Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language

Metadata

Gutenberg ID

21197

Title

Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language

Language

en

Book source

Project Gutenberg

Description max 80 words

Diego Collado's 1632 grammar offers a prescriptive, Latin-framed analysis of early 17th-century Japanese, designed for missionaries. Edited by Richard L. Spear, this annotated translation preserves Collado's semantic approach while correcting errors, serving as a vital historical tool for linguistic scholarship.

Summary up to 500 words

Published in 1632, Diego Collado's *Ars Grammaticae Iaponicae Linguae* stands as the final missionary-era attempt to systematize the Japanese language through the rigid framework of Latin grammar. Edited and translated by Richard L. Spear, this work adapts Collado's original Spanish draft into Latin, reflecting the intense missionary zeal and linguistic constraints of the early 17th century. While derivative of João Rodriguez's superior 1608 *Arte*, Collado's grammar simplifies the language structure, focusing specifically on colloquial speech rather than the written forms detailed by Rodriguez. The text is prescriptive, designed to equip missionaries with the polite speech patterns essential for interacting with Japanese society without causing offense. Collado meticulously categorizes Japanese verbs into active, passive, neutral, and impersonal forms, organizing them according to declensions and conjugations derived from Antonio Lebrija's Latin models. A significant portion of the work addresses honorific particles, such as *maraxi*, *tamai*, and *rare*, which denote varying degrees of respect for superiors, deities, or equals. The grammar introduces specific rules for forming potential, negative, and conditional verbs, often transforming basic roots with particles to indicate humility or reverence. For instance, the verb *cui* (to eat) changes to *cui maraxi* when spoken by a servant to a master. The text also covers adverbs, prepositions, and irregular verbs, though it notably treats Japanese arithmetic with skepticism, acknowledging its reliance on obscure data. Collado's approach is heavily influenced by Rodriguez's *Arte*, adopting its examples and descriptions while filtering them through a Latin semantic lens. This method classifies Japanese forms based on their equivalence to Latin concepts, such as treating certain constructions as infinitives due to their semantic similarity to Latin infinitives. Ultimately, the *Ars Grammaticae* serves as an invaluable document for understanding how European scholars conceptualized non-Indo-European languages before the emergence of modern descriptive linguistics, offering unique insight into the historical application of pre-Cartesian grammatical theory to the Japanese language.

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Categories

• Grammar
• Language