Comments on: Sanjiazi 07: Showing off students

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:35:50 +0000

I’ll email you. It depends on your mode of transportation.

By: alejandra

alejandra — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:48:17 +0000

can you post n about how to arrive in this town. I live in Harbin and I´m doing research about manzu.

By: Paweł

Paweł — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:22:34 +0000

You can read something about vowel alterations in spoken Manchu here: http://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/tungus/Ikegami_manchu.pdf
I think the most common alteration, that occurs in written Manchu as well, is the one between /g/ and /h/, e.g. aga – aha, asigan – asihan, sagambi – sahambi, dasargan – dasarhan. As I’ve noticed, it occurs mostly before back vowels (a, o, v).

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:51:09 +0000

Also there seems to be a lot of alternation between /h/ and /k/, so baniha can become banika. Your example with dahame/dageme is interesting. See these posts on language log for something similar in Uighur.

By: manjuniyalma

manjuniyalma — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:11:02 +0000

Thanks for the post!

It is good to know that the words in their textbooks are written as actually pronounced.

大家”saza” is actually the Manchu word “sasa” (=together 一起), it is often used with “emgi”. If the sound “s” is located between two vowels or “n”, “ng” etc., it is usually (not always!) pronounced as “z”, and “si” frequently becomes “ji”.
e.g. gisun -> gizun , dosimbi -> dojimbi……

“bi emu gisun hvlambi” is pronounced as “bi emu gizun hvlame” in the last sound file.

Therefore, 大家跟我读一句儿 translated in Manchu would be:
“sasa mimbe dahame emu gisun hvla”, but sounds like:
“saza mimbe dageme emu gizun hvla”.

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:21:01 +0000

I think you’re right about the pedagogy issue. I hope to make another trip up there sometime, and this time engage Zhao Jinchun, who I believe wrote the textbooks, and Zhao Aping, who teaches Manchu at Heilongjiang University.

I want to present some more successful pedagogical ideas to them. If I can teach Chinese kids how to master English, they can certainly teach kids how to really master Manchu. They are certainly putting forth enough effort. They just need a few tweaks in their methodology.

I also think that it would help tremendously if Shi Junguang were connected to Manchu scholars around the world.

By: syz

syz — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:37:29 +0000

Mrs. Guan is glorious. I assume you’re planning a full profile of her pedagogical prowess and interlocutory skills.

Speaking of pedagogy, though, what’s presented here doesn’t seem all that different from what I’ve observed with ESL in my daughter’s first grade classroom in Beijing. Lots of memorization of individual words and some phrases; very little in the way of productive communication.