Lexicography in the Philippines (1600–1800)

Spanish missionary lexicography in America and the Philippines is extensive and deserving of detailed research. In the Philippines, from 1600 up to 1898, more than fifty vocabularies were published in thirteen different languages. Alongside these are numerous vocabularies preserved only as manuscripts and others that are known to be lost. Following some recent publications on Philippine lexicography, in particular bibliographic surveys and studies of specific vocabularies (­García-Medall 2004, 2009; Sueiro Justel 2003; Fernández Rodríguez 2009, 2012), as well as Smith-Stark’s (2009) work on Mexican lexicography, this paper presents a contrastive analysis of the lexicographic styles of seven Philippine vocabularies of five different languages: Tagalog, Visayan, Pampango, ­Bicol and Ilokano. Through examination of the lexicographic characteristics of the most important vocabularies written in the first two centuries of Spanish presence in the Philippines (1600–1800), the present writer tries to establish the lexicographical models used by the missionaries: whether they followed the existing models (mainly Nebrija, Molina and Calepino) or if they created a novel Philippine model. The authors of these vocabularies were missionaries of different Orders: Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuits. All these vocabularies are bilingual and bidirectional, with the sole exception of the unidirectional Ilokano vocabulary.