[Novum glossarium sinicum plurium linguarum. Polyglot dictionary. Dictionnaire chinois-polyglotte] / Gerald Pope 寶靖華, 1908-1980, James Enda Thornton 陶雅谷, 1910-1993, Richard B. Meagher 彌希賢, 1909-1989, et al.

54 archival boxes.

The project does not appear to have had an official name, but the titles used here occur in contemporary sources.

Several drafts were made. The Ricci Institute holds part of one draft, primarily containing Chinese-English material (with some French and some Latin). This draft was stored at the Ricci Institute in Taipei before being moved to the Ricci Institute. Our materials appear to date primarily from the late 1950s.

"Linguistic contributions of Protestant missionaries in south China : an overview of Cantonese religious and pedagogical publications (1828–1939)" / Kataoka Shin and Lee Yin Ping.

Religions 15 (2024).

This article belongs to the Special Issue Expressions of Chinese Christianity in Texts and Contexts: In Memory of Our Mentor Professor R. G. Tiedemann (1941–2019).

Local access dig.pdf [Kataoka and Lee-Linguistic Contributions of Protestant Missionaries in South China.pdf]

Abstract:

Robert Morrison 馬禮遜, the first Protestant missionary to China, came to Guangdong as an employee of the East India Company and with the support of the London Missionary Society in 1807. Amongst his path-breaking translation work, he published the first Chinese Bible (Shen Tian Shengshu 神天聖書) in 1823. As many foreigners in Guangdong could not speak Cantonese, Morrison compiled a three-volume Cantonese learning aid, A Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (1828), using specifically Cantonese Chinese characters and his Cantonese romanization system. In consequence, missionaries translated Christian literature and the Bible into Cantonese, for they realized that proficiency in Cantonese was essential for proselytization among ordinary people. Over the past twenty years, we have collected and identified around 260 Cantonese works written and translated by Western Protestant missionaries, and these Cantonese writings can be categorized as follows: 1. dictionaries; 2. textbooks; 3. Christian literature; 4. Bibles; and 5. miscellanea. In the study of the Western Protestant missions, their linguistic contribution is relatively under-represented. Through analyzing the phonological, lexical, and grammatical features of early Cantonese expressions in these selected missionary works, we strive to highlight the missionaries’ contributions to the diachronic study of the Cantonese language in modern southern China.

Missionary linguistics in East Asia : the origins of religious language in the shaping of Christianity? / Sandra Breitenbach.
LC classification number is: BV2082.L3 B76 2008
Bibliography: p. 211-221.

This book examines the language studies of Western missionaries in China and beyond. The goal of this study is to examine the purpose, methods, context, and influence of missionary language studies. The book reveals new insights into the hitherto less well-known and unstudied origins of language thinking. These publically unknown sources virtually form our «hidden history of language». Some key 17th century and pre-17th century descriptions of language not only pass on our Greco-Latin «grammatical» heritage internationally for about two millennia. They also reveal grammar, speaking, and language as an esoteric knowledge. Our modern life has been formed and influenced through both esoteric and common connotations in language. It is precisely the techniques, allusions, and intentions of language making revealed in rare, coded texts which have influenced our modern identities. These extraordinary and highly controversial interpretations of both language and Christianity reveal that our modern identities have been largely shaped in the absence of public knowledge and discussion.--back cover.

Local access dig.pdf. [Breitenbach-Missionary Linguistics.pdf]

Ya-sou zeu-nè ki-liah faong-yé = histoire abrégée de la passion de Jésus-Christ en dialecte de Chang-hai = Yesu shounan jilüe fangyan 耶穌受難記畧方言 / Stanislas Chevalier 蔡尚質, 1852-1930.

The book consists of two interleaved imprints. The Chinese (literary [preface only] and Shanghai dialect) text was printed one-sided using (lead) movable type (called huoban 活板 here) and folded over to form two pages, as is standard in thread-bound books. The Chinese text was printed in 1909 and is numbered in the Chinese manner, by leaf. The numbering of the two Chinese prefaces (the same text presented first in Shanghai dialect and then in literary Chinese) is jumbled, with leaf numbered "2" preceding the leaf numbered "1." The prefaces are dated 1897 (Guangxu 23).

The French and Romanized Chinese (Shanghai dialect) text was printed in 1909. It too is printed one-sided, but rather than folded over in the way of the Chinese text, the leaves of the French and Romanized Chinese text have been cut to half the size of the Chinese-text leaves and bound with one blank side on the verso or recto of the leaf. The preface is paginated in Roman numerals. The first six pages of the main text are paginated in the European manner (1-6). After that, the page numbers are given as 4A, 4B, 5A, etc. These numbers correspond to the Chinese pagination, with A and B indicating recto and verso.

The numerous, unpaginated illustrations, which carry only Chinese-script captions, have been bound in the manner of the Chinese text, that is, folded to form two pages. 

New stitching.