Smallpox

I posted this in response to a query on the American Dialect Society mailing list (ADS-L), and am cross-posting it here because it is more relevant here than there.  Someone had asked about a strange Chinglish translation: smallpox for 天花灯 (tiānhuādēng).  The answer to that is easy enough, and James Harbeck answered it there: the same characters are used for ceiling (天花板) and smallpox (天花).  Another poster, Douglas G. Wilson, then asked the more difficult question of why they are so named.

As I was looking for something else in some Manchu-related materials I serendipitously found the answer to this question. Continue reading Smallpox

The Book of the Nishan Shaman 03

This is the third installment of The Book of the Nisan Shaman (Nixan saman-i bithe). You can find the previous parts here: part 01, part 02. Thanks to Randy for correcting my English.  All suggestions kindly welcomed.

Geren aba i urse morin be dabkiyame yaburengge, hvdun hahi ofi dartai endende  gebungge aba abalara alin de isinafi.

geren [each]
aba-i urse [ hunters], aba-i [hunt] gen, urse [people]
morin-be [horses] acc
dabkiyame [whipping] dict. form: dabkime
yaburengge [riding]
hvdun [fast, quick]
hahi ofi [increased (the speed) rapidly]
dartai endende [at the moment, suddenly] dict. form: andande
gebungge [famous]
aba [hunt]
abalara [hunters]
alin-de [mountain]
isinafi [reached]

All the hunters rode fast whipping their horses to increase speed, and in no time they reached the mountain, which is famous among hunters. Continue reading The Book of the Nishan Shaman 03

The Book of the Nishan Shaman 02

This is the second part of Nixan saman-i bithe (the first part is here), and, at the same time, my first installment as an official author of the blog. After discussion with Randy I decided to change some things.  We minimalized grammatical explanations and gave more accurate glosses, similarly to what Randy did in his installment on Möllendorff.

And here is a couple of links:

Here you can find complete digital version of the manuscript, written by a Manchu called Dekdengge for Prof. Grebenshchikov in Vladivostok in 1913. Uploaded by Bucin (ambula baniha, Bucin agu!)

Here is  full text in romanization with Japanese glosses.

For those who can read Russian, here is a Russian translation. Continue reading The Book of the Nishan Shaman 02

The Book of the Nishan Shaman 01

The book of the Nisan Shaman, or nixan saman i bithe, is one of Shamanism’s most important documents.  It is the story of a shaman who brings a person back from the dead.

The following guest post is the first installment of a translation by Paweł Manowski, from Poland (“p” from comments on earlier posts).  I have only edited it slightly for consistency.

Continue reading The Book of the Nishan Shaman 01

Sanjiazi 07: Showing off students

Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

A couple of students came to the office to demonstrate their Manchu skills.  Mrs Guan was given the third book I mentioned in the last post (which you can open up and look at to follow along, if you like), so she could say some words in Chinese and have the students say their Manchu equivalents.  Continue reading Sanjiazi 07: Showing off students

Kids’ Corner 01

Often children’s stories feature language that native speakers know and take for granted, but is not often found in texts that are intended for the day to day business of adults.  They often include animal names, as well as words denoting things and actions one might encounter in daily life, but would not normally write about.  This series of posts will explore stories that are found in one of the books I purchased in Taipei: Manju gisun aji gurun gisun i jube, 满语童话故事, by 庄吉發, who is a researcher in residence at Taipei Gugong.

yacin-naman-jai-xayan-niman

Continue reading Kids’ Corner 01

Let’s study Möllendorff! 01

By “Möllendorff”, I mean A Manchu Grammar with Analysed Texts, by P.G. von Möllendorff, Shanghai, 1892.  It is the first English language Manchu grammar textbook.  Since then, there has only been one other one published (actually not a textbook, but a reference grammar), in 2002 by Liliya Gorelova, but it’s very expensive, and according to the one review of it on Amazon, contains many typos and other errors.  It’s too expensive for me to buy it myself to make my own judgement.  Möllendorff is reasonably well written, even considering that it’s more than 100 years old.  And it’s free!

Gertraude Roth Li’s (GRL) book, Manchu: a textbook for reading documents (MTRD), is excellent, but it does not purport to be a grammar textbook.  It is designed primarily to help historians to be able to read Manchu documents, so although it is permeated with wonderful grammatical notes, it (deliberately) doesn’t explore syntax in a very complete way.

So exploring the texts in Möllendorff may be a good foothold and introduction to Manchu grammar.  In this series of posts, I will go through the texts in Möllendorff and explain the grammar in light of all the resources I have at my disposal, and provide a fresh translation.  I warmly welcome comments and corrections from readers. Continue reading Let’s study Möllendorff! 01

Sanjiazi 06: Textbooks

Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

After dressing up and taking pictures, Shi Junguang, the Manchu teacher, brought out the books he uses to teach the children in their Manchu language classes.

They are not professionally published, but rather printed out using a color printer.  I’m not sure who wrote these books, but I suspect they were written by Zhao Jinchun, who was the former Manchu teacher at the elementary school, and who now is the vice commissioner of Fuyu county. Continue reading Sanjiazi 06: Textbooks

Manchu books from Taiwan

I’m in Taiwan attending a conference on English language teaching and testing.  My friend the eminent linguist Geoff Pullum gave a mind-blowingly sharp plenary lecture on grammar in the afternoon, and later there was a panel discussion about the design and use of small corpora (or Tiny Little Corpora, as I have called them here).

A couple days ago I went to the National Palace Museum library and met a Manchu scholar, 莊吉發, who has been quite prolific in producing published Manchu materials.  He gave me the address of a publishing company that he uses, and the next day I went to go find it.  Continue reading Manchu books from Taiwan

Sanjiazi 05: Dress-up time

Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4.

There’s an old stereotype about Asians and cameras.  When I was a boy growing up in the Midwest, I remember hearing my father say “I’ve never seen a Chinaman without a camera.”  Of course by “Chinaman” he meant anyone with “yellow” skin.  This kind of talk sounds almost racist these days, but that’s just how people talked back then, regardless of their views on race.  Looking back on my father’s life at that time, I couldn’t say he was racist in any way.  During that time I rarely knew or even saw any Asians, but my father worked with people from all over the world every day.

Stereotypes don’t come out of nowhere though.  After I got married (to a Chinese girl), my wife and I were living in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and once decided to take a Chinese bus tour to Washington DC.  As soon as we got there, the bus stopped in front of the Capitol building and everyone (all Chinese except me) proceded one by one to have their pictures taken in front of it.  Then we got back on the bus, drove to the next attraction, and then the same thing again!  And again!  My wife and I finally decided we would escape and catch up with them later.

Back to Sanjiazi: when the Manchu teacher Shi Junguang (see previous posts, listed above)  and I got back to the school office, some of the others were looking at the school’s collection of traditional Manchu costumes.  Then someone pointed at me and I was doomed. Continue reading Sanjiazi 05: Dress-up time