Manchu language
Encyclopedia
Manchu is a Tungusic
endangered language
spoken in Northeast China
; it used to be the language of the Manchu
, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. Although the Xibe language
, with 40,000 speakers, is in almost every respect identical to Manchu, Xibe speakers, who live in far western Xinjiang
, are ethnically distinct from Manchus.
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 gender-related words in Manchu are distinguished by different stem vowels; in such cases, "a"s are sometimes used to indicate masculine ones, as in ama "father", and "e"s are sometimes used to indicate feminine ones, as in eme "mother".
, 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
.
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 various rewards to those who excelled in the language. 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.
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 Moyria de Mailla
(1669–1748), who benefited from the existence of the parallel Manchu text when translating the historical compendium Tongjian Gangmu (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."
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.
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
, 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.
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.
A few 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.
The 2011 South Korean movie, Choejongbyeonggi Hwal (Korean
:최종병기 활), prominently features the Manchu language.
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
and Korean
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:
In this example, the postposition , "with", requires its nominal argument to have the genitive case, and so we have the genitive case-marker between the noun 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):
These two sentences can be combined into a single sentence using converbs, which will relate the first action to the second. For example,
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.
Less used cases:
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).
, Jilu Mandarin and Japanese language
. 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').
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 in onomatopoeia, 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 onomatopoeia 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 as 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", while 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 the Mandarin language.
The /s/ of the Manchu language is peculiar in that many speakers habitually affricated it, pronouncing it like [ts] in some or all contexts.
There is scholarly controversy over whether the velar consonants actually existed in two allophonic
forms, a forward palatal set and a rearward uvular set, or whether this was merely a carryover in spelling from earlier alphabets.
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
e or Korean
eo/ŏ) never occurred in a word with either of the regular back vowels ([o] and [a]). The vowel [ū] ' onMouseout='HidePop("61433")' href="/topics/Korean_language">Korean
vowel eu/ŭ) 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]. One scholar proposes that it was pronounced as a front rounded vowel initially, but a back unrounded vowel medially. The modern Sibe (Xibe) pronounce it identically to [u].
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).
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 while 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.
Tungusic languages
The Tungusic languages form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain...
endangered language
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
spoken in Northeast China
Northeast China
Northeast China, historically known in English as Manchuria, is a geographical region of China, consisting of the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. The region is sometimes called the Three Northeast Provinces...
; it used to be the language of the Manchu
Manchu
The Manchu people or Man are an ethnic minority of China who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of the Ming dynasty rebels , they came to power in China and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which...
, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. Although the Xibe language
Xibe language
The Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.-Phonology:...
, with 40,000 speakers, is in almost every respect identical to Manchu, Xibe speakers, who live in far western Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
, are ethnically distinct from Manchus.
Manchu is an agglutinative language
Agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
that demonstrates limited vowel harmony
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
. It has been demonstrated that it is derived mainly from the Jurchen language
Jurchen language
Jurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern Tungusic language.-Writing:...
though there are many loan words from Mongolian and Chinese. Its script is vertically written and taken from the Mongolian alphabet
Mongolian alphabet
Many alphabets have been devised for the Mongolian language over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. The oldest, called simply the Mongolian script, has been the predominant script during most of Mongolian history, and is still in active use today in the Inner Mongolia region of China...
(which in turn derives from Aramaic
Aramaic alphabet
The Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BC. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels....
via Uyghur
Uyghur alphabet
Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, administered by China, by the Uyghur people. It is a language with a long literary tradition, and has been written using numerous writing systems through time...
and Sogdian
Sogdian alphabet
The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdiana. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of three scripts used to write the Sogdian language,...
). Although Manchu does not have the kind of grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
that many Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
do, some gender-related words in Manchu are distinguished by different stem vowels; in such cases, "a"s are sometimes used to indicate masculine ones, as in ama "father", and "e"s are sometimes used to indicate feminine ones, as in eme "mother".
Writing system
The Manchu language uses the Manchu scriptManchu alphabet
The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu...
, which was derived from the traditional Mongol script
Mongolian alphabet
Many alphabets have been devised for the Mongolian language over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. The oldest, called simply the Mongolian script, has been the predominant script during most of Mongolian history, and is still in active use today in the Inner Mongolia region of China...
, which in turn is based on the vertically written pre-Islamic Uyghur script. Manchu is usually romanized
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
according to the system devised by Paul Georg von Möllendorff
Paul Georg von Möllendorff
Paul Georg von Möllendorff was a German linguist and diplomat. Möllendorff is mostly known for his service as an adviser to the Korean king Gojong in the late nineteenth century and for his contributions to Sinology...
in his Manchu grammar.
Its ancestor, Jurchen
Jurchen language
Jurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern Tungusic language.-Writing:...
, used the Jurchen script
Jurchen script
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
, which is derived from the Khitan script
Khitan script
Khitan scripts may refer to one of two mutually exclusive scripts used by the Khitan people during the 10th-12th centuries:*Khitan small script – invented in about 924 or 925 CE by a scholar named Diela...
, which in turn was derived from Han characters
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
. There is no relation between the Jurchen script
Jurchen script
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
and the Manchu script
Manchu alphabet
The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu...
.
History and significance
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
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
Eight Banners
The Eight Banners were administrative divisions into which all Manchu families were placed. They provided the basic framework for the Manchu military organization...
, offering various rewards to those who excelled in the language. As the Yongzheng Emperor
Yongzheng Emperor
The Yongzheng Emperor , born Yinzhen , was the fifth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the third Qing emperor from 1722 to 1735. A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimal expense. Like his father, the Kangxi Emperor, Yongzheng used military...
(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
Shenyang
Shenyang , or Mukden , is the capital and largest city of Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Currently holding sub-provincial administrative status, the city was once known as Shengjing or Fengtianfu...
).
By the 19th century even the imperial court had lost fluency in the language. The Jiaqing Emperor
Jiaqing Emperor
The Jiaqing Emperor was the seventh emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1796 to 1820....
(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
Forbidden City
The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum...
, whose historical signs are written in both Chinese
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
and Manchu.
Another limited use of the language was for voice commands in the Qing army, attested as late as 1878.
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 classicalClassical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
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 Moyria de Mailla
Joseph-Anna-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla
Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla was a French Jesuit missionary to China.-Biography:...
(1669–1748), who benefited from the existence of the parallel Manchu text when translating the historical compendium Tongjian Gangmu (通鑒綱目); Amiot
Jean Joseph Marie Amiot
Jean Joseph Marie Amiot was a FrenchJesuit missionary.-Life:Joseph Marie Amiot was born at Toulon. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1737 and was sent in 1750 as a missionary to China. He soon won the confidence of the Qianlong Emperor and spent the remainder of his life at Beijing...
(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."
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
Irkutsk
Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...
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
Romanization of Chinese
The romanization of Mandarin Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history...
used at the time by the writers transcribing Chinese words in English or French books.
Current situation
Currently, very few native Manchu speakers remain; in what used to be ManchuriaManchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
virtually no one speaks the language, the entire area having been completely sinicized
Sinicization
Sinicization, Sinicisation or Sinification, is the linguistic assimilation or cultural assimilation of terms and concepts of the language and culture of China...
. As of 2007, the last native speakers of the language were thought to be 18 octogenarian residents of the village of Sanjiazi
Sanjiazi
Sanjiazi village or Ilanbotokso in Youyi Daur, Manchu and Kirghiz Ethnic Township , Fuyu County, Qiqihar Prefecture, Heilongjiang province...
, located in Fuyu County
Fuyu County, Heilongjiang
Fuyu County is a county of western Heilongjiang province of Northeast China, under the administration of Qiqihar City, to the southwest. Various economic crops and the milk are produced in the fertile land...
, in Qiqihar
Qiqihar
- Subdivisions :Qiqihar is divided into 16 divisions: 7 districts , 8 counties and 1 county-level city .-Economy:...
, Heilongjiang
Heilongjiang
For the river known in Mandarin as Heilong Jiang, see Amur River' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. "Heilongjiang" literally means Black Dragon River, which is the Chinese name for the Amur. The one-character abbreviation is 黑...
Province. A few speakers also remain in Dawujia village in Aihui District
Aihui District
Aihui District is an administrative district of the Prefecture-level city of Heihe, in China's Heilongjiang Province. It is located on the right bank of the Amur River, about 30 km downstream of the Heihe central urban area....
of Heihe
Heihe
Heihe is a city in Heilongjiang, China.It is located at , on the Russian border, on the south bank of the Amur River, across the river from the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk...
Prefecture.
In fact, the modern custodians of the language are actually the Xibe
Xibe
The Xibe or Sibo are a Tungusic ethnic group living mostly in northeast China and Xinjiang. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.- History :...
(or Sibe) who live near
Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County
Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in northern Xinjiang is the only Xibe autonomous county of the People's Republic of China. It has an area of 4,430 square kilometers and a population 160,000...
the Ili
Ili River
thumb|right|300px|Map of the Lake Balkhash drainage basin showing the Ili River and its tributariesThe Ili River is a river in northwestern China and southeastern Kazakhstan .It is long, of which is in Kazakhstan...
valley in Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
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
Xibe language
The Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.-Phonology:...
is taught as a second language by the Ili Teachers' College (Yili Normal College) in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture
Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture
Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture , in northernmost Xinjiang, is the only Kazakh autonomous prefecture of the People's Republic of China.-Geography and coordinates:The following figures excludes both Tacheng Prefecture and Altay Prefecture....
of northern Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
. Occasional television broadcasts in Xibe language are made in Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County
Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County
Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in northern Xinjiang is the only Xibe autonomous county of the People's Republic of China. It has an area of 4,430 square kilometers and a population 160,000...
, and about 1,300 copies of the world's only newspaper in Xibe language, Qapqal News
Qapqal News
The Qapqal News is the world's only newspaper in the Xibe language, a Tungusic language spoken in northwest China. It is one of roughly fifty minority-language newspapers in the Xinjiang autonomous region of the People's Republic of China.-History:...
, appear twice a week.
Various regional governments around China have taken to teaching Manchu in more recent times; it was reported
that Heilongjiang University
Heilongjiang University
Heilongjiang University is a multi-disciplinary university in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, People's Republic of China.Heilongjiang University was founded in March 1941, in the base of China's communist revolution, Yan'an...
Manchu language research center in no.74, Xuefu Road, Harbin
Harbin
Harbin ; Manchu language: , Harbin; Russian: Харби́н Kharbin ), is the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China, lying on the southern bank of the Songhua River...
, listed Manchu as an academic major
Academic major
In the United States and Canada, an academic major or major concentration is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits....
. 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.
A few 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
Xibe language
The Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.-Phonology:...
is spoken natively.
The 2011 South Korean movie, Choejongbyeonggi Hwal (Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
:최종병기 활), prominently features the Manchu language.
Syntax
Manchu phrases are all head-last. This means that the head-word of a phrase (e.g. the nounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
of a noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
, or the verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
of a verb phrase
Verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
) 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
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
bear resemblance to that of Manchu, which would, according to the Altaic hypothesis
Altaic languages
Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
, 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:
- I that person+GEN with go+PAST
- I went with that person
In this example, the postposition , "with", requires its nominal argument to have the genitive case, and so we have the genitive case-marker between the noun 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):
- that woman house ABL go.out+PAST.FINITE
- That woman came out of the house.
- 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,
- that woman house ABL go.out+PAST.CONVERB, town DAT go+PAST.FINITE
- That woman, having come out of the house, went to town.
- that woman house ABL go.out+IMPERFECT.CONVERB, town DAT go+PAST.FINITE
- That woman, coming out of the house, went to town.
- 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.- nominativeNominative caseThe nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
– used for the subject of a sentence, no overt marking - accusativeAccusative caseThe accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
– 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.:
- 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.
- genitiveGenitive caseIn grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
-instrumentalInstrumental caseThe instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
– used to indicate possession or means by which something is accomplished. It is marked by the particle i or its allomorphAllomorphIn linguistics, an allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound without changing meaning. The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes....
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). - dativeDative caseThe dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
-locativeLocative caseLocative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
– 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. - ablativeAblative caseIn linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
– 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. - prolativeProlative caseThe prolative case is a declension of a noun or pronoun that has the basic meaning of "by way of"....
– 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
- distributiveDistributive caseThe distributive case is used on nouns for the meanings of per or each.In Hungarian it is -nként and expresses the manner when something happens to each member of a set one by one , or the frequency in time .In the Finnish...
– used to indicate every one of something. suffix -dari - formalEssive-formal caseIn the Hungarian language this case combines the Essive case and the Formal case, and it can express the position, task, state , or the manner . The...
– 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
- translativeTranslative caseThe translative case is a grammatical case that indicates a change in state of a noun, with the general sense of "becoming X" or "change to X"....
– 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
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
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 since the only consonant that came regularly at the end of native words was /n/, similar to the situation in Beijing Mandarin, Northeastern MandarinNortheastern Mandarin
Northeastern Mandarin is the dialect of Mandarin Chinese spoken in what historically was Manchuria. It is very similar to the Beijing dialect upon which Standard Chinese is based.-Geographical spread:...
, Jilu Mandarin and Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. 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').
Manchu consonants
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Dental | Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ɲ 1 | ŋ 2 | |
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
voiceless | p | t | tʃ 3 | k |
| voiced | b | d | dʒ 4 | ɡ | |
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
f | s | ʃ 5 | x 6 | |
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
r | ||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
l | j 7 | w | ||
- romanized as
- romanized as
- romanized as
- romanized as
- romanized as <š>, <ś>,
, or - romanized as
- romanized as
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 in onomatopoeia, 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 onomatopoeia 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 as 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
Segment (linguistics)
In linguistics , the term segment may be defined as "any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech."- Classifying speech units :...
.
Early Western descriptions of Manchu phonology, particularly those made by speakers of languages such as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, 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
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
(rather than lack of vs. presence of aspiration
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
, or lenis vs. fortis
Fortis and lenis
In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc....
), labelled Manchu b as "soft p", Manchu d as "soft t", and Manchu g as "soft k", while 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
Tenseness
In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants. Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in...
, as in the Mandarin language.
The /s/ of the Manchu language is peculiar in that many speakers habitually affricated it, pronouncing it like [ts] in some or all contexts.
There is scholarly controversy over whether the velar consonants actually existed in two allophonic
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
forms, a forward palatal set and a rearward uvular set, or whether this was merely a carryover in spelling from earlier alphabets.
Manchu vowels
| 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
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
e or Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
eo/ŏ) never occurred in a word with either of the regular back vowels ([o] and [a]). The vowel [ū] ' onMouseout='HidePop("61433")' href="/topics/Korean_language">Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
vowel eu/ŭ) 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]. One scholar proposes that it was pronounced as a front rounded vowel initially, but a back unrounded vowel medially. The modern Sibe (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 a high unrounded vowel (customarily romanized with a y) found in words such as sy (Buddhist temple) and Sycuwan (Sichuan). Chinese affricatesAffricate consonant
Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
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
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
, for example the words morin (horse) and temen (camel).
Vowel harmony
The vowel harmonyVowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
found in the Manchu language was traditionally described in terms of the philosophy of the I Ching
I Ching
The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...
. Syllables with front vowels were described as being as "yin
Yin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
" syllables whereas syllables with back vowels were called "yang
Yin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
" syllables. The reasoning behind this was that the language had a kind of sound symbolism where front vowels represented feminine objects or ideas while 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.
Notations
- Gorelova, Liliya M. 2002. Manchu Grammar. Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 90-04-12307-5
- Haenisch, Erich. 1961. Mandschu-Grammatik. Leipzig: Veb Verlag Enzyklopädie
- Li, Gertraude Roth. 2000. Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, ISBN 0-8248-2206-4
- 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.
- 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
External links
- Manchu Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
- Entry for Manchu at Rosetta Project
- Unicode Manchu/Sibe/Daur Fonts and Keyboards – English
- Unicode Manchu/Sibe/Daur Fonts and Keyboards – Chinese
- Manchu language Gospel of Mark
- Manchu alphabet and language at Omniglot
- Manchu Test Page
- Manchu-Chinese–English Lexicon
- online Manchu-Chinese, Manchu–Japanese lexicon
- Manchu Wikibook
- Wikisource copy of "A Manchu Grammar with Analysed Texts" by P.G. von Möllendorff, 1892
- anaku Manchu Script Creator
- 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