79-627: Prince Keqin of the Second Rank ( Manchu : ᡩᠣᡵᠣᡳ ᠪᠠᡥᠠᠮᡝ ᡴᡳᠴᡝᠮᠪᡳ ᡤᡳᠶᡡᠨ ᠸᠠᠩ ; doroi bahame kicembi giyūn wang ), or simply Prince Keqin , was the title of a princely peerage used in China during the Manchu -led Qing dynasty (1644–1912). It was also one of the 12 "iron-cap" princely peerages in the Qing dynasty, which meant that the title could be passed down without being downgraded. The first bearer of
158-757: A language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples . Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the dozen living languages of the Tungusic language family. The term "Tungusic" is from an exonym for the Evenk people (Ewenki) used by the Yakuts ("tongus"). Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. Some scholars have criticized
237-437: A Han. But all my life I have made a hobby of Manchu." Shen didn't have to learn Manchu as part of his job because he was never an official,so he seems to have studied it voluntarily. Most Han people were not interested in learning non-Han languages, so it is not known why Shen was doing it, but he did praise Manchu writing, saying that it was simpler and clearer than Chinese. A Hangzhou Han Chinese, Chen Mingyuan , helped edit
316-615: A Manchu–Chinese dictionary. In the late 1830s, Georgy M. Rozov translated from Manchu the History of the Jin (Jurchen) Dynasty . A school to train Manchu language translators was started in Irkutsk in the 18th century, and existed for a fairly long period. An anonymous author remarked in 1844 that the transcription of Chinese words in Manchu alphabet, available in the contemporary Chinese–Manchu dictionaries,
395-464: A Proto-Tungusic *t > Manchu s when followed by *j in the same stem, with any exceptions arising from loanwords. Some linguists believe there are connections between the vowel harmony of Proto-Tungusic and some of the neighboring non-Tungusic languages. For example, there are proposals for an areal or genetic correspondence between the vowel harmonies of Proto-Korean , Proto-Mongolian , and Proto-Tungusic based on an original RTR harmony . This
474-451: A commotion'). Manchu has twenty consonants, shown in the table using each phoneme's representation in the IPA , followed by its romanization in italics. /pʰ/ was rare and found mostly in loanwords and onomatopoeiae , such as pak pik ('pow pow'). Historically, /p/ appears to have been common, but changed over time to /f/ . /ŋ/ was also found mostly in loanwords and onomatopoeiae and there
553-402: A rule, back and front vowels cannot co-occur in a word: in other words, the lone front vowel never occurs in a word with any the regular back vowels ( a, o, ū ). (An exception is the diphthong eo , which does occur in some words, i.e. deo , "younger brother", geo , "a mare", jeo , "department", leole , "to discuss", leose , "building", and šeole , "to embroider", "to collect". ) In contrast,
632-404: A vowel. In some words, there were vowels that were separated by consonant clusters, as in the words ilha ('flower') and abka ('heaven'); however, in most words, the vowels were separated from one another by only single consonants. This open syllable structure might not have been found in all varieties of spoken Manchu, but it was certainly found in the southern dialect that became the basis for
711-449: A word, including suffixes, are either one or the other. Rounded vowels in the root of a word cause all the following vowels in the word to become rounded, but not those before the rounded vowel. Those rules are not absolute, and there are many individual exceptions. Vowel length is phonemic in most languages, with many words distinguished based on the distinction between short vowel and long vowel. Languages without long vowels consist of
790-427: Is vowel harmony . It is described as based on the opposition between back and front vowels , but these phonological natural classes differ from the actual phonetic realization. The vowels a, o, ū function as back, as expected, but the only phonologically front vowel is e (even though it is phonetically central). Finally, the vowels i and u function as "neutral" vowels for the purposes of vowel harmony. As
869-486: Is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic. Other Tungusic languages have relatively short or no written traditions. Since around the 20th century, some of these other languages can be written in a Russian-based Cyrillic script , but the languages remain primarily spoken languages only. The earliest Western accounts of Tungusic languages came from the Dutch traveler Nicolaes Witsen , who published in
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#1732855518536948-474: Is done in base ten , and the names of the cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 are cognates in most cases. The normal word order for all of the languages is subject–object–verb . Tungusic languages exhibit a complex pattern of vowel harmony , based on two parameters: vowel roundedness and vowel tenseness (in Evenki, the contrast is back and front). Tense and lax vowels do not occur in the same word; all vowels in
1027-536: Is one of several competing proposals, and on the other hand, some reconstruct Proto-Tungusic without RTR harmony. Some sources describe the Donghu people of 7th century BC to 2nd century BC Manchuria as Proto-Tungusic. Other sources sharply criticize this as a random similarity in pronunciation with "Tungus" that has no real basis in fact. The historical records of the Korean kingdoms of Baekje and Silla note battles with
1106-596: Is perhaps due to influences from the Para-Mongolic Khitan language , from Old Korean , and perhaps also from Chukotko-Kamchatkan and unknown languages of uncertain linguistic affiliation. Some linguists estimate the divergence of the Tungusic languages from a common ancestor spoken somewhere in Eastern Manchuria around 500 BC to 500 AD. (Janhunen 2012, Pevnov 2012) Other theories favor a homeland closer to Lake Baikal . ( Menges 1968, Khelimskii 1985) While
1185-500: Is pronounced as /joː/ ), io(w)an , io(w)en , ioi ( /y/ ), and i(y)ao , and they exist in Chinese loanwords. The diphthong oo is pronounced as /oː/ , and the diphthong eo is pronounced as /ɤo/ . Stress in Manchu has been described in very different ways by different scholars. According to Paul Georg von Möllendorff (1892), it was always on the last syllable. In contrast, Ivan Zakharov (1879) gives numerous specific rules: on
1264-404: Is shown here as phonemic. Early Western descriptions of Manchu phonology labeled Manchu b as "soft p", Manchu d as "soft t", and Manchu g as "soft k", whereas Manchu p was "hard p", t was "hard t", and k was "hard k". This suggests that the phonological contrast between the so-called voiced series ( b, d, j, g ) and the voiceless series ( p, t, c, k ) in Manchu as it was spoken during
1343-410: Is taught there as a tool for reading Qing-dynasty archival documents. In 2009 The Wall Street Journal reported that the language is offered (as an elective) in one university, one public middle school, and a few private schools. There are also other Manchu volunteers in many places of China who freely teach Manchu in the desire to rescue the language. Thousands of non-Manchu speakers have learned
1422-613: Is today considered a primary language family. Especially in the past, some linguists linked Tungusic with Turkic and Mongolic languages , among others, in either the Altaic or the Transeurasian language family. However, the proposal that there are genetic rather than merely areal links remains highly controversial. Some scholars believe that the language spoken in Europe by the Avars (who created
1501-490: Is vertically written and taken from the Mongolian script (which in turn derives from Aramaic via Uyghur and Sogdian ). Although Manchu does not have the kind of grammatical gender found in most European languages, some gendered words in Manchu are distinguished by different stem vowels (vowel inflection), as in ama , 'father', and eme , 'mother'. The Qing dynasty used various Mandarin Chinese expressions to refer to
1580-539: Is very common in modern spoken Xibe but unknown in Manchu. Since the 1980s, there have been increased efforts to revive the Manchu language. Revival movements are linked to the reconstruction of ethnic Manchu identity in the Han-dominated country. The Manchus mainly lead the revival efforts, with support from the PRC state, NGOs and international efforts. Revivalism began in the post- Mao era when non-Han ethnic expression
1659-596: The Dutch language a book, Noord en Oost Tartarye (literally 'North and East Tartary'). It described a variety of peoples in the Russian Far East and included some brief word lists for many languages. After his travel to Russia, his collected findings were published in three editions, 1692, 1705, and 1785. The book includes some words and sentences from the Evenki language , then called "Tungus". The German linguist Wilhelm Grube (1855–1908) published an early dictionary of
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#17328555185361738-571: The Ili valley in Xinjiang , having been moved there by the Qianlong Emperor in 1764. Modern written Xibe is very close to Manchu, although there are slight differences in the writing system which reflect distinctive Xibe pronunciation. More significant differences exist in morphological and syntactic structure of the spoken Xibe language. For one example among many, there is a " converb " ending, - mak , that
1817-510: The Jurchenic languages (Jurchen, Manchu, Xibe) and the Hezhe language. Diphthongs also occur in all languages. Tungusic words have simple word codas , and usually have simple word onsets, with consonant clusters forbidden at the end of words and rare at the beginning. Below are Proto-Tungusic consonants as reconstructed by Tsintsius (1949) and the vowels according to Benzing (1955): Tungusic
1896-589: The Mohe ( Chinese : 靺鞨 ) in Manchuria during the 1st and 2nd centuries. Some scholars suggest these Mohe are closely connected to the later Jurchens, but this is controversial. Alexander Vovin (2015) notes that Northern Tungusic languages have Eskimo–Aleut loanwords that are not found in Southern Tungusic, implying that Eskimo–Aleut was once much more widely spoken in eastern Siberia. Vovin (2015) estimates that
1975-532: The Nanai language (Gold language) in 1900, as well as deciphering the Jurchen language for modern audiences using a Chinese source. The Tungusic languages are of an agglutinative morphological type, and some of them have complex case systems and elaborate patterns of tense and aspect marking. However, none of the languages have grammatical gender or noun classes. All Tungusic languages have postpositions . Counting
2054-520: The Pentaglot . Among his directives were to eliminate directly borrowed loanwords from Chinese and replace them with calque translations which were put into new Manchu dictionaries. This showed in the titles of Manchu translations of Chinese works during his reign which were direct translations contrasted with Manchu books translated during the Kangxi Emperor 's reign which were Manchu transliterations of
2133-417: The Qianlong Emperor was shocked to see a Manchu official, Guo'ermin, not understand what the emperor was telling him in Manchu, despite coming from the Manchu stronghold of Shengjing (now Shenyang ). By the 19th century, even the imperial court had lost fluency in the language. The Jiaqing Emperor (reigned 1796–1820) complained that his officials were not proficient at understanding or writing Manchu. By
2212-524: The " plurality of ethnic cultures within one united culture". Another reason for revivalism lay in the archives of the Qing Empire–a way to translate and resolve historical conflicts between the Manchus and the state. Lastly, the people wanted to regain their language for the rituals and communication to their ancestors–many shamans do not understand the words they use. Manchu associations can be found across
2291-607: The (Qing) dynasty (had been) unable to coerce the country's ministers and people to learn the national writing and national speech (Manchu)". Chinese fiction books were translated into Manchu. Bannermen wrote fiction in the Chinese language. Huang Taiji had Chinese books translated into Manchu. Han Chinese and Manchus helped Jesuits write and translate books into Manchu and Chinese. Manchu books were published in Beijing . The Qianlong Emperor commissioned projects such as new Manchu dictionaries, both monolingual and multilingual like
2370-541: The Chinese characters. The Pentaglot was based on the Yuzhi Siti Qing Wenjian ( 御製四體清文鑑 ; "Imperially-Published Four-Script Textual Mirror of Qing"), with Uyghur added as a fifth language. The four-language version of the dictionary with Tibetan was in turn based on an earlier three-language version with Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese called the "Imperially-Published Manchu Mongol Chinese Three pronunciation explanation mirror of Qing" ( 御製滿珠蒙古漢字三合切音清文鑑 ), which
2449-785: The Eskimo–Aleut loanwords in Northern Tungusic had been borrowed no more than 2,000 years ago, which was when Tungusic was spreading northwards from its homeland in the middle reaches of the Amur River . Wang and Robbeets (2020) place the Proto-Tungusic homeland in the Lake Khanka region. Liu et al. (2020) revealed that Haplogroup C-F5484 and its subclades are the genetic markers of Tungusic-speaking peoples. C-F5484 emerged 3,300 years ago and began to diverge 1,900 years ago, indicating
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2528-417: The Manchu alphabet, but are not distinguished in the romanization. The vowel e (generally pronounced like Mandarin [ɤ] )) is pronounced as /e/ after y , as in niyengniyeri /ɲeŋɲeri/. Between n and y , i is absorbed into both consonants as /ɲ/. The relatively rare vowel transcribed ū (pronounced [ʊ] ) was usually found as a back vowel ; however, in some cases, it was found occurring along with
2607-820: The Manchu language by Russian sinologists started in the early 18th century, soon after the founding of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing, to which most early Russian sinologists were connected. Illarion Kalinovich Rossokhin [ Wikidata ] (died 1761) translated a number of Manchu works, such as The history of Kangxi's conquest of the Khalkha and Oirat nomads of the Great Tartary, in five parts ( История о завоевании китайским ханом Канхием калкаского и элетского народа, кочующего в Великой Татарии, состоящая в пяти частях ), as well as some legal treatises and
2686-630: The Manchu language, such as "Qingwen" ( 清文 ) and "Qingyu" ( 清語 ) ("Qing language"). The term "national" was also applied to writing in Manchu, as in Guowen ( 國文 ), in addition to Guoyu ( 國語 ) ("national language"), which was used by previous non-Han dynasties to refer to their languages and, in modern times, to the Standard Chinese language. In the Manchu-language version of the Treaty of Nerchinsk ,
2765-481: The Qing dynasty. Manchu-language texts supply information that is unavailable in Chinese, and when both Manchu and Chinese versions of a given text exist, they provide controls for understanding the Chinese. Like most Siberian languages, Manchu is an agglutinative language that demonstrates limited vowel harmony . It has been demonstrated that it is derived mainly from the Jurchen language though there are many loan words from Mongolian and Chinese . Its script
2844-490: The Second Rank", and awarded "iron-cap" status . It was passed down over 13 generations and held by 17 persons – one as Prince Cheng, one as Prince Yanxi, six as Prince Ping, and nine as Prince Keqin. Manchu language Manchu (Manchu: ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ , Romanization: manju gisun ) is a critically endangered East Asian Tungusic language native to the historical region of Manchuria in Northeast China . As
2923-401: The Second Rank". Yoto's son and successor, Luoluohun (died 1646), inherited the peerage as " Prince Yanxi of the Second Rank " ( Prince Yanxi ). The peerage was renamed again to " Prince Ping of the Second Rank " ( Prince Ping ) when it was passed on to Luoluohun's son, Luokeduo (died 1682). During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor , the peerage was restored to its former name, "Prince Keqin of
3002-471: The ancestors of the Manchu and ruled over the later Jin dynasty (1115–1234) . Manchu began as a primary language of the Qing dynasty Imperial court, but as Manchu officials became increasingly sinicized , many started losing the language. Trying to preserve the Manchu identity, the imperial government instituted Manchu language classes and examinations for the bannermen , offering rewards to those who excelled in
3081-548: The approximate age of differentiation of Tungusic languages. The earliest written attestation of the language family is in the Jurchen language , which was spoken by the rulers of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) . The Jurchens invented a Jurchen script to write their language based on the Khitan scripts . During this time, several stelae were put up in Manchuria and Korea. One of these, among
3160-475: The book Introduction to the Qing language ( 清文啟蒙 ; Cing wen ki meng bithe ), which was co-written by a Manchu named Uge. Uge gave private Manchu language classes, which were attended by his friend Chen. Chen arranged for its printing. Han Chinese at the Hanlin Academy studied the Manchu language in the Qing. The Han Chinese Hanlin graduate Qi Yunshi knew the Manchu language and wrote a book in Chinese on
3239-406: The case of dzengse (orange) (Chinese: chéngzi ) and tsun (inch) (Chinese: cùn ). In addition to the vocabulary that was borrowed from Chinese, such as the word pingguri (apple) (Chinese: píngguǒ), the Manchu language also had a large number of loanwords from other languages such as Mongolian , for example the words morin (horse) and temen (camel). A crucial feature of the Manchu language
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3318-546: The country, including Hong Kong , and Taiwan which is now under the administration of the Republic of China. Consisting of mostly Manchus and Mongols, they act as the link between the people, their ethnic leaders and the state. NGOs provide large support through "Manchu classes". Manchu is now taught in certain primary schools as well as in universities. Heilongjiang University Manchu language research center in no.74, Xuefu Road, Harbin , listed Manchu as an academic major . It
3397-566: The early modern era was actually one of aspiration (as shown here) or tenseness , as in Mandarin . /s/ was affricated to [ts] in some or all contexts. /tʃʰ/ , /tʃ/ , and /ʃ/ together with /s/ were palatalized before /i/ or /y/ to [tɕʰ] , [tɕ] , and [ɕ] , respectively. /kʰ/ and /k/ were backed before /a/, /ɔ/, or /ʊ/ to [qʰ] and [q] , respectively. Some scholars analyse these uvular realizations as belonging to phonemes separate from /kʰ/ and /k/ , and they were distinguished in
3476-691: The end of the 19th century the language had declined to such an extent that even at the office of the Shengjing general the only documents written in Manchu (rather than Chinese) would be the memorials wishing the emperor long life; during the same period, the archives of the Hulan banner detachment in Heilongjiang show that only 1% of the bannermen could read Manchu and no more than 0.2% could speak it. Nonetheless, as late as 1906–1907, Qing education and military officials insisted that schools teach Manchu language and that
3555-598: The front vowel e . Much disputation exists over the exact pronunciation of ū . Erich Hauer , a German sinologist and Manchurist, proposes that it was pronounced as a front rounded vowel initially, but a back unrounded vowel medially. William Austin suggests that it was a mid-central rounded vowel. The modern Xibe pronounce it identically to u . There are altogether eighteen diphthongs and six triphthongs. The diphthongs are ai , ao , ei , eo , ia , ie , ii , io , iu , oi , oo , ua , ue , ui , uo , ūa , ūe , ūi , and ūo . The triphthongs are ioa , ioo (which
3634-433: The frontier regions and Manchu in order to be able to write and compile their writings on the region. A Manchu-language course over three years was required for the highest ranking Han degree holders from Hanlin but not all Han literati were required to study Manchu. Towards the end of the Qing it was pointed out that a lot of Bannermen themselves did not know Manchu anymore and that, in retrospect, "the founding emperors of
3713-583: The frontier regions of China by translating and using the Manchu-language sources in the Grand Secretariat 's archives. In 1740, Hanlin Academy expelled the Han Chinese Yuan Mei for not succeeding in his Manchu studies. Injišan, and Ortai, both Manchus, funded his work. The Han Chinese Yan Changming had the ability to read Tibetan , Oirat , and Mongolian. Han Chinese officials learned languages on
3792-474: The general form of the protolanguage is clear from the similarities in the daughter languages, there is no consensus on detailed reconstructions. As of 2012, scholars are still trying to establish a shared vocabulary to do such a reconstruction. The Lake Khanka region was found to present the most likely homeland, based on linguistic and ancient genetic data. There are some proposed sound correspondences for Tungusic languages. For example, Norman (1977) supports
3871-508: The historical record again after the unification of the Jurchen tribes under Nurhaci , who ruled 1616–1626. He commissioned a new Manchu alphabet based on the Mongolian alphabet, and his successors went on to found the Qing dynasty . In 1636, Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the ethnonym "Manchu" would replace "Jurchen". Modern scholarship usually treats Jurchen and Manchu as different stages of
3950-426: The increased efforts to revive the Manchu language, there are many obstacles standing in the way. Even with increased awareness, many Manchus choose to give up their language, some opting to learn Mongolian instead. Manchu language is still thought of as a foreign language in a Han-dominated Chinese speaking country. Obstacles are also found when gaining recognition from the state. Resistance through censorship prevented
4029-432: The language through these measures. Despite the efforts of NGOs, they tend to lack support from high-level government and politics. The state also runs programs to revive minority cultures and languages. Deng Xiaoping promoted bilingual education. However, many programs are not suited to the ethnic culture or to passing knowledge to the younger generations. If the programs were created via "top-down political processes"
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#17328555185364108-423: The language was for voice commands in the Qing army, attested as late as 1878. Bilingual Chinese-Manchu inscriptions appeared on many things. A Jiangsu Han Chinese named Shen Qiliang wrote books on Manchu grammar, including Guide to Qing Books ( 清書指南 ; Manju bithe jy nan ) and Great Qing Encyclopedia ( 大清全書 ; Daicing gurun-i yooni bithe ). His father was a naval officer for the Qing and his grandfather
4187-486: The language. Chinese classics and fiction were translated into Manchu and a body of Manchu literature accumulated. As the Yongzheng Emperor (reigned 1722–1735) explained, "If some special encouragement … is not offered, the ancestral language will not be passed on and learned." Still, the use of the language among the bannermen declined throughout the 18th century. Historical records report that as early as 1776,
4266-486: The last years of the dynasty. In 1912 the Qing was overthrown, most Manchus could not speak their language, and the Beijing dialect replaced Manchu. A large number of Manchu documents remain in the archives, important for the study of Qing-era China. Today, written Manchu can still be seen on architecture inside the Forbidden City , whose historical signs are written in both Chinese and Manchu. Another limited use of
4345-765: The local government. Among the various classes of the Manchurian language and calligraphy some turned out to be a success. Beijing has the biggest and most wealthy Beijing Daxing Regency Manchu Association ( 北京大兴御苑满族联谊会 ). (pp100-101) Other support can be found internationally and on the Internet . Post- Cultural Revolution reform allowed for international studies to be done in China. The dying language and ethnic culture of Manchus gained attention, providing local support. Websites facilitate communication of language classes or articles. Younger generations also spread and promote their unique identity through popular Internet media. Despite
4424-434: The locals tend to look at them with distrust. But if they were formed via specialized governmental organizations, they fare better. According to Katarzyna Golik : In Mukden , the historical Manchurian capital, there is a Shenyang Manchu Association ( 沈阳市满族联谊会 ) which is active in promoting Manchurian culture. The Association publishes books about Manchurian folklore and history and its activities are run independently from
4503-454: The meaning of the Chinese text". Currently, several thousand people can speak Manchu as a second language through primary education or free classes for adults offered in China. However very few native Manchu speakers remain. In what used to be Manchuria virtually no one speaks the language, the entire area having been completely sinicized . As of 2007, the last native speakers of the language were thought to be 18 octogenarian residents of
4582-449: The meanings of the names. He goes on that the Manchu translations of Chinese classics and fiction were done by experts familiar with their original meaning and with how best to express it in Manchu, such as in the Manchu translation of the Peiwen yunfu . Because Manchu is not difficult to learn, it "enables the student of Sinology to use the Manchu versions of the classics […] in order to verify
4661-518: The most important extant texts in Jurchen, is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" ( Da Jin deshengtuo songbei ), which was erected in 1185, during the Dading period (1161–1189). It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele. The last known example of the Jurchen script was written in 1526. The Tungusic languages appear in
4740-416: The neutral vowels i and u are free to occur in a word with any other vowel or vowels. The form of suffixes often varies depending on the rules of vowel harmony. Certain suffixes have only one form and are not affected by vowel harmony (e.g. de ); these include the suffixes of the accusative, dative-locative and alternate ablative cases ( be , de , deri ), the suffix for the imperfect converb (- me ) and
4819-513: The nominalizers ( -ngge , -ningge and ba ). Others have two forms ( giyan/giyen , hiyan/hiyen , kiyan/kiyen ), one of which is added to front-vowel stems and the other to back-vowel stems. Finally, there are also suffixes with three forms, either a/e/o (e.g. han/hen/hon ) or o/ū/u (e.g. hon/hūn/hun ). These are used in accordance with the following scheme: Tungusic languages The Tungusic languages / t ʊ ŋ ˈ ɡ ʊ s ɪ k / (also known as Manchu–Tungus and Tungus ) form
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#17328555185364898-418: The officials testing soldiers' marksmanship continue to conduct an oral examination in Manchu. The use of the language for the official documents declined throughout Qing history as well. In particular, at the beginning of the dynasty, some documents on sensitive political and military issues were submitted in Manchu but not in Chinese. Later on, some Imperial records in Manchu continued to be produced until
4977-420: The one hand, he seems to say that every prosodic word lent slight prominence to the vowel of its first syllable by lengthening it, but on the other hand suffixes such as the case markers and the interrogative particles received stress, as did the perfect participle suffix and the optative suffix when these forms have future meaning. In the closely related Xibe, Jerry Norman (1974) found yet another system – stress
5056-454: The original Chinese. De Moyriac de Mailla (1669–1748) benefited from the existence of the parallel Manchu text when translating the historical compendium Tongjian Gangmu ( Tung-chien Kang-mu ; 资治通鉴纲目 ). Jean Joseph Amiot , a Jesuit scholar, consulted Manchu translations of Chinese works as well, and wrote that the Manchu language "would open an easy entrance to penetrate … into the labyrinth of Chinese literature of all ages." Study of
5135-413: The performing of Banjin festivals , a festival in recognition of a new reconstructed Manchu identity, in Beijing. Written Manchu was close to being called an " open syllable " language because the only consonant that came regularly at the end of native words was /n/ , similar to Beijing Mandarin , Northeastern Mandarin , Jilu Mandarin and Japanese . This resulted in almost all native words ending in
5214-486: The same language. Currently, Manchu proper is a dying language spoken by a dozen or so elderly people in Qiqihar , China. However, the closely related Xibe language spoken in Xinjiang , which historically was treated as a divergent dialect of Jurchen-Manchu, maintains the literary tradition of the script, and has around 30,000 speakers. As the only language in the Tungusic family with a long written tradition, Jurchen-Manchu
5293-456: The term "Chinese language" ( Dulimbai gurun i bithe ) referred to all three Chinese, Manchu, and Mongol languages, not just one language. Manchu is southern Tungusic . Whilst Northern Tungus languages such as Evenki retain traditional structure, the Chinese language is a source of major influence upon Manchu, altering its form and vocabulary. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchen people and Jurchen language as 'Manchu'. The Jurchen are
5372-506: The title was Yoto (1599–1639), a grandson of Nurhaci , the founder of the Qing dynasty. In 1636, he was awarded the title " Prince Cheng of the First Rank " ( Prince Cheng ) by his uncle Huangtaiji , who succeeded Nurhaci as the ruler of the Qing Empire. However, he was subsequently demoted for committing offences. After his death, he was posthumously honoured with the title "Prince Keqin of
5451-491: The traditional native language of the Manchus , it was one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) of China, although today the vast majority of Manchus speak only Mandarin Chinese . Several thousand can speak Manchu as a second language through governmental primary education or free classes for adults in classrooms or online. The Manchu language has high historical value for historians of China, especially for
5530-781: The tree-based model of Tungusic classification and argue that the long history of contact among the Tungusic languages makes them better treated as a dialect continuum . The main classification is into a northern branch and a southern branch (Georg 2004) although the two branches have no clear division, and the classification of intermediate groups is debatable. Four mid-level subgroups are recognized by Hölzl (2018), namely Ewenic , Udegheic , Nanaic , and Jurchenic . Population distribution of total speakers of Tungusic languages, by speaker Alexander Vovin notes that Manchu and Jurchen are aberrant languages within South Tungusic but nevertheless still belong in it, and that this aberrancy
5609-658: The village of Sanjiazi ( Manchu : ᡳᠯᠠᠨ ᠪᠣᡠ᠋ , Möllendorff : ilan boo , Abkai : ilan bou ), in Fuyu County , in Qiqihar , Heilongjiang Province. A few speakers also remain in Dawujia village in Aihui District of Heihe Prefecture. The Xibe (or Sibe) are often considered to be the modern custodians of the written Manchu language. The Xibe live in Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County near
5688-477: The vowels of Chinese loanwords. These sounds are believed to have been pronounced as such, as they never occurred in native words. Among these, was the symbol for the high unrounded vowel (customarily romanized with a y , /ɨ/) found in words such as sy (Buddhist temple) and Sycuwan (Sichuan); and the triphthong ioi which is used for the Chinese ü sound. Chinese affricates were also represented with consonant symbols that were only used with loanwords such as in
5767-446: The written language. It is also apparent that the open-syllable tendency of the Manchu language had been growing ever stronger for the several hundred years since written records of Manchu were first produced: consonant clusters that had appeared in older forms, such as abka and abtara-mbi ('to yell'), were gradually simplified, and the words began to be written as aga or aha (in this form meaning 'rain') and atara-mbi ('to cause
5846-474: Was allowed. By the 1980s, Manchus had become the second largest minority group in China . People began to reveal their ethnic identities that had been hidden due to 20th century unrests and the fall of the Qing Empire . Language revival was one method the growing numbers of Manchus used in order to reconstruct their lost ethnic identity. Language represented them and set them apart from other minority groups in
5925-603: Was an official of the Ming dynasty before rebels murdered him. Shen Qiliang himself fought against the Three Feudatories as part of the Qing army. He then started learning Manchu and writing books on Manchu grammar from Bordered Yellow Manchu Bannermen in 1677 after moving to Beijing. He translated the Hundred Family Names and Thousand Character Classic into Manchu and spent 25 years on the Manchu language. Shen wrote: "I am
6004-566: Was in turn based on the "Imperially-Published Revised and Enlarged mirror of Qing" ( 御製增訂清文鑑 ) in Manchu and Chinese, which used both Manchu script to transcribe Chinese words and Chinese characters to transcribe Manchu words with fanqie . A number of European scholars in the 18th century were frustrated by the difficulties in reading Chinese, with its "complicated" writing system and classical writing style. They considered Manchu translations, or parallel Manchu versions, of many Chinese documents and literary works very helpful for understanding
6083-514: Was more useful for learning the pronunciation of Chinese words than the inconsistent romanizations used at the time by the writers transcribing Chinese words in English or French books. In 1930, the German sinologist Erich Hauer argued forcibly that knowing Manchu allows the scholar to render Manchu personal and place names that have been "horribly mutilated" by their Chinese transliterations and to know
6162-411: Was no single letter in the Manchu alphabet to represent it, but rather a digraph of the letters for /n/ and /k/ . [ɲ] is usually transcribed with a digraph ni , and has thus often been considered a sequence of phonemes /nj/ rather than a phoneme of its own, though work in Tungusic historical linguistics suggests that the Manchu palatal nasal has a very long history as a single segment , and so it
6241-448: Was usually penultimate (rarely antepenultimate) in the stem and was not affected by the addition of suffixes, except for monosyllabic suffixes beginning in a voiceless sound, which were treated as part of the stem for the purposes of stress placement. Disyllabic suffixes sometimes had secondary stress of their own. Manchu absorbed a large number of non-native sounds into the language from Chinese. There were special symbols used to represent
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