The True Editor of the Manuductio ad linguam Tunkinensem (Seventeenth- to Eighteenth-Century Vietnamese Grammar)

The objective of this paper is to analyze the first two Vietnamese grammars written in Latin: (1) LinguaeAnnamiticae seu Tunchinensis Brevis Declaratio (1651), by Alexandre de Rhodes; and (2) Manuductio ad linguam Tunckinensem, a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century anonymous manuscript. Roland Jacques (2002) concluded that the editor of the Manuductio was Honufer Bürgin, and that Rhodes and Bürgin worked independently of each other starting with the same reference: the grammar of Francisco de Pina. This article also proposes a hypothesis about who the true editor of the Manuductio was.