Official languange in Qing

[Bahar]

What’s the official language used in Qing dynasty ( 清朝 )? Did the emperors of Qing speak Mandarin ( 普通話 ) daily?

[carlo]

The term 普通话 was more or less invented in 1955, 44 years after the fall of the Qing. In modern TV dramas, emperors always speak putonghua with a hint of modern 北京话, but the language actually spoken in Beijing in the 18th and 19th centuries differed somehow from the modern dialect (there are phonological and other studies showing this). However, by the 19th century the difference shouldn't have been very significant.

AFAIK, Manchu and Chinese were both official languages, in that 上谕 etc. were normally drafted by two separate departments (sort of 'language editors') within the imperial bureaucracy until 1911. Some internal (内部) documents are in Manchu only (documents from the earlier reigns, sensitive drafts within the 军机处 etc.). Some Han Chinese at the top echelons of government could read and write Manchu fluently, but they were obviously a selected few: later emperors used Manchu as a sort of 'code language' for secret communications among goverment departments and with troop commanders. To this day, Manchu remains an important research tool for Qing historians for exactly this reason.

I don't know when the emperors and the Manchu bannermen began losing fluency in the language, it certainly didn't help that Manchu had a very short history as a written language and no literary tradition. The last emperor was still forced to learn Manchu as a young boy, but by the time it was like learning Latin (see 我的前半生）.

[Meng Lelan]

Where do you get a copy of 我的前半生

in the original Chinese?

[marcopolo79]

Just like in Europe in the 18th century, where Latin was the language of religion, French was the language of diplomacy, and the particular local language was the one used at court, different languages served different functions in the Qing court.

As far as I know, Manchu and Mandarin were the language of official communiques, Mandarin was the language of the Court, and Tibetan was used for religious purposes.

Check out this link to an interesting exhibit at the National Palace Museum in Taipei regarding Qing documents : http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh93/understood9310/

[carlo]

A good reprint was published recently, I have it at home so can't check now. Also on the web:

www.bookhome.net/lishi/zhuanji/wdqbs/

Nice link btw, 知道了. For those interested there's a brilliant book in English that traces the evolution of the 'palace memorials' after Kangxi (search for Monarchs and Ministers).

[ala]

The Qing court used Nanjing Mandarin (commonly called Blue-green Mandarin 蓝青官话) and Manchu until late 1800's when it switched to Beijing Mandarin. The common Chinese language for much of Ming and Qing was Nanjing Mandarin.

[Claw]

Why was it called Blue-green Mandarin?

[Ian_Lee]

But I guess the language that the Qing Emperors (at least the first 4 or 5)were most fluent should be Mongol.

Owing to political reason, the Manchu Royal Family had a tradition of marrying with the princesses from the Eastern and Southern Mongol banners. So very likely that the first language those Manchu Emperors learnt was Mongol.

[djwebb2004]

I am wondering if Blue Green Mandarin, lanqing, reflects a pronunciation ofthe word nanjing? Lots of Chinese pronounce nan as lan...

[carlo]

Recently out of curiosity I bought a Chinese translation of Thomas Wade's 'Colloquial Chinese' (語言自邇集）, a 19th-century textbook for learners of Mandarin Chinese (more precisely, 'spoken Pekingese') that was considered the best study resource for foreigners in China during the last years of the Qing Empire. I'm finding it interesting for several reasons:

- It's fun to see how people learned Chinese some 150 years ago, and the sort of things they learned to say.

- The gulf between spoken and written Chinese at the time was much greater than it is today, so that the two had to be learned separately. This book focuses exclusively on the spoken dialect of Beijing, as opposed to 'putonghua' (which obviously didn't exist at the time), and the dialogues sound like a cross between 大宅門 (the famous TV series) and a xiangsheng by Hou Baolin. In one of the very first lessons, 'I'm feeling tired' is not 我累了, but 我身子乏了. Unfortunately no modern textbook teaches these things.

- There have been some interesting changes in both vocabulary and pronunciation. For example, 學 was pronounced xiu2 (I think some people around here still say xiao2), and 了 was always pronounced liao (I can't figure out from Wade's transcription if that was meant to be a neutral tone or what). Vocabulary also is obviously far removed from the 21st century, with people going around in 轎子 and currying favours with 貝勒.

Apparently, the Beijing dialect became the 'official spoken language' of the Qing Empire (the official written language was 文言文) sometimes around 1850. The book's translator says that around that time Japanese envoys to China were lamenting the lack of textbooks for learning Pekingese. All the Japanese books back then were in fact teaching the Nanjing dialect, which as a spoken standard in the Qing empire had already become obsolete.

[trevelyan]

It's fun to see how people learned Chinese some 150 years ago, and the sort of things they learned to say.

A bit off thread topic, maybe, but I really enjoyed these snippets when I ran into them while reading Robert Hart's diary. For those that don't know, Hart eventually became the Inspector General of the Chinese Customs. This would have been when he was perhaps 22 or 23.

Chinese Study Lessons of Robert Hart (1854):

August 29: Made up a few Chinese phrases this morning. Office duty has almost entirely cast aside attention to the language.

August 30: Duty neglected today and the tongue not properly ruled. Very little done at Chinese.

September 3: Slept very late this morning

October 22: Commenced my Chinese studies this morning; it is very strange at first to sit with a man who does not speak a word of English, and of whose language you are equally ignorant. I got the names of several objects from him; and some two or three phrases. Some of his sounds remind me of the way you wd speak to a horse; in fact I cd not put any English letters together to present them. I dare say, when my ears get more accustomed to the Chinese Sounds, I shall be better able to make out their equivalents in English.

November 10: Very little Chinese done today: Next week I hope to commence a more systematic plan of study - also to get on better - and see my progress more clearly."

November 18: I must not read novels so much again as I have done in the last two days. They made me neglect my Chinese studies to a great extent."

December 28: Done nothing in Chinese today. I wish I had never come out to China; but as I am here, I must only try to make the best of a bad bargain.

.....

and a few years later, on the perils of watermelon:

Ate a great quantity of Se-kwa today: I had complained of an approaching attack of diarrhoea from a small piece I ate before, but was astonished to hear from them that such was always the effect of a small piece, that it ought to be parken of largely & that then 'twould "yew yih, er woo sun （有益而无损?）" as Hsieh said. Hang remarked 'twas just the thing to eat in this weather, else why wd Laouteen have produced at this very period the very thing one likes most to go into. So I ate heartily: but fearfully. Hang sd, "don't entertain any fears, or you'll bring on the thing from dread.