A study of 17^<th> century manuscript of Konkani-Portuguese dictionary

2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 16520264
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Nanzan University
• Principal Investigator: MARUYAMA Toru Nanzan University, Faculty of Humanities, Professor, 人文学部, 教授 (40165949)
• Project Period (FY): 2004 – 2005
• Keywords: Konkani / Portuguese / Society of Jesus / Time of Discovery / Linguistic Studies / Dictionary / Christian Documents

Research Abstract

One of the main research results of this project is a publication of a private edition of the Konkani-Portuguese dictionary compiled by Jesuits and revised by Father Diogo Ribeiro in 1626. The need for this publication is based on the following two reasons. First of all, as an Indo-European language spoken in India, the Konkani vocabulary is not easily available in any documented form, either printed or electronic (except 19^<th> century Dalgado's Konkani-Portuguese dictionary which is extremely difficult to obtain these days). Even Ralph Turner's A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages contains not more than 800 Konkani words in the index. Secondly, as missionary linguistic studies by Jesuits, Thomas Steven's Konkani grammar and his Christian Doctrine, written in Konkani, were published already in the 17th century, while no Konkani-Portuguese dictionary has been published so far. I believe that these reasons justify the publication of this manuscript.
In the midsummer of 1999, I happened to come across 697 carbon-copied sheets of a typewritten manuscript entitled Vocabulario da lingoa Canarim in a storehouse of a secondhand bookstore in Lisbon, Portugal. In the following year, by the courtesy of Ames Library of South Asia, University of Minnesota, I was able to obtain a xerox copy of the original manuscript, which led me to make this printed version of the Konkani-Portuguese dictionary (=the 400 pages final research report published in March, 2006). Basically I have input the alphabetical data according to the typewritten version, and the diacritic marks according to the xerox copy of the original manuscript.