Comments on: Minim confusion

By: Tenzin Ngawang

Tenzin Ngawang — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:54:48 +0000

In Mongolian, the word for “long” is URTU and the word for “Horde” is ORDO, they are homograms, but Mongolians can figure them out by context. This issue does not seem to bother native speakers very much.

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:55:17 +0000

It is possible, but it’s a little uncertain. Most of the letters have pretty clear values, except for “e”. From what I can tell, we can’t be completely sure how Manchu sounded when it was still a living language.

By: glossika

glossika — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:18:13 +0000

Could it be possible to provide the IPA for the romanized transcription of Manchu? I own a couple readers for Manchurian with romanization and Chinese translation, however, I think I’m still making pronunciation mistakes as I cannot determine the exact values of some letters.

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:01:15 +0000

I just found another homographic pair: aji means small, and enji means vegetarian.

By: Zev Handel

Zev Handel — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:29:37 +0000

@p, thankfully a new post on the book has appeared (http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu/2008/11/book-materials-of-spoken-manchu/), sparing me the task of writing up all those details. For which I’m grateful!

By: Echoes of Manchu » Book: Materials of Spoken Manchu

Echoes of Manchu » Book: Materials of Spoken Manchu — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:03:18 +0000

[...] Zev Handel’s comment on an earlier post, we have now obtained Materials of Spoken Manchu from Seoul National University [...]

By: p

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:08:59 +0000

Well, I can’t see a big interest around, so would one person be enough? What kind of details can you provide? Can you make the whole book available, or just give me/us some informations on the matter I’m/we’re particularly interested in?

By: Zev Handel

Zev Handel — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:14:57 +0000

This comment isn’t actually relevant to the blog post, but I want to get some information out there that might be of interest to readers of this list.

I have just come into possession of a book titled “Materials of Spoken Manchu” (Altaic Languages Series 01, Seoul National University Press. Copyright 2008 by the Altaic Society of Korea.) Authors: Kim Juwon, Ko Dongho, Chaoke D.O., Han Youfeng, Piao Lianyu, Boldyrev B.V.

ISBN 978-89-521-0947-7

The back cover blurb says: “This book offers spoken Manchu data and a brief linguistic description of spoken Manchu used in Sanjiazi village, Fuyu county in China. This book is a report of our fieldwork research that we carried out as part of the research project REAL (Researches on Endangered Altaic Languages) of the Altaic Society of Korea ….”

The book is in English. The first several sections are a brief grammar of the language. The book then lists 1800 lexical items in Manchu with glosses in Chinese and English, and several hundred short conversational sentences.

I can provide more details if there is interest.