2025/11/07 by Sarah Bramao-Ramos · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy #Historical Linguistics and Language Studies #Translation Studies and Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.3998/saksaha.8646
openalex created_date 2025/11/07 · openalex publication_date 2025/11/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article examines Muwa gisun (Plain Talk), a handwritten manuscript in the Harvard-Yenching Library and one of the most well-known examples of a Manchu learning primer, situating it within the broader context of Qing-era dialogue books. Manuscripts such as this reflect much more than language instruction: They illuminate classroom practices, multilingual reading strategies, and Manchu manuscript culture. Through close comparative analysis of Muwa gisun and three other related manuscripts held in Copenhagen, Berlin, and Nagasaki, this article identifies shared dialogues, textual differences, and corrections to showcase the collaborative and iterative nature of Manchu-language manuscript production and use. This article also places these Manchu dialogue books in conversation with multilingual pedagogical traditions in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and across early-modern Europe, drawing parallels with language-learning manuals for languages such as Latin. Ultimately, this study argues that dialogue books in Manchu were part of a dynamic manuscript culture where students, teachers, and readers engaged with text through copying, recitation, and correction—practices that bridged the division between the oral and the written and shaped multilingual language acquisition. 摘要 本篇論文所探討的《粗話》爲哈佛燕京圖書館所藏手抄本。在諸多滿語初學讀本中，該文獻尤爲人熟知。本文將其置於清代滿語會話課本的脈絡中，並加以考察。此類手稿不僅反映了語言敎學狀況，更揭示了當時的課堂實踐方法、多語閱讀策略、滿文手稿文化。本文以《粗話》爲中心，與現存於哥本哈根、柏林、長崎的三份相關手稿對讀，細緻比較其對話內容的共通與差異，並考察其中的修訂與校正，藉此揭示滿文手稿在製作與使用過程中展現的協作和反覆修潤的特性。同時，本文亦將滿語會話課本置於更廣泛的多語教育傳統之中，將此類書籍日本、朝鮮、越南、近世歐洲的語學教材進行比較，並與拉丁語等語言的課本相互參照。最終，本文主張，滿語會話課本構成了一種生動的手稿文化：學生、敎師、讀者通過抄錄、誦讀、校改等方式與文本互動。此種實踐既跨越口語與書寫之界限，亦深刻塑造了多語習得的模式。