Background

The following is an online dictionary created for Manchu (traditional script: ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ
ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ), a Tungusic language spoken in China. At the time of this writing, the main editor of the dictionary, Jacob Kodner, is a third-year undergraduate student of linguistics at the University of California, Irvine. Self-taught and proficient in Mandarin, the editor touched base with Meng Rong Lu (孟荣路), from Chabchal County (察布查尔) via WeChat in April 2021. Meng Rong Lu, the primary linguistic correspondent for this project, is at the age of 43 years-old at the time of writing, and is a native speaker. He is also fluent in Mandarin Chinese—which was the language of communication between the collaborators. 

With respect to the Manchu language, the language is noted to be critically endangered by UNESCO, and there is an estimate of around 12 native speakers who are located in the Heilongjiang province of China (Meng Rong Lu, personal communication). A recent estimate puts the number of Manchu speakers in Xinjiang to be around 20,000 individuals. Those proficient in the language number around 500 individuals who are estimated to be at an average age of 75; those proficient in the script falls around 30 (Meng Rong Lu, personal communication). Due to the current status of Manchu, this dictionary was created with three objectives in mind for different audiences, which are outlined in (1)-(3) below:

(1) For native speakers: to learn the written language
(2) For non-native speakers: to learn the spoken and written language
(3) For the academic community: to provide linguistic data for research purposes  

The specific structure of the dictionary’s entries—which are discussed in detail in the Methodology section—was created in order to address these objectives. For instance, the traditional Manchu script version of lexemes are provided to meet objective (1), and audio recordings and translations of lexemes are included to meet objective (2). 

Methodology

The present version of the dictionary was worked on from June to December 2021, and the majority of the time spent on the project was dedicated to collecting and processing entries. Each entry is coded with a number based on the order in which the lexeme (spoken version) appears in the alphabet, and the data points collected and processed for each entry are listed below in (4)—with a sample entry outlined in (5):

The data collection process started with Meng Rong Lu creating a list of lexemes, which was done by consulting the written Manchu terms in Kengo Yamamoto’s A Classified Dictionary of Spoken Manchu and translating them into spoken form. The terms in spoken form (eventually becoming (4a)) and the written forms (4d) were grouped together as individual lexemes on a spreadsheet, and each lexeme received an individual number code (i.e., the entry number). Each lexeme was also given a translation in Mandarin Chinese (4f). Meng Rong Lu then recorded himself pronouncing the spoken version of each lexeme and converted the recordings into .wav files named after the code (as shown in (4b)). A spreadsheet with the components collected for each coded lexeme (i.e., (4a), (4b), (4d), and (4f)) was sent to the main editor Kodner.

The spreadsheet received by the main editor from Meng Rong Lu was then uploaded to a cloud-based spreadsheet editor. The main editor proceeded to use an online tool he personally developed to convert the romanized forms of spoken lexemes into IPA. The transcription schema can be found in the Provisional Inventory ("Grammar") section of this resource, which we note to be specific to this dictionary and subject to change. The aforementioned online tool, originally named Manchu to IPA, takes a specific romanization system developed by Meng Rong Lu as input, and outputs IPA. In addition to IPA, the main editor included images of the written form of lexemes written in traditional Manchu script. There have been documented issues with rendering Manchu script on different browsers and software, so in order to remedy these issues, static images of the script were chosen over Unicode. Images were generated using the online tool Anakvu.

Finally, the main editor translated all of the Mandarin translations from Meng Rong Lu into English. For accuracy purposes, both Manchu-Chinese and Manchu-English dictionaries were consulted, including Manchu.Work (满族空间) and Jerry Norman’s A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary. Any words that were considered by the main editor and Mandarin speakers to be unclear and/or difficult to translate were run past Meng Rong Lu for assistance. Upon completion of the translation process, the entire spreadsheet was checked for errors multiple times by both the main editor and Meng Rong Lu, and then was uploaded to this website with digital assistance from Living Dictionary program coordinator Anna Luisa Daigneault and Living Dictionary web developer Diego Córdova Nieto (both from Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages).

Selected References

Gorelova, L. M. (2002). Manchu Grammar. Brill. 

Moseley, C. (2010). Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. 3rd ed. UNESCO Publishing.

Norman, J. (2013). A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary. Harvard University Asia Center.

Yamamoto, K. (1969). A Classified Dictionary Of Spoken Manchu: With Manchu, English And Japanese Indexes. Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa

Zikmundova. (2013). Spoken Sibe: Morphology of the Inflected Parts of Speech (Vol. 55060). Karolinum Press.