Francisco de Pina | |
|---|---|
 Francisco de Pina (left) &Alexandre de Rhodes (right), two missionaries that had the great impact on developing the newchữ Quốc ngữ. | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1585 |
| Died | 15 December 1625(1625-12-15) (aged 39–40) |
| Nationality |  Portugal |
| Denomination | Roman Catholicism |
Francisco de Pina (Portuguese pronunciation:[fɾɐ̃ˈsiʃkuðɨˈpinɐ]; 1585 – 1625) was a PortugueseJesuit interpreter, missionary and priest, credited with creating the firstLatinized script of theVietnamese language, which the modernVietnamese alphabet is based on.
Francisco de Pina was born inGuarda, Portugal, in 1585 and entered the Jesuit order in 1605.[1] In the years between 1611 and 1617 he studied atSt. Paul's College, Macau, where he was exposed to the works ofJoão Rodrigues Tçuzu.[1] The latter was a Portuguese Jesuit who had pioneered transliteration of Japanese into Latin alphabet using phonetics of thePortuguese language. João Rodrigues Tçuzu arrived inMacau from Japan in 1614, 6 years after completing his most famous work aboutJapanese grammar,Arte da Lingoa de Iapam.
Francisco de Pina arrived inĐàng Trong (calledCochinchina by Europeans at the time) in 1617 in order to replace the JesuitDiogo de Carvalho in the missionary work of evangelization developed together with the ItalianFrancesco Buzomi in modern Vietnam since 1615.[2] At the time there were two Portuguese Jesuit residences inĐàng Trong: modernHội An andQui Nhơn. Pina took residence inHội An, but his missionary work was spread between the twoJesuit missions.
Francisco de Pina drowned at sea in modernCửa Đại on 15 December 1625 while trying to rescue guests on a wrecked boat.[1] His body was buried in an unknown location in Hội An.[3]
Although no works of Francisco de Pina survive today, he is considered to be the first European able to speak fluent Vietnamese, a skill which he used in his missionary work.[4] Pina believed that such skill was a fundamental part of the evangelization work, and repeatedly accused his fellow clergymen of not acting in the same manner.[5] Pina pioneered the method of recording the Vietnamese language with Latin characters, which forms the basis of the modernVietnamese alphabet, while teaching his disciples the Vietnamese language. The most famous of these isAlexandre de Rhodes, who published in 1651 in Rome theDictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum, a trilingual dictionary between Vietnamese, Portuguese andLatin compiled by Alexandre de Rhodes from the work of various Portuguese Jesuits (among whichGaspar do Amaral,António Barbosa,António de Fontes and Francisco de Pina himself).
Francisco de Pina compiled a first vocabulary of the Vietnamese language in 1619, and reported to his superiors having composed a treatise on orthography and phonetics in 1622 or 1623.[6]Some scholars[1][7] have argued that Pina is responsible for writing a grammar based on whichHonufer Bürgin compiled and edited the textManuductio ad Linguam Tunkinensem independently of the work of Alexandre de Rhodes.[1]Other scholars have challenged this conclusion by gathering evidence that theManuductio ad Linguam Tunkinensem was written byPhilippus Sibin using theDictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum of Alexandre de Rhodes as a reference.[6]
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