in Roman alphabet writing. Indicating the guidance to the notation of each Kanji by the Japanese Wakun (Japanese reading of Kanji) is ingenuous in that it anticipates the method in “日葡辞書” (1603-04, Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary: originally titled “Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam”). We can consider the system of specifying Kanji notation by Roman alphabet writing in “羅葡日辞書” as one of the foundations for “日葡辞書.”
