Manuel da Assumpção was a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 who wrote the first grammar of Bengali language

Bengali language

Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...

 (Bangla language), titled Vocabulary of Bangla language and Portuguese, divided in two parts (archaic ).

Grammar and Dictionary

The grammar was written in Portuguese language

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

. Assumpção wrote this first grammatical instructions of Bengali language between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in Bhawal estate

Bhawal Estate

Bhawal Estate was a large zamindari estate in Bengal in modern-day Bangladesh. Bhawal Estate spread over and covered 2,274 villages with the combined population around 500,000, many of them tenant farmers...

, now in Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

. The grammar consists of two sections, the first is a brief grammar of the Bangla language and the second a Bangla-Portuguese and Portuguese-Bangla dictionary.
The book was published in 1743 in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

. The grammar was based on the model of the Latin grammar

Latin grammar

The grammar of Latin, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflected; consequently, it allows for a large degree of flexibility in choosing word order...

 and used Roman script for writing Bangla words.

Crepar Xaxtrer Orth, Bhed

Manuel da Assumpção wrote another book under the title Crepar Xaxtrer Orth, Bhed. It was a bilingual book published in Lisbon in 1735. It was a missionary book, in format a dialogue between a clergyman and his disciple. The main text was printed on the right page while the translation in Bengali

Bengali script

The Bengali alphabet is the writing system for the Bengali language. The script with variations is used for Assamese and is basis for Meitei, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Kokborok, Garo and Mundari alphabets. All these languages are spoken in the eastern region of South Asia. Historically, the script has...

 appeared on the left. The whole book was, however, printed in Roman type.

External links

• Grammar. Banglapedia
  Banglapedia
  Banglapedia, or the National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh, is the first Bangladeshi encyclopedia. It is available in print, CD-ROM format and online, in both Bangla and English. The print version comprises ten 500-page volumes...
  
  . Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved on 2006-11-17