Texto escrito para uma colega romena que é professora de japonês num liceu de Bucareste – 5 de Maio de 2004.

By 1543, Japanese people heard, for the first time, the sounds of a strange and distant language. This was the beginning of a cooperation which left a testimony until now.

During a century, until 1639, Portugal carried to Japan a valuable contribution in the field of modern sciences and took there the news about European arts. 1582 is considered the golden period of the so-called “Portuguese age in Japan”; but in 1623, the conflict between the two peoples increased in a definitive way, mainly because of religious reasons, and the separation happened…

However, if the opportunities were lost, something remained from that period.

It is historically recognized that the Portuguese let them know the grape-wine, the bread, the gunpowder, the rifle, the European textiles… The importation of foreign products means also the importation of its names and designations. So, Portuguese and Japanese mutually exchanged words that were adopted in different fields of life such as food, clothes, commerce, religion, culture, technology, and so on…

From the Japanese influence, in the Portuguese vocabulary remain words like “biombo”, “catana”, “quimono”, “chá”, ”haraquiri”, among many others.

In the Japanese language there are more or less 4000 words with a Portuguese root and origin, revealing, however, a phonetical adaptation, although some of them are no longer used in current language. “Arigatô” is perhaps the most known example. Here are a few examples picked up from different semantic areas:

Japanese word	Portuguese source
arigatô  koppu  karuta haka  orugan astrorarabyo kapitan  saya shuchim  karusan botan boro pan tempura   kasutera	obrigado (thank you) copo (glass for liquid drink) carta (card) faca (knife) órgão (musical organ) astrolábio (instrument for navigation) capitão (captain) saia (skirt) setim (satin) calção (short pants) botão (button) bolo (sweet cake) pão (bread) têmpora, tempero  castela – it is a quite interesting story about this cake, still made like in the 16th century!

bobura etc., etc., etc.

abóbora (pumpkin) etc., etc., etc.

Recently I read an interesting article about the the Japanese waves of immigration towards Brazil occurred over 85 years in the last 20^th century – the “Dakasegin”, have you already heard? The author noticed the adaptation and linguistic importation, by the Japanese immigrants, of some modern words from the Brazilian/Portuguese language. I remember a few examples:

I feel this is a quite interesting subject, about which we could make some investigation…