11.05.08
Posted in Excursions, Script at 2:43 pm by Randy Alexander
On Monday morning, October 12th, we met at the train station for a 7:40 train. On Saturday, I had called Mr Guan (the Jilin City Manchu Association’s resident Manchu language expert), and he said he couldn’t go. This was very unfortunate because that left me as the only one going who was interested in the language. So only Mrs Guan, Mrs Wu, and Mrs Guan’s 26-year-old daughter, who is a graduate of a Changchun college of Chinese Medicine, were to be my traveling companions. We boarded the train and set off on our way. Read the rest of this entry »
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09.26.08
Posted in Script at 12:08 am by Randy Alexander
I found my first real case of minim confusion, which I previously said was theoretically possible in Manchu because medial “a”
, pre-consonantal “n”, and one form of “k”
are all made up of identical strokes.
By my “first real case”, I mean two words that are attested in dictionaries, having the same written form but different pronunciation, i.e. they are homographs.
First of all, the theory behind it. Initial “a” looks like 
. Initial “e” looks like 
. Medial “n” when followed by a consonant looks like , so when you have a word that starts with “en” followed by a consonant, the “en” looks like , the same as initial “a” . Read the rest of this entry »
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09.19.08
Posted in Excursions, Script at 2:57 am by Randy Alexander
I went to Wulajie again earlier this week. A fellow school headmaster had arranged a trip there for his school so the students could learn about Manchu culture and spend part of the afternoon drawing. His school is an art school, and he said he chose Wulajie partly because he was inspired by my interest in Manchu language and culture, and also that it makes sense for kids to know more about Manchu culture since this area (Northeast China) used to be their country.
He filled up two tour busses and hired two tour guides, one for each bus. The tour guides talked about the usual things — Manchu people don’t eat dog meat, their chimneys run under their beds to provide a heated surface to sleep on, they are great archers, etc. Not much linguistic stuff outside of the fact that there is only a handful of mother-tongue speakers left.
Our first stop was the same government outpost that I mentioned in an earlier post, where I saw a strange word in Manchu script on an outside wall. The word is strange because it spells “kisi”, which is not in any Manchu dictionary that’s available to me. So what is this word? Read the rest of this entry »
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05.22.08
Posted in Introductory, Script at 11:48 pm by Randy Alexander
You’ve all seen those movies where someone finds some ancient parchment or carving with strange runes written on it. And then some professor-type runs off with it for an hour or so and then comes back holding it above his head shouting, “I’ve got it! It means….”
Yeah, right.
Deciphering an unknown script can be a nearly impossible task. Some scripts, like the Indus Script, remain undeciphered, despite many researchers collectively spending decades attempting to do so, even with thousands of (albeit short) texts available.
But the Manchu script is not some mysterious script; it was the language of the Chinese government during the final dynasty. There is even a kind of colony in Xinjiang province that was started in 1764 called the Xibe (or Sibo) that may still even produce their own newspaper.
Let’s take a look at exactly how hard it is to learn Manchu script. Remember now, this isn’t some mysterious script that no one has ever deciphered. It was commonly used just less than 100 years ago. There are even textbooks and online study materials available (which I’ll give links to as we go).
Read the rest of this entry »
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