Language diversity in the Sinophone world : historical trajectories, language planning, and multilingual practices / Henning Klöter and Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Abstract:

Language Diversity in the Sinophone World offers interdisciplinary insights into social, cultural, and linguistic aspects of multilingualism in the Sinophone world, highlighting language diversity and opening up the burgeoning field of Sinophone studies to new perspectives from sociolinguistics. The book begins by charting historical trajectories in Sinophone multilingualism, beginning with late imperial China through to the emergence of English in the mid-19th century. The volume uses this foundation as a jumping off point from which to provide an in-depth comparison of modern language planning and policies throughout the Sinophone world, with the final section examining multilingual practices not readily captured by planning frameworks and the ideologies, identities, repertoires, and competences intertwined within these different multilingual configurations. Taken together, the collection makes a unique sociolinguistic-focused intervention into emerging research in Sinophone studies and will be of interest to students and scholars within the discipline.

Mandarin over Manchu : court-sponsored Qing lexicography and its subversion in Korea and Japan / Mårten Söderblom Saarela 

This extract is from the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Volume 77 Number 2.

Abstract:

The Manchu language studies of the Qing empire emerged in Beijing during the late seventeenth century and spread to Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan during the eighteenth century. The Qing court sponsored the compilation of multilingual thesauri and thereby created an imperial linguistic order with Manchu at the center and vernacular Chinese, or Mandarin, in a subordinate position. Chosŏn and Tokugawa scholars, by contrast, usually placed Mandarin—not Manchu, Korean, or Japanese—as the leading language in the new multilingual thesauri they compiled on the basis of Qing works. I show how the balance between Manchu and Mandarin changed as Korean and Japanese scholars reworked lexicographic books from Beijing. The lexicographic evidence demonstrates that the international languages of pre-twentieth-century East Asia included Manchu and vernacular Mandarin as well as literary Chinese.

Plurilingualism in traditional Eurasian scholarship : thinking in many tongues / edited by Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer, Mårten Söderblom Saarela.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Notes on Contributors xiii

Introduction 1

Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer, and Michele Loporcaro

Part 1 Language Diversity

1.1 Introduction 19

Glenn W. Most

1.2 The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) 26

Joel S. Baden

1.3 A 5th-Century bce Greek Historian Discusses the Pelasgians and the

Origins of the Greek Language

Herodotus, Histories 33

Filippomaria Pontani

1.4 Language Arose from Spontaneous Feelings and Reactions to Nature

The Doctrine of Epicurus (4th Century bce) and Lucretius (1st Century

bce) 41

Filippomaria Pontani

1.5 Language Diversity as a Result of Social Interaction

Xunzi’s View on Plurilingualism in 3rd-Century bce China 52

Dagmar Schäfer

1.6 Language Is a Collective Product of Mankind

Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History (1st Century bce) 67

Filippomaria Pontani

vi contents

1.7 A 1st-Century bce/ce Greek Geographer Discusses What a “Barbarian”

Language Is in Terms of Homer and the Carians

Strabo, Geography 73

Filippomaria Pontani

1.8 Plurilingualism in China and Inner Asia in the 12th Century ce

“Khitan Reciting Poetry” 83

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Part 2 Etymology

2.1 Introduction 93

Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer, and Michele Loporcaro

2.2 An Early Post-Vedic Treatise on the Etymological Explanation of Words

Yāska, Etymology 107

Johannes Bronkhorst

2.3 A 4th-Century bce Greek Philosophical Analysis of the Methods and

Limits of Etymology

Plato, Cratylus 119

Glenn W. Most

2.4 A 1st-Century bce Roman Polymath’s Explanation of the Mysteries of

Latin

Varro, On the Latin Language 134

Glenn W. Most and Michele Loporcaro

2.5 A 1st-Century ce Stoic Etymological and Allegorical Explanation of

Greek Gods

Cornutus, Compendium of Greek Theology 155

Glenn W. Most

2.6 Zheng Xuan and Commentarial Etymology (2nd Century ce) 168

Dagmar Schäfer

2.7 Etymology in the Most Important Reference Encyclopedia of Late

Antiquity (ca. 600 ce)

Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 182

Michele Loporcaro and Glenn W. Most

2.8 Buddhist Etymologies from First-Millennium India and China

Works by Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, and Paramārtha 200

Roy Tzohar

2.9 An Influential Latin Dictionary and Its Etymologies (12th Century ce) in

the Linguistic Landscape of Medieval Europe

Hugutio of Pisa’s Derivationes 212

Michele Loporcaro

Part 3 Lexicography

3.1 Introduction 229

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

3.2 Lexicality and Lexicons from Mesopotamia 240

Markham J. Geller

3.3 Translating Oriental Words into Greek

A Papyrus Glossary from the 1st Century ce 245

Filippomaria Pontani

3.4 The Making of Monolingual Dictionaries

The Prefaces to the Lexica of Hesychius (6th Century ce) and Photius (9th

Century ce) 252

Filippomaria Pontani

3.5 A 10th-Century ce Byzantine Encyclopedia and Lexicon

Suda, Letter Sigma 264

Glenn W. Most

3.6 A Dictionary of the Imperial Capital

Shen Qiliang’s Da Qing quanshu (1683) 274

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Part 4 Translation

4.1 Introduction 287

Dagmar Schäfer and Markham J. Geller

4.2 Translators of Sumerian

The Unsung Heroes of Babylonian Scholarship 300

Markham J. Geller

4.3 The Earliest and Most Complete Story of the Translation of the

Pentateuch into Greek (2nd Century bce)

The Letter of Aristeas 317

Benjamin G. Wright iii

4.4 “Faithful” and “Unfaithful” Translations

The Greco-Latin Tradition in Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius

(395/396 ce) 329

Filippomaria Pontani

4.5 A 4th-Century ce Buddhist Note on Sanskrit-Chinese Translation

Dao’an’s Preface to the Abridgement of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā

Sūtra 339

Bill M. Mak

4.6 An 8th-Century ce Indian Astronomical Treatise in Chinese

The Nine Seizers Canon by Qutan Xida 352

Bill M. Mak

4.7 Two 8th-Century ce Recensions of Amoghavajra’s Buddhist Astral

Compendium

Treatise on Lunar Mansions and Planets 363

Bill M. Mak

4.8 Arabic and Arabo-Latin Translations of Euclid’s Elements 376

Sonja Brentjes

Part 5 Writing Systems

5.1 Introduction 391

Dagmar Schäfer, Markham J. Geller, and Glenn W. Most

5.2 A 4th-Century bce Greek Philosophical Myth about the Egyptian

Origins of Writing

Plato, Phaedrus 406

Glenn W. Most

5.3 A Buddhist Mahāyāna Account of the Origin of Language

The Descent into Laṅkā Scripture (Laṅkāvatārasūtra) 416

Roy Tzohar

5.4 Stories of Origin

Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist 425

Sonja Brentjes

5.5 Inventing or Adapting Scripts in Inner Asia

The Jin and Yuan Histories and the Early Manchu Veritable Records

Juxtaposed (1340s–1630s) 444

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

5.6 An Essay on the Use of Chinese and Korean Language in Late 18th-

Century ce Chosŏn

Yu Tŭkkong, “Hyang’ŏ pan, Hwaŏ pan” 454

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Index of Subjects 463

Index of Names 476

Index of Sources 481

"Was plurilingualism the exception or the norm in traditional Eurasian scholarship? This volume presents a selection of primary sources-in many cases translated into English for the first time-with introductions that provide fascinating historical materials for challenging notions of the ways in which traditional Eurasian scholars dealt with plurilingualism and monolingualism. Comparative in approach, global in scope, and historical in orientation, it engages with the growing discussion of plurilingualism and focuses on fundamental scholarly practices in various premodern and early modern societies-Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, Islamic, Ancient Greek, and Roman-asking how these were conceived by the agents themselves. The volume will be an indispensable resource for courses on these subjects and on the history of scholarship and reflection on language throughout the world"-- Provided by publisher.

Local access dig.pdf. [Pluralingualism Eurasia.pdf]

Link to Brill eBooks via Boston College Libraries

Link to DOAB Directory of Open Access Books

The early modern travels of Manchu : a script and its study in East Asia and Europe / Mårten Söderblom Saarela.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Conventions -- Introduction. A Cultural History of the Manchu Script -- Chapter 1. To Follow Fuxi or Kubilai Khan? Written Manchu Before 1644 -- Chapter 2. The Beijing Origins of Manchu Language Pedagogy, 1668-1730 -- Chapter 3. Phonology and Manchu in Southern China and Japan, c. 1670-1716 -- Chapter 4. Manchu Words and Alphabetical Order in China and Japan, 1683-1820s -- Chapter 5. Leibniz's Dream of a Manchu Encyclopedia and Kangxi's Mirror, 1673-1708 -- Chapter 6. The Manchu Script and Foreign Sounds from the Qing Court to Korea, 1720s-1770s -- Chapter 7. The Invention of a Manchu Alphabet in Saint Petersburg, 1720s-1730s -- Chapter 8. The Making of a Manchu Typeface in Paris, 1780s-1810s -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

A linguistic and historical study of the Manchu script in the early modern world, Manchu was a language first written down as part of the Qing state-building project in Northeast Asia in the early seventeenth century. After the Qing invasion of China in 1644, and for the next two and a half centuries, Manchu was the language of state in one of the early modern world's great powers. Its prominence and novelty attracted the interest of not only Chinese literati but also foreign scholars. Yet scholars in Europe and Japan, and occasionally even within China itself, were compelled to study the language without access to a native speaker. Jesuit missionaries in Beijing sent Chinese books on Manchu to Europe, where scholars struggled to represent it in an alphabet compatible with Western pedagogy and printing technology. In southern China, meanwhile, an isolated phonologist with access to Jesuit books relied on expositions of the Roman alphabet to make sense of the Manchu script. When Chinese textbooks and dictionaries of Manchu eventually reached Japan, scholars there used their knowledge of Dutch to understand Manchu.In The Early Modern Travels of Manchu, Mårten Söderblom Saarela focuses on outsiders both within and beyond the Qing empire who had little interaction with Manchu speakers but took an interest in the strange, new language of a rising world power. He shows how--through observation, inference, and reference to received ideas on language and writing--intellectuals in southern China, Russia, France, Chosŏn Korea, and Tokugawa Japan deciphered the Manchu script and explores the uses to which it was put for recording sounds and arranging words.

Local access dig.pdf [Söderblom Saarela-Early Modern Travels Manchu.pdf]

Access to Books at JSTOR via BC Libraries

The Manchu language at court and in the bureaucracy under the Qianlong emperor / by Mårten Söderblom Saarela.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This is the first book-length study of the roles played by the Manchu language at the center of the Qing empire at the height of its power in the eighteenth century. It presents a revisionist account of Manchu not as a language in decline, but as extensively and consciously used language in a variety of areas. It treats the use, discussion, regulation, and philological study of Manchu at the court of an emperor who cared deeply for the maintenance and history of the language of his dynasty"--  Provided by publisher.

Introduction 1
1 The How and Why of Manchu 3
2 Manchu Documents, Books, and Three Reasons for Writing  this Study 12
1 Background: The Manchu Language from the Seventeenth Century to the Qianlong Period 19
1 The Early History of Written Manchu 19
2 The Manchu Language in China Proper 23
3 Scholarly Efforts to Describe the Manchu Language and Qianlong’s
Project to Change it 26
3.1 Manchu Grammatical Studies 27
3.2 Qianlong’s Manchu Neologisms 29
2 Public Inscriptions and Manchu Language Reform in the Early
Qianlong Reign 37
1 Background: Manchu Steles and Public Inscriptions 39
2 Public Inscriptions and Qianlong-era Language Reform 45
3 The Names for Temples, Altars, and Gates 46
4 The Inscription at Fragrance of the Teaching Temple 53
5 Conclusion 57
3 Linguistic Compartmentalization and the Palace Memorial System 59
1 Manchu and Chinese Linguistic Regimes 61
2 Linguistic Compartmentalization and the Palace
Memorial System 67
2.1 The Forwarding of Palace Memorials to Outer Court
Agencies 68
3 The Experiment of Bilingual Palace Memorials 69
3.1 Military Communications 72
3.2 Judicial Cases Involving Individuals Subject to Chinese Law 79
4 Language Choice and Secrecy 83
5 The Limits of Linguistic Compartmentalization:
Lateral Communications 93
6 Conclusion 99
4 Reading Manchu Palace Memorials Against the Idea of Manchu Decline 102
1 The Idea of Manchu Decline 103
2 Palace Memorials from Letters to Bureaucratic Summaries 107
3 How did Qianlong Understand Authorship? The Examples of Kuilin, Kinglin, and Guncukdar 113
4 Problems Related to the Composite Nature of Memorials 120
5 Conclusion 123
5 Imperial Corrections of Language Errors in Manchu
Palace Memorials 124
1 Corrections before Qianlong 125
2 Qianlong’s Corrections of Manchu Usage 127
2.1 Spelling Mistakes and Non-standard Spellings 128
2.2 Word Choice (1): Improper Usage 131
2.3 Word Choice (2): Qianlong’s Idiosyncratic Standard 134
2.4 Sinicisms 138
2.5 Grammatical Errors 145
3 Criticism of Language and of the Writer 152
4 Reprimands for Mistakes in Languages other than Manchu 153
5 Conclusion 155
6 Philological Scholarship in Manchu: Linguistic Studies on the
Pre-conquest Archive 157
1 What was “Evidential Learning”? 157
2 Manchu “Evidential Learning” 161
3 Manchu Philology before Qianlong: The Translation of
Confucian Literature 162
4 The Pre-conquest Archive and the Early Veritable Records 170
5 The Book of Characters Without Dots and Circles 173
6 The Book of Old Manchu Phrases Lifted from the Veritable Records 178
6.1 Structure and Character of the Book 181
6.2 Glosses that Highlight Morphology 183
6.3 Comments on Linguistic Structures 184
6.4 Defining Historical and Contemporary Usage 186
6.5 Glosses that Acknowledge the Plurilingual Historical Context of the Source Text 187
6.6 Conclusion 189
7 Footnotes to Early Qing History: The Grand Secretariat Copy of the Old
Manchu Archive 191
1 Editing the Old Archive 193
2 The Yellow Sticky Notes 198
2.1 Notes on the Archive’s Plurilingual Character 198
2.2 Consultation of Experts and Use of Field Reports 201
2.3 Consultation of Literature 204
2.4 The Research Behind the Notes and Its Limitations 211
3 The Philology of Manchu before Manchu: Multilingual
Historical Glossaries 214
4 Conclusion 222
Conclusion: Manchu after Qianlong 226
1 Manchu as a Language of Court Scholarship 227
2 Statistics on Manchu Document Production 228
3 A New Role for Manchu? 236
4 Survival as an Administrative Language in
Multilingual Contexts 237
5 Socio-political Change and Linguistic Change 240
6 Manchu’s Survival as a Vernacular Language 241
7 Limited use of Manchu as a Spoken Language in
Nineteenth-century Beijing 243
8 The Decline of Manchu 247
Bibliography 251
Archives and Databases Used 251
Works Cited 251
Index 289

Local access dig.pdf. [Söderblom Saarela-Manchu language.pdf]

Access Brill eBook (Boston College community)