Diego Collados Grammar of the Japanese Language | Page 4

the Ars Grammaticae Iaponicae Linguae consisted to no
small degree of abridging the exhaustive material contained in
Rodriguez' grammar and arranging it within the framework of Lebrija's
Introductiones.
To say that Collado followed Lebrija in the general structure of his
description is not to imply that he fell heir to all of his precursor's
virtues. The Salamanca grammar of 1481 is a masterpiece of orderly
presentation. Printed in lettera formata with carefully indented
subdivisions, it offers the student a clear display of the conjugational
system as well as long columns of Latin examples of a given
grammatical structure, accompanied on the right side of the page with
Spanish equivalents. Collado makes little effort at copying this orderly
display. There are in his presentation no paradigms, but instead only
loosely connected sentences that talk the student through the various
forms of the conjugation; and there is no orderly array of examples.
Add to this the innumerable factual and typographical errors, and one is
left with a presentation that lacks most of the basic scholarly virtues of
its precursor.
A similar criticism may be leveled against the work from the point {6}
of view of Rodriguez' influence. Without matching the Introductiones
in orderliness, the Arte more than compensates for its casual format by
containing a mass of exhaustively collected and scrupulously presented
linguistic data.[6] There was available no better source than the Arte

from which Collado might have culled his examples of Japanese.
One doubt that remains in assessing Collado's use of Rodriguez'
material is that perhaps his presentation of the most readily
understandable material in the Arte is not so much an effort on his part
to simplify the learning of Japanese for his students, as it is a reflection
of his lack of adequate familiarity with the language he was teaching.
The Phonological System
A study of the phonological data reveals the Ars Grammaticae
Iaponicae Linguae to be of minimal historical value. Any student of the
phonology of early modern Japanese should turn to the far more
reliable work of Father Rodriguez. Nevertheless, certain aspects of
Collado's transcription require our attention.
The most obvious innovation in the representation of the language is
Collado's transcription with an i of the palatal consonant which all his
contemporaries record with a y. Thus in the text we find iomi and coie
(terms for native words and Chinese borrowings) where Rodriguez
writes yomi and coye. This change was affected while the text was
being translated from the Spanish manuscript which uses y; and
Collado himself must have felt the innovation to be of dubious value
since he retained y for the spellings in the Dictionarium.[7]
Collado's handling of the nasal sounds is too inconsistent to be a
reliable source for phonological data. Given his rather awkward
specification that nasalization is predictable before what we must
assume he means to be the voiced stops and affricates,[8] his grammar
presents an uncomfortably irregular pattern in the transcription of the
phenomena. Thus, on page 39 we find vo mõdori aró ca? as well as {7}
modori aró ca?. Again, what he presents as the ending z[~u]ba in his
description of the formation of the negative conditional (p. 34) appears
in tovazunba in its only occurrence in a sample sentence (p. 62). To
further confound the issue such forms as tovazunba and qinpen occur in
contrast to sambiacu, varambe, and varãbe.
In Chart 1 the traditional pattern of the goj[=u]onzu (chart of 50 sounds)

is followed as a convenient framework in which to display the
transcriptional system employed by Collado.
Chart 1
COLLADO'S TRANSCRIPTION SYSTEM
The Simple Series
/#/ /k/ /g/ /s/ /z/ /t/ /d/ /n/ /[phi]/ /b/ /p/ /m/ /y/ /r/ /w/
/a/ a ca ga sa za ta da na fa ba pa ma ia ra va /i/ i qi gui xi ji chi gi ni fi
bi pi mi - ri - /u/ u cu gu su zu tçu zzu nu fu bu pu mu iu ru - /e/ [ie] qe
gue xe je te de ne fe be pe me ie re - /o/ [vo] co go so zo to do no fo bo
po mo io ro vo
The Long Series
/au/ [vó] có gó só zó tó dó nó fó bó (pó) mó ió ró vó /uu/ ú cú (gú)(sú) -
(tçú) - - fú (bú)(pú) - iú rú - /ou/ [vô] cô (gô) sô zô tô dô nô (fô) (bô) pô
mô iô rô vô
The Palatal and Labial Series
/ky/ /sy/ /ty/ /ny/ /by/ /my/ /kw/ /gy/ /zy/ /dy/ /[phi]y/ /py/ /ry/ /gw/
/a/ (qua)(guia) xa ja cha gia (nha) fia bia pia (mia) (ria) qua gua /u/ qui
(guia) xu ju (chu)(giu)(nhu)(fiu) - - (miu) (riu) - - /o/ qio guio xo (jo)
cho gio (nho)(fio)(bio) - (mio) (rio) - -