Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum

The Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (known in Vietnamese as Tự điển Việt-Bồ-La) is a trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary written by the French Jesuit lexicographer Alexandre de Rhodes after 12 years in Vietnam.

It was published by the Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1651, upon Rhodes's visit to Europe, along with his catechism Phép giảng tám ngày.

[1] From the 17th century, Western missionaries started to devise a romanization system that represented the Vietnamese language to facilitate the propagation of the Christian faith, which culminated in the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum of Alexandre de Rhodes.

[1] The publication also incorporates a summary on Vietnamese grammar (Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis Brevis Declaratio) and the codification of some contemporary pronunciations.

[3] Despite those efforts, Christian publications in Vietnam continued to use either Latin or the traditional Vietnamese chữ Nôm, rather than the simpler alphabetic Quốc ngữ, for the next 200 years.

Title page of the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum . Note the spelling mistake of the word Annamiticum , as it has three n s.
First page of Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum .
The Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes created the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum .