The 19th-century Missionary Goncalves and　Perceptions of the Chinese Language:The Portuguese Lazarist Church and it’s Linguistic Policy　

Goncalves was a Portuguese Lazarist missionary who wrote the first book, 漢字文法 Arte China, published in 1829, to make use of the translated term 文法, or “grammar’. He was an extremely important author and greatly influenced later foreign research in and learning of the Chinese language. Nevertheless, there is very little serious research on him, and this paper addresses the linguistic characteristics of Goncalves’ work, in particular, his perceptions of Mandarin distinguished him from his Western contemporaries, and places him as the forerunner of the connection of Mandarin with Peking