Francisco Varo's Glossary of the Mandarin Language

Francisco Varo's Glossary of the Mandarin Language PDF Author: W South Coblin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000479013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1003

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Book Description
Western missionaries contributed largely to Chinese lexicography. Their involvement was basically a practical rather than a theoretical one. In order to preach and convert, it was necessary to speak Chinese. A missionary on post needed to learn at least two languages, the national Guanhua, the "language of the officials" or "Mandarin," and the local vernacular. The first lexicographical work by missionaries was a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary compiled in the late 1500s by Francisco Varo (1627-1687), a Spanish Dominican based in the province of Fujian, was legendary for his superb mastery in Mandarin. His Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina, a Spanish-Chinese dictionary, is made available to modern readers in the present study, which is based on two manuscripts held in Berlin and London. Volume 1 contains the text of Varo's glossary, with English translations offered for all Spanish glosses and Chinese characters added for all Chinese forms. Volume 2 includes a pinyin index to all Chinese forms in the text and a selective index to the English translations of the Chinese glosses. The Vocabulario is mainly devoted to the spoken language, but includes literary forms as well. Varo was also sensitive to other matters of usage, e.g., questions of style, new expressions coined by the missionaries, specific expressions in Chinese and in European culture, Chinese customs and beliefs, and aspects of grammar. The Vocabulario is recommended for readers interested in Chinese linguistics, lexicography, Sino-Western cultural relations and the history of Christianity in China.

Francisco Varo's Glossary of the Mandarin Language

Francisco Varo's Glossary of the Mandarin Language PDF Author: W South Coblin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000479013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1003

Get Book Here

Book Description
Western missionaries contributed largely to Chinese lexicography. Their involvement was basically a practical rather than a theoretical one. In order to preach and convert, it was necessary to speak Chinese. A missionary on post needed to learn at least two languages, the national Guanhua, the "language of the officials" or "Mandarin," and the local vernacular. The first lexicographical work by missionaries was a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary compiled in the late 1500s by Francisco Varo (1627-1687), a Spanish Dominican based in the province of Fujian, was legendary for his superb mastery in Mandarin. His Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina, a Spanish-Chinese dictionary, is made available to modern readers in the present study, which is based on two manuscripts held in Berlin and London. Volume 1 contains the text of Varo's glossary, with English translations offered for all Spanish glosses and Chinese characters added for all Chinese forms. Volume 2 includes a pinyin index to all Chinese forms in the text and a selective index to the English translations of the Chinese glosses. The Vocabulario is mainly devoted to the spoken language, but includes literary forms as well. Varo was also sensitive to other matters of usage, e.g., questions of style, new expressions coined by the missionaries, specific expressions in Chinese and in European culture, Chinese customs and beliefs, and aspects of grammar. The Vocabulario is recommended for readers interested in Chinese linguistics, lexicography, Sino-Western cultural relations and the history of Christianity in China.

Francisco Varo's Glossary of the Mandarin Language: An English and Chinese annotation of the Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina

Francisco Varo's Glossary of the Mandarin Language: An English and Chinese annotation of the Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina PDF Author: Francisco Varo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
Francisco Varo (1627-1687), a Spanish Dominican based in the province of Fujian, was legendary for his superb mastery in Mandarin. His Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina, a Spanish-Chinese dictionary, is made available to modern readers in the present study, which is based on two manuscripts held in Berlin and London.

Biblical Translation in Chinese and Greek

Biblical Translation in Chinese and Greek PDF Author: Toshikazu S. Foley
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004178651
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
This study integrates three independent subjects - translation theory, Mandarin aspect, and Greek aspect - for the purpose of formulating a working theory applicable to translating the Bible. The primary objectives are defined in terms of grammatical translation of Greek aspect into Mandarin aspect at the discourse level. A historical overview of the Chinese Bible is provided as a way of introducing major translation issues related to linguistic, conceptual, and logistical challenges. The proposed theory provides the translator with a powerful tool, which is tested in two sample passages from John 18-19 and 1 Corinthians 15. Provided, also, are critical reviews of over sixty Chinese Bible versions, Nestorian, Manichaean, Catholic documents, and a translation written according to the proposed theory.

The Language of the Sangleys

The Language of the Sangleys PDF Author: Henning Klöter
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004184937
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
An incisive, multi-faceted study of a Spanish-Chinese manuscript grammar of the seventeenth century, The Language of the Sangleys presents a fascinating, new chapter in the history of Chinese and general linguistics.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) PDF Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

And He Knew Our Language

And He Knew Our Language PDF Author: Marcus Tomalin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027246076
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This ambitious and ground-breaking book examines the linguistic studies produced by missionaries based on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America (and particularly Haida Gwaii) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Making extensive use of unpublished archival materials, the author demonstrates that the missionaries were responsible for introducing many innovative and insightful grammatical analyses. Rather than merely adopting Graeco-Roman models, they drew extensively upon studies of non-European languages, and a careful exploration of their scripture translations reveal the origins of the Haida sociolect that emerged as a result of the missionary activity. The complex interactions between the missionaries and anthropologists are also discussed, and it is shown that the former sometimes anticipated linguistic analyses that are now incorrectly attributed to the latter. Since this book draws upon recent work in theoretical linguistics, religious history, translation studies, and anthropology, it emphasises the unavoidably interdisciplinary nature of Missionary Linguistics research.

The Study of Language in 17th-century England

The Study of Language in 17th-century England PDF Author: Vivian Salmon
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027245355
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This volume brings together a number of papers by Vivian Salmon, previously published in various journals and collections that are unfamiliar, and perhaps even inaccessible, to historians of the study of language. The central theme of the volume is the study of language in England in the 17th century. Papers in the first section treat aspects of the history of language teaching. The second section consists of three articles on the history of grammatical theory. The papers in the third and final section deal with the search for the universal language .

History of Linguistics 2002

History of Linguistics 2002 PDF Author: Eduardo Guimarães
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027292248
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This volume brings together a selection of revised papers, originally presented at ICHoLS IX (São Paulo/Campinas). The papers in the first section deal with studies ranging from the Latin model in post-Renaissance grammars to new scientific propositions at the turn of the 19th century; the second part carries articles devoted to a variety of topics in 19th and 20th century linguistics; and in the third section are united papers based on plenary presentations, ranging from ancient Greek reflections upon language to developments in Brazilian linguistics beginning with the implantation of structuralist work by Joaquim Mattoso Câmara (1904–1970) in the 1960s. In the concluding contribution, a survey of advances in the history of the language sciences is offered.

A History of Language Philosophies

A History of Language Philosophies PDF Author: Lia Formigari
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588115614
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Theory and history combine in this book to form a coherent narrative of the debates on language and languages in the Western world, from ancient classic philosophy to the present, with a final glance at on-going discussions on language as a cognitive tool, on its bodily roots and philogenetic role.An introductory chapter reviews the epistemological areas that converge into, or contribute to, language philosophy, and discusses their methods, relations, and goals. In this context, the status of language philosophy is discussed in its relation to the sciences and the arts of language. Each chapter is followed by a list of suggested readings that refer the reader to the final bibliography."About the author" Lia Formigari, Professor Emeritus at University of Rome, La Sapienza. Her publications include: "Language and Experience in XVIIth-century British Philosophy." Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1988; "Signs, Science and Politics. Philosophies of Language in Europe 1700 1830." Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1993; "La semiotique empiriste face au kantisme." Liege: Mardaga, 1994.

Essays in the History of Linguistic Anthropology

Essays in the History of Linguistic Anthropology PDF Author: Dell H. Hymes
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902724507X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Anthropology and linguistics, as historically developing disciplines, have had partly separate roots and traditions. In particular settings and in general, the two disciplines have partly shared, partly differed in the nature of their materials, their favorite types of problem the personalities of their dominant figures, their relations with other disciplines and intellectual current. The two disciplines have also varied in their interrelation with each other and the society about them. Institutional arrangements have reflected the varying degrees of kinship, kithship, and separation. Such relationships themselves form a topic that is central to a history of linguistic anthropology yet marginal to a self-contained history of linguistics or anthropology as either would be conceived by most authors. There exists not only a subject matter for a history of linguistic anthropology, but also a definite need.