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.