05.05.08
Breaking Ground
Seeing as I live up here in Manchuria, all the hubbub about Manchu stirred up my wanderlust instinct and I was chomping at the bit to go poke around in 三家子 (sānjiāzi) or someplace. On the map, I noticed that there were some Manchu villages nearby, so I heeded the call.
I met with my friend Alice and caught the 08:15 bus to 乌拉街 (Wūlājiē ). It took about an hour and twenty minutes to get there. During the ride, we asked some other passengers and the 车长 (chēzhǎng , conductor) if anybody could speak Manchu there. Everybody said that they didn’t know anyone who could speak, but they thought there still might be some old people who could. The 车长 said that she thought they taught Manchu in the area primary school, so that’s where we headed when we got off the bus.
When we arrived at the school, there was a busful of government leaders finishing up their visit to the school—about 12 of them. As soon as they came out of the school gates, we headed in, not having any idea what to expect in this situation. But none of the Leaders said anything to us, and we just went right in, looking like we were supposed to be there.
- Alice in front of the Long Tan District Primary School [Note: the times on the pictures are 12 hrs earlier than they should be. 15 refers to April 15th.]
As we approached the inner gate, I was shocked to notice that the traditional carved wooden sign on the right of the gate had Manchu script on it.
- The sign on the left says: Jilin County Long Tan District Communist Youth League
- The sign on the right says: Jilin County Long Tan District Young Pioneers Organization
Just past the gate there is a traditional Chinese freestanding wall (not attached to anything) that also has Manchu script on it. The Chinese below it reads 尚德, 博学, 竞争, 创新 (shàngdé , bóxué , jìngzhēng , chuàngxīn ; upholding virtue, erudition, competition, pioneering).
We asked where the headmaster’s office was and were quickly ushered in. They asked us if we were there with the visiting leaders, and I explained that I had nothing to do with them — it was just a coincidence that we were there at the same time. I explained that I was there just to see if Manchu was being taught there. The reason that the leaders were there, it turns out, was to install a new headmaster. The old headmaster, Headmaster Liu, was going to be working at the Manchu middle school, and it was the first day for Headmaster Wang, the new guy.
They said that Manchu was indeed being taught there, but that since it was late in the year, it was not being taught at the moment because math and Chinese had to take priority since they were tested subjects. It was taught at the beginning of the school year for a while in September, and was going to be taught again next school year.
I asked if the government was supportive, and they said yes. I pried a little further, saying I had lived here for more than five years, and I understand the government pretty well, and were they genuinely supportive, or did they just try to appear that way? After a few snickers, they said that the support was genuine and that the government really wants to save the Manchu language.
I asked to meet their Manchu teacher. The first three or four times I asked, they said that the teacher was busy teaching other subjects. I was persistent though, and finally Headmaster Wang said the teacher would be finished with class at 11:40. Having some time to kill, I asked if I could go around and take some pictures of the school and maybe could he give us a little tour? : )
Headmaster Wang explained that he was new, so he didn’t know too much about the history of the school, but sure, he would show us around. As we set out he explained that the school was originally a citadel that was important during the Qing Dynasty, and that the Emperor had spent some time there. Most of the citadel was destroyed by the Communists during the Autumn Offensive of 1947, but the layout was still there, and you could still see the city walls. There were three sets of them. The innermost set formed the boundaries of the school.
First stop: Wulajie Ancient Walled City Tourist Map
That’s what it says! Notice the three citadel walls, which form the front and sides of the school. (Actually the side walls extend back to a fourth wall, which is outside the scale of the map.) In back of the school there is a big hill. On the map it shows a building on the top, but it is no longer there. The hill is called 白花公主点将台 (Báihuā Gōngzhǔ Diǎnjiàngtái, the platform on which Princess Whiteflower chose the generals). In front of the hill there is a little building which is also gone.
Standing in front of where the little building was, you can see the school’s new back wall with its moon gate in front of the hill, but the pavilion on the hill was replaced in 1975 by an obelisk commemorating the martyrs that died there during the Cultural Revolution.
From on top of the hill, you can see the back wall, and on the horizon you can see the second, bigger wall with huge old trees growing on it.
This is the primary school which once was a Manchurian palace, as seen from the back.
After our tour, we went back to Headmaster Wang’s office. He went to go get the Manchu teacher. When she arrived, I said “si sain” to her (which is the Manchu equivalent of hello), and she didn’t get it at first, but then she suddenly realized what I was doing, and laughed and returned my Manchu greeting. I asked her if she thought that there was a relationship between “si sain” and “你好(nǐhǎo)”; whether one was borrowed from the other. She said no; languages all have their way of saying hello, and “si sain” has no relationship to “你好“. I told her that I thought there might be some relationship because these two ways of saying hello are semantically equal: “si” = “你” = “you” and “sain” = “好” = “good”. I don’t know of any other languages that use this kind of greeting in exactly this way.
I asked how much Manchu she knew, and she said not so much. She took a course at Beihua University in Jilin City. She excused herself for a moment while she went out and got her textbook. When she came back I asked her if she could write some Manchu script for me and I flipped through the textbook. She had a good basic foundation, but said there is no one she can really practice with. We agreed to keep in touch and encourage each other’s study of Manchu.
We had a quick lunch with the headmaster before we left. On the way out, between the main gate and the outside gate, there are 14 murals depicting the history of the palace. Some of them show the palace’s original appearance.
This is the original front entrance.
This is the building that was on the hill.
We called a cab and had him take us to another village (雾凇岛, Wùsōng Dǎo, Rimefrost Island) where the headmaster said there might be old people who could still speak the language. On the way, we passed one of the outer walls.
As I was taking the picture, an old guy walked up to me and asked where I was from (don’t get too many whiteys up this way…). I told him and said I was looking for Manchu speakers. He gave me a name of an old guy to look for in the village we were headed to.
When we got there, the cab driver stopped to ask a woman where we could find this guy. She said she would take us to where he should be and got in the car. She took us to a little building where some oldsters were playing ma jiang. The guy we were looking for wasn’t there, and none of them said they could speak Manchu, but one guy said they said they still performed Manchu ritual drum songs.
He got up and got an old black bag down, out of which he pulled a little notebook. In the notebook was written Manchu incantations to invoke spirits that help them with their crops. The songs were written using Chinese characters to represent the pronunciation, and there was some Manchu script on one page that he said he had copied down.
I asked him if he could read some of it for me, and he said sure.
Here is what he sang (from the first page, not the one pictured above):
He stopped and said “也就念了…再多就不能念啦. 哎, 就这么意思啊. 这是开头的…这是开头的. 嗯, 哎, ‘Amba Abka’.” (Yě jiù niàn le…zài duō jiù bùnéng niàn le . Ai, jiù zhème yìsi a. Zhè shì kāitóu de . Ng, ai, ‘Amba Abka’; I just read…I can’t read any more, it’s just like that. This is the beginning…this is the beginning. Mm, ah, ‘Amba Abka’.)
He couldn’t read any more because it is an incantation used to call spirits and can only be used when really calling spirits.
Brimming with satisfaction that our little excursion produced some unexpectedly nice surprises, Alice and I left to go back to the bus station. We got on the bus and started on our way. I saw a restaurant sign with Manchu script and yelled for them to stop the bus. I explained that I wanted to take a picture of the sign. They stopped, and I ran out and got this:
This is not just a restaurant sign; it’s a sign that the Manchu people are interested in holding on to their language. It’s a small glimmer of hope that the Manchu language may yet survive.
Victor H. Mair said,
May 5, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Great stuff! A good beginning. This will be a valuable resource.
Jerry Norman said,
May 6, 2008 at 12:55 am
Each generation seems to produce new people who get interested in Manchu. Good for you. I look forward to hearing more from you. Do you mind if I forward your email to Victor to a kind of moribund list we have over here about Manchu language?
Jerry Norman
strangeguitars said,
May 6, 2008 at 1:03 am
Please do. Can we join your list?
Ben said,
May 6, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Thanks for the great site! I’ve been interested in the Manchu language for a long time. I wanted to take a course that was offered in the summer of UC Berkeley in 1996 but I was already working and couldn’t take time off.
Please add more sound and video files as you grow the site so we can learn how to pronounce the language. Thanks!
Keith Dede said,
May 8, 2008 at 2:37 am
This is excellent material. Thank you for sharing it!
A colleague has a recording of a Sibo reciting a Manchu text. It will be interesting to compare that recording with the video here.
FYI: anyone interested in learning Manchu, there is a regular Manchu study group, Takta, that meets in Portland, Oregon, every week.
Zev Handel said,
May 18, 2008 at 11:16 pm
This blog is a wonderful contribution: interesting, well-written, and substantive. I look forward to reading more.
What does ‘Amba Abka’ mean?
Will you be able to describe for us in a future post your own background and experience with Manchu?
I fear that your final note of hope–”that the Manchu language may yet survive”–is likely too optimistic. Records will certainly survive, and scholars will continue to read the language. And some who study the language may develop a limited capacity to speak. But as there is no longer the possibility of native speakers emerging–that is to say, children learning Manchu as their first language within a community of native speakers–it will not be possible for the language to exist in anything like its earlier incarnation.
It will be interesting to see, therefore, what type of Manchu ability the supporters of language revitalization try to achieve, and how much progress they make.
If other readers of this list find my assessment too bleak, I would be only too pleased to be corrected!
Randy Alexander said,
May 20, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Zev –
Amba Abka means “Great Heaven”. When I went to Wulajie and filmed that guy chanting, I didn’t have any idea what it meant, but coming back and checking in dictionaries I figured it out. I went to Wulajie again last week and he confirmed the meaning, though I think it was even a little fuzzy for him; he can’t speak Manchu, but just knows that chant. More posts about the chant and its context are forthcoming.
Also more posts will describe my (and the other authors’) background in Manchu. Until very recently we have had none! So you will be able to see our background develop firsthand.
Part of what we’ll be looking into is both how Manchu is dying, and how it is surviving. I’m not being too optimistic about the survival of Manchu, but I don’t want to prematurely pronounce it dead.
Echoes of Manchu » The writing on the wall said,
May 22, 2008 at 11:48 pm
[...] The last example I want to look at is written on the side of a building in what was a Qing Dynasty government outpost in Wulajie. [...]
Sally said,
June 1, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Hi! Randy!
Your blog is wonderful. Although I live in Jilin, But I didn’t know any thing about manchu.
This blog let me know about Wulajie and I saw many picture about this.
Is that rideo made by yourself? It’s very interesting.
Echoes of Manchu » Manchu Shaman Reincarnated as Brit Pop Star? said,
June 10, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[...] a trip to the Manchu village of Wulajie, and recorded a man singing a ritual chant. If not, please read the post and listen to the chant at the end of the post. April 15th is the day I went. I had never met the [...]
Michael Rank said,
July 23, 2008 at 5:36 am
Fascinating stuff! FYI There was this very interesting NYT article
Scientists Link a Prolific Gene Tree to the Manchu Conquerors of China
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/science/01manc.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and there have been interesting articles about Manchus in the official Chinese press eg
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2007-03/15/content_828004.htm
I was also interested to read that ni hao in Manchu is si sain as sain also means good in Mongolian (sain ban uu, how are you?). As I understand it Manchu and Mongolian aren’t related (or only distantly) although they use the same traditional script, so find it surprising they use the same word for good…
Michael
Rory said,
August 14, 2008 at 7:17 am
Fantastic blog. I just started studying Manchu from the wiki book, & my library has Gorelova’s big grammar. But I’d love to hear more sound files for pronunciation! “Amba atka” was great, so clear.
This is a great, great work you’re doing!
K. said,
September 10, 2008 at 2:42 am
Cool blog; I’m looking forward to following it!
With respect, “si sain” is not a greeting in traditional Manchu, though it may be becoming one in the very interesting version of “zombie Manchu” that’s been taking form in China since the late ’80s or ’90s. At least up until the first decade of the 20th century, what you’d see is “si saiyvn” ({v} = u-macron) — a contraction of an interrogative question, “*are* you well?”. If anything it’s a calque of Mongolian, not Chinese. (IMO!)
sima said,
September 10, 2008 at 4:48 pm
That’s a useful comment, K. I know Randy’s become rather suspicious of ’si sain’ and has been trying to track down where it came from. Can you tell us any more about “zombie Manchu”. The relatively large number of learners, against a very small number of native speakers could be producing all kinds of effects, never mind the fact that those few native speakers will have been using Mandarin for many interactions for much of their lives.
I’ve been trying to track down the origins of 你好 (nǐhǎo) which itself seems to be a relatively recent addition to Chinese. The earliest use I’ve been able to find so far is in 红楼梦 (Hónglóu Mèng – The Dream of the Red Chamber). Also, it doesn’t really seem like a very Chinese expression and it appears quite possible it’s some kind of adaptation of of a greeting from elsewhere.
Presumably Mongolian, Chinese and Manchu have interacted considerably. I asked a Mongolian friend to read some sentences from a Manchu phrasebook for me. They were really ’spooked’ by a couple of the expressions, though not by ’si sain’.
Jerry Norman said,
September 11, 2008 at 9:26 am
The usual greeting in Mongolian is sain bainuu ‘are you well?’ In Cabcal the Sibe say baitakv na ‘are you okay?’ You are correct to say that a lot of polite language in Modern Chinese is of relatively recent origin and much of it based on European expressions. If Manchu is going to become a modern language, then obviously a lot of accommodation to modern usage will have to be made. For ‘goodbye’ the Sibe say sirame acaki; my old Manchu teacher in Taiwan back in the 60s (he was also a Sibe) said jai acaki. I have never seen either expression in Qing dynasty texts.
K. said,
September 12, 2008 at 5:20 am
Sima, don’t take me too seriously — “zombie Manchu” is just an unfairly flippant way of referring the form of Manchu spoken/written by adult learners, whose L1 is Chinese, and who for the most part are learning from Chinese-language materials on Manchu which, going by the ones I looked at some years back, may have a thin or shaky linguistic/philological grounding.
Which is *not* say that this resurrected Manchu isn’t “valid” as a language, or that it’s not linguistically interesting in its own right; just that, IMO, it often diverges significantly from ‘classical’ written Manchu. And probably from Sibe as well, as Jerry can tell us. You encounter similar differences (though maybe not as marked?) in language revitalization efforts in North America and Canada — it’s the nature of the beast.
sima said,
September 15, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Don’t worry, K. I don’t take these things too seriously, but did like your turn of phrase. Actually, I think it was a timely reminder to us to take care with the various Manchu materials we’ve encountered.
Kafayet Yhebira said,
March 18, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I am Manchurian from Russia I wish to thank you for your article and hope to read more. I am currently training to preserve and teach my native language and culture to people out side of China as I have heard the conditions are bad and worsinging for Manchu in China. I wish to stay in contact.
Sincerely
Yhebira
fiyangtahvn said,
August 18, 2009 at 10:05 pm
amba akba in english is the “big sky” meaning
Altan said,
August 21, 2009 at 12:54 am
Fascinating blog. I have been learning Manchu for 3 months and now feel I can read some books on it. Is there any way to find Chinese classical novels such as Water Margin, or Three Kingdoms in Manchu?
For native Mongolian speakers, Manchu seems easy to learn. Many words have the same roots with Mongolian, and learning vocabulary was like studying some archaic Mongolian.
Randy Alexander said,
August 21, 2009 at 1:51 am
I haven’t found any Chinese classical novels in Manchu translation online, but there are a few things here that you might like.
Altan said,
August 21, 2009 at 3:05 am
Thanks a lot Randy,
I never expected to find such a many material in Manchu online.
manjuniyalma said,
August 26, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I personally think the origin of “si sain” is really a trivial issue. But for those who are interested, there are papers authored by Chinese scholars on this topic.
Greeting is not a modern social practice, and it has been around for thousands of years among Manchus. There is no need to “modernize” or “reinvent” the Manchu language in order to accommodate greeting. All forms of greetings can be found in Manchu conversation textbooks used in Qing dynasty.
Randy Alexander said,
August 26, 2009 at 4:02 pm
@manjuniyalma: If you know of papers authored by Chinese scholars on the subject of the origin of “si sain”, could you give us some references or links?
Also, what “Manchu conversation textbooks used in the Qing dynasty” are you referring to? The only thing like that I have heard of is tanggv meyen.
manjuniyalma said,
August 27, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I read about one paper. It was not about “si sain” per se, but about a feild study on Sanjiazi Manchu. The expression of “si sain” was used as an illustrative example. I can’t locate it now, but will provide the link or reference if I run across them.
The following link also contains some discussion related to this subject http://www.sibeweb.com/BBS/forumTopicRead.asp?id=633&page=1
Neither “si sain” nor “si saiyvn” is correct. “si sain” errs in grammar. “si saiyvn” is grammatically correct, but not a customary expression.
Manchu conversation textbooks available online:
兼汉满套话(i.e. the 2nd volume of 清文启蒙)
清文指南(one version of tanggv meyen)
清语老乞大(a Manchu-Korean conversation book)
清话百条(another version of tanggv meyen?)
Wanbok Chung said,
September 12, 2009 at 1:37 pm
September 11, 2009
Hi,
My name is Wanbok Chung, a Korean American, and am interested in purchasing the above four books,
兼汉满套话(i.e. the 2nd volume of 清文启蒙)
清文指南(one version of tanggv meyen)
清语老乞大(a Manchu-Korean conversation book)
清话百条(another version of tanggv meyen?)
Would please let me know where and how I could purchase the above
four books?
I am very interested in learning Manchu since I would like to find out
how Manchu, Korean, and Japanese are related. I believe that those three languages are very closely related and I would like to prove it by finding more Manchu language words that still remained in Korean and Japanese.
Sincerely yours
Wanbok Chung
Wanbok Chung said,
September 12, 2009 at 2:18 pm
This is my contact”
Wanbok Chung
2728 Ransford Ave. #A
Pacific Grove, CA 93050
(831)324-0049 Home
(831)227-0076 Cell
email: mys123us@yahoo.co.kr
I would like have some information on how to purchase
兼汉满套话(i.e. the 2nd volume of 清文启蒙)
清文指南(one version of tanggv meyen)
清语老乞大(a Manchu-Korean conversation book)
清话百条(another version of tanggv meyen?)
these books online.
Thanks,
Wanbok Chung
Paweł said,
September 23, 2009 at 1:11 am
The Altaic Hypothesis?
If you know Japanese, have a look at the romanized Nixan saman-i bithe text with parallel Japanese translation, where you can plainly see the corresponding grammatical constructions. You can find it in “The Book of the Nisan Shaman 02″ installment.
Also, do you know this paper: http://rapidshare.com/files/83387288/likimun_manju.pdf ?
Best,
Paweł
manjuniyalma said,
September 27, 2009 at 6:15 am
Two of theese books 清文指南 and 清语老乞大have been published in Taiwan. You can buy them online from the publisher or through online bookstores in Taiwan.
But by reading your post I don’t understand why you need those four books. Anyway, these books are for studying conversation. If you are interested in studying vocabulary, dictionaries would suite you purposes much better.
Having said that, I don’t think vocabulary is a good approach to study closeness between languages. For example, despite the fact that Japanese has a large portion of vocabulary common with Chinese, and not sharing a single word with Manchu, it is well establihsed that Japanese is a closer relative to the latter.
Also the theories of vocabulary similarity tend to be far-fetched. For these reasons and with all respects, I attribute little value to the article written by Li Ki Mun.
If I say the word “xun” in Manchu has a common root with “sun” in English, I am just being silly. But if I say Manchu and English are two closely related languages because of the superficial ressemblance of these two little words, I would be insulting the intelligence of the entire humanity.