The development and adoption of a Romanized script had an enormous impact on Vietnam's intellectual development and has been attributed to the work of Alexandre de Rhodes. This study contends that Rhodes' achievement was due to the efforts of earlier Portuguese linguists upon whose work he built. The development and eventual official adoption of a Romanized script has had an enormous impact on Vietnam's cultural and intellectual development and has been a major contributor to its high literacy rate and its modernization. Among linguists, the development of the Roman