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Paper short abstract:

João Rodriguez's Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa (1620, Macao) is the first example of using 'K' in Japanese romanization. To point out the origin of his methods, I will compare examples of the Japanese romanization in Pater-Noster by Andre Palmeiro to the Chinese romanization by Matteo Ricci.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I will describe the usage of 'K' as [k-] in the romanization of Japanese in late 16th century and early 17th century.

As the letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ, the 'K' notation is mainly used for foreign words in Latin languages including Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. Therefore, European missionaries in Japan in the 16th century used 'C' or 'Q', not 'K', when they romanized the pronunciation of [k-] of Japanese. João Rodriguez's Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa [Nihon shōbunten (The Small Grammar Book of Japanese Language)] (1620, Macao) seems to be the first example of the use of 'K' in the romanization of the Japanese language. Rodriguez's spelling methods are based on Portuguese; therefore, CA, CU, and CO are used, but he suggested using KI and KE instead of QUI and QUE to avoid pronunciation mistakes. He also suggested using KA, KI, KU, KE, and KO as notations of conjugative suffix.

However, in this period, there were few examples of materials that adopted Rodriguez's methods. A rare example using 'K' is the Japanese translation of Pater-Noster in Epistola by Andre Palmeiro (1632, Macao). This Pater-Noster is a multilingual translation of Latin, Japanese, Chinese (Chinese characters and phonetic notation using the alphabet), and Vietnamese. The romanized notations of Japanese translation in Palmeiro's Pater-Noster are partly similar and partly dissimilar from Rodriguez's methods in Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa. For example, the notations KI as [ki] and DZU as [dzu] are similar to Rodriguez's methods, but the notation SCI as [ʃi] does not follow Rodriguez's method.

At that time in China, Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci began using the letter 'K' for romanizing Chinese pronunciation, and the notation SCI in Palmeiro's Pater-Noster is quite similar to Ricci's methods. This means that the Japanese romanization in Palmeiro's Pater-Noster uses more than one method: Rodriguez's method and Ricci's method.

I will point out the possibility that the Chinese phonetic notation used by Jesuits in China may have influenced the usage of the letter 'K' in Rodriguez's Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa.