A Guide to Mandarin, in Manchu: on a Partial Translation of Guanhua zhinan (1882) and Its Historical Context

Abstract

This paper describes and contextualizes Guwan hûwa jy nan, a partial Manchu translation, hitherto unidentified as such, of a Japanese-authored Mandarin primer —Guanhua zhinan—from 1882. In so doing, the paper will highlight certain characteristics of the language primer in Northeast Asia and their consequences for our conceptualization of Mandarin Chinese as China’s national language. East Asian primers in dialogue form moved between communities of readers and even languages with remarkable ease. Not only did the same Chinese texts reach places far apart, they were also adapted for the teaching of languages entirely different from those of their original composition. The Manchu translation of the Japanese Mandarin primer is one example of this phenomenon. It represents the confluence of a pedagogical tradition of teaching the Qing dynastic language and a growing foreign interest in Beijing Chinese, manifest here through the text’s origin in the Meiji government’s interpreter corps.