Expert: M.G. Sheftall - 4/16/2009

Question
QUESTION: This isn't specifically Japanese history, but it still somewhat counts.

My question is, How did the first Portuguese sailors and missionaries learn to speak Japanese if it was a language they had not encountered before?

ANSWER: John,

Your question is indeed relevant to Japanese history -- which might have been very different if the first Jesuit missionaries who arrived here had had better luck with their Japanese skills!

To the best of my knowledge, the Portuguese were forced to translate back and forth between their language via Chinese, which was already known by educated Japanese, and to a much lower level of proficiency by the Portuguese (n.b., when Perry anchored here in Japan in 1853, Dutch was useful as a common second language).

Still, the going was rough indeed. In fact, (later St.) Francis Xavier was said to have remarked in exasperation over the language something to the effect that Japanese had to have been crafted by the Devil himself, so confounding was the tongue to the spreading of the Gospel.

I wish I could give you a reference citation for this, but with a little Googling, you should be able to find something.

M.G. Sheftall



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you very much for the response to my first question. It was very helpful, so now I just have one more question.

If the missionaries translated back and forth between Chinese and Japanese in order to learn the latter, than how did they first learn Chinese when they discovered China?

Answer
John,

The Portuguese had already encountered Chinese by this point in the context of their trade interests in the East Indies (today's Malaysia and Indonesia, where the Chinese were a mercantile presence far before the arrival of Westerners).

Now, how the original Portuguese/Chinese encounters went over, I am not sure, but I would presume that the mutual second language in that case would have been a kind of "trader's Arabic" (with which Iberian Peninsular residents the Portuguese were all too familiar, having been under Moorish occupation for centuries until just recently by this point).

And the Arabs had arrived in the area (thus the huge Islamic populations there) centuries before either of them.

Hope this has helped,

M.G. Sheftall