The Decline of Manchu in Its Contact with Late Qing Chinese—A Case Study of Several Editions of Qingwen Zhiyao

Abstract

This paper is a comparative survey of the vocabulary of the Manchu-Chinese bilingual textbook Qingwen Zhiyao with that of 6 subsequent Chinese editions. It is found that the earlier Chinese translations of Qingwen Zhiyao were heavily influenced by the Manchu language, with a number of characteristically Manchu words being incorporated into the Chinese translations to varying degrees. However, most of these disappeared as the four later Chinese versions were rewritten, such as in The Hundred Lessons included in the 1867 Yu yen tzu erh chi, thus providing an indirect illustration of the decline of Manchu and its gradual replacement by Chinese, with which it was in contact. In the process, we uncover explanations for the source of new uses of some Chinese words and the reason for their short duration. We also reveal the strategies employed by the Chinese lexical system for dealing with heterogeneous Manchu constituents.

Latin transcriptions of Manchu in this paper are from Japanese scholar Takekoshi Takashi 竹越孝 (2015). We also refer to Qingwen Zhiyao Jiedu 《<清文指要>解读》 (2005a) and Xubian jian Han Qingwen Zhiyao Jiedu 《续编兼汉<清文指要>解读》 (2005b), both annotated by Zhang Huake. Example sentences in this paper are organized sequentially from A to G. Chapter numbers conform to those in Textual Criticism and Language Study of Qingwen Zhiyao. Not all the example sentences of every version are listed for the sake of space. Versions A and D are our primary concern. Versions B and C are similar to Version A, while the editions after Version C are similar to each other, except for Version F which has some different expressions.