Vietnam / France: Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660)

Alexander de Rhodes was born in Avignon, France. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rome on 24 April 1612 to dedicate his life to missionary work. He arrived in Indochina about 1619. A Jesuit mission had been established in Hanoi in 1615; Rhodes arrived there in 1620. He spent ten years in and around the Court at Hanoi during the rule of Trịnh Tùng and Trịnh Tráng.

While he was in Vietnam, he wrote the first Vietnamese Catechism and he published the first Portuguese-Latin-Vietnamese dictionary. This dictionary was later used widely by many Vietnamese scholars to create the new Vietnamese writing system, largely using the Roman alphabet - still used today and now called Quốc Ngữ (national language).

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