Manchu language

Manchu
ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ manju gisun
Native to	China
Region	Heilongjiang
Ethnicity	10.7 million Manchus (2000 census)
Native speakers	10 (2015)
Language family	Tungusic Southern Manchu group Manchu
Dialects	Xibe
Writing system	Manchu alphabet (Mongolian script)
Language codes
ISO 639-2	mnc
ISO 639-3	mnc
Glottolog	manc1252

Manchu (Manchu: ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ
ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ manju gisun) is a severely endangered Tungusic language spoken in Northeast China; it was the native language of the Manchus and one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty (1636–1911). Most Manchus now speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native and semi-speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. Manchu language sources have two main uses for historians of China, especially for the Qing dynasty. They 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 originally Central Asian languages such as Turkic and Mongolian, 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 is vertically written and taken from the Mongolian alphabet (which in turn derives from Aramaic via Uyghur and Sogdian). Although Manchu does not have the kind of grammatical gender that many Indo-European languages do, some gendered words in Manchu are distinguished by different stem vowels, as in ama "father" vs. eme "mother".

Writing system

The Manchu language uses the Manchu script, which was derived from the traditional Mongol script, which in turn is based on the vertically written pre-Islamic Uyghur script. Manchu is usually romanized according to the system devised by Paul Georg von Möllendorff in his Manchu grammar. Its ancestor, Jurchen, used the Jurchen script, which is derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Han characters. There is no relation between the Jurchen script and the Manchu script

Chinese Characters can also be used to transliterate Manchu. All the Manchu vowels, and the syllables commencing with a consonant, are represented by single Chinese characters, as are also the syllables terminating in i, n, ng, and o; but those ending in r, k, s, t, p, I, m, are expressed by the union of the sounds of two characters, there being no Mandarin syllables terminating with these consonants. Thus the Manchu syllable am is expressed by the Chinese characters a-muh (8084, 7800) (阿木 a mù), and the word Manchu is, in the imperial Manchu dictionary, spelt in the following manner: Ma (7467) -a (8084) gan (2834) { 瑪阿安 mǎ ā ān} —Man; —choo (1303) a (11767) { 諸烏 zhū wū} chu; —Manchu.

Teaching

Mongols learnt their script as a syllabary, dividing the syllables into twelve different classes, based on the final phonemes of the syllables, all of which ended in vowels. The Manchus followed the same syllabic method when learning Manchu script, also with syllables divided into twelve different classes based on the finals phonemes of the syllables. Today, the opinion on whether it is alphabet or syllabic in nature is still split between different experts. In China, it is considered syllabic and Manchu is still taught in this manner. The alphabetic approach is used mainly by foreigners who want to learn the language. Studying Manchu script as a syllabary takes a longer time.

Despite the alphabetic nature of its script, Manchu was not taught phoneme by phoneme per letter like western languages are, rather, Manchu children were taught to memorize all the syllables in the Manchu language separately as they learned to write, like Chinese characters. Manchus when learning, instead of saying I, a---la; I, o---lo; &c., were taught at once to say la, lo, &c. Many more syllables than are contained in their syllabary might have been formed with their letters, but they were not accustomed to arrange them otherwise than as they there stand. They made, for instance, no such use of the consonants I, m, n, and r, as westerners do when they called them liquid; hence if the Manchu letters s, m, a, r, t, be joined in that order as a Manchu would not able to pronounce them as English speaking people pronounce the word smart.

Names

The Qing dynasty referred to the Manchu language in various Chinese titles such as "Qingwen" 清文, or "Qingyu" 清語 ("Qing language") and Guoyu 國語 ("national language"), which was used by previous non-Han dynasties to refer to their languages. The "national" was also applied to the Manchu writing as in Guowen 國文 in addition to Guoyu 國語. In the Manchu language version of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the term "Chinese language" (Dulimbai gurun i bithe) referred to all three Chinese, Manchu, and Mongol languages, not just one language. Guoyu now refers to Standard Chinese.

History and significance

Plaque at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, in both Chinese (left, qián qīng mén) and Manchu (right, kiyan cing men)

A symbol of the Manchu people

Official designation for China in Manchu, reads "Dulimbai gurun".

In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchen people and Jurchen language as "Manchu".

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 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 was in decline throughout the 1700s. Historical records report that as early as 1776, the Qianlong Emperor was shocked to see a high 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 to 1820) complained about his officials being good neither at understanding nor writing Manchu.

By the end of the 19th century the language was so moribund that even at the office of the Shengjing (Shenyang) general, the only documents written in Manchu (rather than Chinese) would be the memorials wishing the emperor long life; at the same time 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 the officials testing soldiers' marksmanship continue to conduct an oral examination in Manchu.

The use of the language for the official documents declined throughout the Qing history as well. Especially 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 the last years of the dynasty, which was overthrown in 1912. 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 the language was for voice commands in the Qing army, attested as late as 1878.

Studies of Manchu in Qing China

The Qianlong Emperor commissioned projects such as new Manchu dictionaries, both monolingual and multilingual like 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 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 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 御製滿珠蒙古漢字三合切音清文鑑 ("Imperially-Published Manchu Mongol Chinese Three pronunciation explanation mirror of Qing"), which was in turn based on the 御製增訂清文鑑 ("Imperially-Published Revised and Enlarged mirror of Qing") in Manchu and Chinese, which used both Manchu script to transcribe Chinese words and Chinese characters to transcribe Manchu words with fanqie.

European scholarship

A number of European scholars in the 18th century, frustrated by the difficulties in reading Chinese, with its complicated writing system and the classical writing style, considered Manchu translations, or parallel Manchu versions, of many Chinese documents and literary works as a great help to understanding them. Among them was de Moyriac de Mailla (1669–1748), who benefited from the existence of the parallel Manchu text when translating the historical compendium Tongjian Gangmu (Tung-chien Kang-mu; 《通鑒綱目》); Amiot (1718–1793) 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."

The Kangxi Emperor's stele near Lugou Bridge, with parallel Chinese and Manchu text

Study of the Manchu language by Russian sinologists started in the early 18th century, soon after founding of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing, to which most of early Russian sinologists were connected. Illarion Kalinovich Rossokhin (Razsokhin) (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 a Manchu–Chinese dictionary. In the late 1830s, Georgy M. Rozov translated from the 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.

A European author remarked in 1844 that the transcription of Chinese words in Manchu alphabet, available in the contemporary Chinese–Manchu dictionaries, 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 Eric 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 the meanings of the names. He goes on that because 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, for instance, the Manchu translation of the Peiwen yunfu or the language of difficult Chinese novels. 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 the meaning of the Chinese text".

Current situation

"Banjin Inenggi" and Manchu linguistic activity by the government and students in Changchun, 2011

Currently, 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 the village of Sanjiazi (Manchu: ᡳᠯᠠᠨ
ᠪᠣᠣ; Möllendorff: ilan boo; Abkai: ilan bou), located in Fuyu County, in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province. A few speakers also remain in Dawujia village in Aihui District of Heihe Prefecture.

In fact, the modern custodians of the language are actually the Xibe (or Sibe) who live near the Ili valley in Xinjiang and were moved there by the Qianlong Emperor in 1764. Modern Xibe is very close to Manchu, although there are a few slight differences in writing and pronunciation. Xibe is taught as a second language by the Ili Teachers' College (Yili Normal College) in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of northern Xinjiang. Occasional television broadcasts in Xibe language are made in Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, and about 1,300 copies of the world's only newspaper in Xibe language, Qapqal News, appear twice a week.

In recent years, with the help of the governments in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, many schools started to have Manchu classes. Various regional governments around China have taken to teaching Manchu in more recent times; it was reported that Heilongjiang University Manchu language research center in no.74, Xuefu Road, Harbin, listed Manchu as an academic major. It is taught there as a tool for reading Qing Dynasty archival documents. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2009 that the language is offered (as elective) in one university, one public middle school, and a few private schools.

There are some groups of Manchu language enthusiasts in Beijing and elsewhere in Eastern China who try to revive the language of their ancestors using available dictionaries and textbooks, and even occasional visits to Qapqal, where the related Xibe language is spoken natively. 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 the language through these measures.

Dialects

Beijing dialect of Manchu

This section is about the dialect of Manchu spoken in Beijing. For the Northern Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing, see Beijing dialect.

Many of the Manchu words are now pronounced with some Chinese peculiarities of pronunciation, so k before i and e=ch', g before i and e=ch, h and s before i=hs, etc. H before a, o, u, ū, is the guttural Scotch or German ch.

A Manchu Grammar: With Analysed Texts, Paul Georg von Möllendorff, p. 1.

The Chinese Northern Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing had a major impact on the phonology of the dialect of Manchu spoken in Beijing, and because Manchu phonology was transcribed into Chinese and European sources based on the sinified pronunciation of Manchus from Beijing, the original authentic Manchu pronunciation is unknown to scholars.

The Manchus of Peking (Beijing) were influenced by the Chinese dialect spoken in the area to the point where pronouncing Manchu sounds was hard for them, and they pronounced Manchu according to Chinese phonetics, whereas the Manchus of Aigun (in Heilongjiang) could both pronounce Manchu sounds properly and mimick the sinified pronunciation of Manchus in Peking (Beijing), because they learned the Pekinese (Beijing) pronunciation from either studying in Peking or from officials sent to Aigun from Beijing, and they could tell them apart, using the Chinese influenced Pekinese pronunciation when demonstrating that they were better educated or their superior stature in society.

Grammar

Syntax

Manchu phrases are all head-final. This means that the head-word of a phrase (e.g. the noun of a noun phrase, or the verb of a verb phrase) always falls at the end of the phrase. Thus, adjectives and adjectival phrases always precede the noun they modify, and the arguments to the verb always precede the verb. As a result, Manchu sentence structure is subject–object–verb (SOV). The grammars of Japanese, Korean, and Turkish bear resemblance to that of Manchu, which would, according to the Altaic hypothesis, be due to a genetic relatedness.

Manchu uses a small number of case-marking particles that are similar to those found in Japanese, but also has a separate class of true postpositions. Case-markers and postpositions can be used together, as in the following sentence:

bi tere niyalma+i emgi gene+he

I that person+GEN with go+PAST

I went with that person

In this example, the postposition emgi, "with", requires its nominal argument to have the genitive case, and so we have the genitive case-marker i between the noun niyalma and the postposition.

Manchu also makes extensive use of converb structures, and has an inventory of converbial suffixes that indicate the relationship between the subordinate verb and the finite verb that follows it. For example, given the following two sentences (which have finite verbs):

tere sargan boo ci tuci+ke

that woman house ABL go.out+PAST.FINITE

That woman came out of the house.

tere sargan hoton de gene+he

that woman town DAT go+PAST.FINITE

That woman went to town.

These two sentences can be combined into a single sentence using converbs, which will relate the first action to the second. For example,

tere sargan boo ci tuci+fi, hoton de gene+he

that woman house ABL go.out+PAST.CONVERB, town DAT go+PAST.FINITE

That woman, having come out of the house, went to town.

tere sargan boo ci tuci+me, hoton de gene+he

that woman house ABL go.out+IMPERFECT.CONVERB, town DAT go+PAST.FINITE

That woman, coming out of the house, went to town.

tere sargan boo ci tuci+cibe, hoton de gene+he

that woman house ABL go.out+CONCESSIVE.CONVERB, town DAT go+PAST.FINITE

That woman, though she came out of the house, went to town.

Manchu cases

Manchu has six cases, though one of them occurs only occasionally in Classical Manchu. The cases are marked by particles that can be written either with the noun to which they apply or separately. The particles do not obey the rule of vowel harmony, yet they are also not truly postpositions.

• nominative – used for the subject of a sentence, no overt marking
• accusative – used for the direct object of a sentence, marked by the particle be. Direct objects can sometimes also take the nominative. It is commonly felt that the marked accusative has a definite sense, like using a definite article in English. There are, however, sentences in Classical Manchu that use the accusative and the non-subject nominative for different thematic functions, e.g.:

tere ba+i niyalma sukū+be gūlha+0 ara+mbi

that place+GEN people skin+ACC boot make+IMPERFECT.FINITE

The people of that place make boots out of skin (lit. make skin into boots).

In this example, "boots" and "skin" are separately marked with the two forms, and they have different thematic relationships to the verb. In other cases, however, it seems the two forms can be used interchangeably.

• genitive-instrumental – used to indicate possession or means by which something is accomplished. It is marked by the particle i or its allomorph ni that is used after a word ending in -ng. For instance, abka-i cira (the emperor's countenance, literally "the face of heaven") vs. wang-ni moo (the king's tree).
• dative-locative – used to indicate location, time, place, or indirect object, it is marked by the particle de. In the modern spoken Manchu dialect of the Sibe (Xibe), this particle is normally used to mark the locative, but not the dative.
• ablative – used to indicate the origin of an action or the basis for a comparison, it is marked by the particle ci. In the modern spoken Manchu dialect of the Sibe (Xibe), this particle is used to mark the dative.
• prolative – used to indicate the origin of an action, it is marked by the particle deri. This case is used infrequently in Classical Manchu. In the modern spoken Manchu dialect of the Sibe (Xibe), this particle is used to mark the ablative.

Less used cases:

• initiative – used to indicate the starting point of an action. suffix -deri
• terminative – used to indicate the ending point of an action. suffix -tala/-tele/-tolo
• indef. allative – used to indicate 'to a place, to a situation' when it is unknown whether the action reaches exactly to the place/situation or around/near it. suffix -si
• indef. locative – used to indicate 'at a place, in a situation' when it is unknown whether the action happens exactly at the place/situation or around/near it. suffix -la/-le/-lo
• indef. ablative – used to indicate 'from a place, from a situation' when it is unknown whether the action is really from the exact place/situation or around/near it. suffix -tin
• distributive – used to indicate every one of something. suffix -dari
• formal – used to indicate a simile ("as/like"). suffix -gese
• identical – used to indicate that something is the same as something else. suffix -ali/-eli/-oli (apparently derived from the word adali, meaning "same")
• orientative – used to indicate "facing/toward" (something/an action), showing only position and tendency, not movement in. suffix -ru
• revertive – used to indicate "backward" or "against (something)". From the root 'ca' (see cargi, coro, cashu-n, etc.) suffix -ca/-ce/-co
• translative – used to indicate change in the quality/form of sth. suffix -ri
• in. accusative – used to indicate that the touch of the verb on the object is not surely complete. suffix -a/-e/-o/-ya/-ye/-yo

In addition, there were some suffixes, such as the primarily adjective-forming suffix -ngga/-ngge/-nggo, that appear to have originally been case markers (in the case of -ngga, a genitive case marker), but which had already lost their productivity and become fossilized in certain lexemes by the time of the earliest written records of the Manchu language: e.g. agangga "pertaining to rain" as in agangga sara (an umbrella), derived from Manchu aga (rain).

Phonology

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 the situation in Beijing Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin, Jilu Mandarin and Japanese. This resulted in almost all native words ending in 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 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 a commotion').

Consonants

Phonemes:

		Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n	ɲ 1	ŋ 2
Plosive	aspirated	pʰ 9	tʰ 10	tʃʰ 3	kʰ 8
	unaspirated	p 9	t 10	tʃ 4	k 8
Fricative		f	s	ʃ 5	x 6
Rhotic			r
Approximant			l	j 7	w

1. romanized as ⟨ni⟩
2. romanized as ⟨ng⟩
3. romanized as ⟨c⟩, ⟨ch⟩, or ⟨q⟩ before /i/ or /y/, in which it is pronounced as [tɕʰ].
4. romanized as ⟨j⟩. Pronounced as [tɕ] before /i/ or /y/.
5. romanized as ⟨š⟩, ⟨ś⟩, ⟨sh⟩; or ⟨x⟩. Pronounced as [ɕ] before /i/.
6. romanized as ⟨h⟩
7. romanized as ⟨y⟩
8. romanised as ⟨k⟩ and ⟨g⟩. /kʰ/ and /k/ are pronounced [qʰ] and [q] respectively before /a/, /ɔ/, and /ʊ/.
9. romanized as ⟨p⟩ and ⟨b⟩ respectively.
10. romanized as ⟨t⟩ and ⟨d⟩ respectively.

Manchu has twenty consonants, shown in the table using the usual transcription conventions (and the IPA values of the consonants where they differ). The consonant /p/ was rare and found mostly in loanwords and onomatopoeiae, such as pak pik ('pow pow'). Historically, many ps appear to have occurred in ancient forms of the language; however, they had been changed over time to f. The phoneme /ŋ/ was also found mostly in Chinese loanwords and onomatopoeiae and there was no Manchu letter to represent it; it was written as a digraph nk using the Manchu letters for n and k. The palatal nasal consonant, [ɲ], is usually transcribed with a digraph, "ni", and has thus often been considered a phonemic sequence of /n/ followed by /j/ though work in Tungusic historical linguistics suggests that the Manchu palatal nasal, like Spanish "ñ" ([ɲ]) has a very long history as a single segment.

Early Western descriptions of Manchu phonology, particularly those made by speakers of languages such as French, in which the primary contrast between "b" and "p", "d" and "t", or "g" and "k" is truly one of presence vs. lack of voicing (rather than lack of vs. presence of aspiration, or lenis vs. fortis), labelled 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, g, j) and the voiceless series (p, t, k, c) in Manchu as it was spoken during the early modern era was actually one of aspiration and/or tenseness, as in Mandarin.

The /s/ of the Manchu language is peculiar in that many speakers habitually affricated it, pronouncing it like [ts] in some or all contexts.

Some scholars analyse the velar (or palatal?) consonants and the uvular consonants as two separate sets of phonemes. They were distinguished in spelling, but this may have been merely a carryover from earlier alphabets.

Vowels

Vowels of Manchu.

neutral	front	back
i		o
u		ʊ (ū)
	e	a

In this vowel system, the "neutral" vowels (i and u) were free to occur in a word with any other vowel or vowels. The lone front vowel (e, but generally pronounced like Mandarin [ɤ] ) never occurred in a word with either of the regular back vowels (o and a). The relatively rare vowel transcribed ū (possibly pronounced [ʊ]) was usually found as a back vowel; however, in some cases, it was found occurring along with 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 Shibe (Xibe) pronounce it identically to u.

Loanwords

Remarkably Manchu was able to absorb a large number of nonnative sounds into the language from Chinese. There were special symbols used to represent 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) found in words such as sy (Buddhist temple) and Sycuwan (Sichuan). Chinese affricates were also represented with consonant symbols that were only used with loanwords such as in the case of dzengse (orange) (Chinese: chéngzi) and tsun (inch) (Chinese: cùn). In addition to the vocabulary that was borrowed from Chinese, the Manchu language also had a large amount of loanwords from other languages such as Mongolian, for example the words morin (horse) and temen (camel).

Vowel harmony

The vowel harmony found in the Manchu language was traditionally described in terms of the philosophy of the I Ching. Syllables with front vowels were described as being as "yin" syllables whereas syllables with back vowels were called "yang" syllables. The reasoning behind this was that the language had a kind of sound symbolism where front vowels represented feminine objects or ideas and the back vowels represented masculine objects or ideas. As a result, there were a number of word pairs in the language in which changing the vowels also changed the gender of the word. For example, the difference between the words hehe (woman) and haha (man) or eme (mother) and ama (father) was essentially a contrast between the front vowel, [e], of the feminine and the back vowel, [a], of the masculine counterpart.

In popular culture

The Manchu language was spoken in the Korean film War of the Arrows. Ryu Seung-ryong, cast in the role of Jyushinta, and Moon Chae-won, who played Choi Ja-in, speak Manchu often in the film. It was also spoken in the film Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, in which it was called Tartar.

In Anthony Trollope's novel The Way We Live Now, the Chinese Emperor, who speaks only Manchu, must eat silently at a state dinner given in his honor in London, as nobody at the table is able to interpret Manchu into English, only Manchu into Chinese.

Further reading

Learning texts of historical interest

For readers of Chinese

Literature

References

• Gorelova, Liliya M. 2002. Manchu Grammar. Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 90-04-12307-5
• Haenisch, Erich. 1961. Mandschu-Grammatik. Leipzig: Veb Verlag Enzyklopädie (German)
• Erling von Mende. 2015. “In Defence of Nian Gengyao, Or: What to Do About Sources on Manchu Language Incompetence?”. Central Asiatic Journal 58 (1-2). Harrassowitz Verlag: 59–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13173/centasiaj.58.1-2.0059.
• Möllendorff, Paul Georg von. 1892. A Manchu Grammar: With Analysed Texts. Shanghai.
• Norman, Jerry. 1974. "Structure of Sibe Morphology", Central Asian Journal.
• Norman, Jerry. 1978. A Concise Manchu–English Lexicon, University of Washington Press, Seattle.
• Norman, Jerry. 2013. A Comprehensive Manchu–English Dictionary, Harvard University Press (Asia Center), Cambridge ISBN 9780674072138.
• Ramsey, S. Robert. 1987. The Languages of China. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey ISBN 0-691-06694-9
• Tulisow, Jerzy. 2000. Język mandżurski (« The Manchu language »), coll. « Języki Azjii i Afryki » (« The languages of Asia and Africa »), Dialog, Warsaw, 192 p. ISBN 83-88238-53-1 (Polish)

• Kane, Daniel. 1997. “Language Death and Language Revivalism the Case of Manchu”. Central Asiatic Journal 41 (2). Harrassowitz Verlag: 231–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41928113.

External links

• Manchu Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Abkai — Unicode Manchu/Sibe/Daur Fonts and Keyboards
• Manchu language Gospel of Mark
• Manchu alphabet and language at Omniglot
• Manchu Test Page
• Manchu–Chinese–English Lexicon
• online Manchu–Chinese, Manchu–Japanese lexicon (Chinese)
• Manchu Wikibook
• Wikisource copy of "A Manchu Grammar with Analysed Texts" by P.G. von Möllendorff, 1892
• anaku Manchu Script Creator (Chinese)
• A Dying Language
• Contrast In Manchu Vowel Systems
• Lament for a dying language
• Manchu Word Of The Day, Open Source Manchu–English dictionary
• Manju Nikan Inggiri Gisun i Buleku Bithe (Manchu–Chinese–English dictionary)
• Manchu language guide
• The Manchu Studies Group
• Tawney, Brian. "Reading Jakdan's Poetry: An Exploration of Literary Manchu Phonology". AM Thesis (Harvard, RSEA).
• 清代满族语言文字在东北的兴废与影响