Editing Jurchen language (section)

==Ming Dynasty Jurchen dictionaries==
The two most extensive resources on the Jurchen language available to today's linguists are two dictionaries created during the [[Ming Dynasty]] by the Chinese government's [[Bureau of Translators]] (''Siyi Guan'')<ref>{{cite book|author=Shou-p'ing Wu Ko|title=Translation (by A. Wylie) of the Ts'ing wan k'e mung, a Chinese grammar of the Manchu Tartar language (by Woo Kĭh Show-ping, revised and ed. by Ching Ming-yuen Pei-ho) with intr. notes on Manchu literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fdAOAAAAQAAJ&q=ancient+character+may+have+answered+the+purposes+state+time+being+spirit+nation+sufficient+preserve+it+many+generations+without+national+character+literature&pg=PR19|year=1855|pages=xix–}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Translation of the Ts'ing wan k'e mung, a Chinese Grammar of the Manchu Tartar Language; with introductory notes on Manchu Literature: (translated by A. Wylie.)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v6k-AAAAcAAJ&q=ancient+character+may+have+answered+the+purposes+state+time+being+spirit+nation+sufficient+preserve+it+many+generations+without+national+character+literature&pg=PR19|year=1855|publisher=Mission Press|pages=xix–}}</ref><ref name="WylieCordier1897">{{cite book|author1=Alexander Wylie|author2=Henri Cordier|title=Chinese Researches|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.279856|quote=ancient character may have answered the purposes state time being spirit nation sufficient preserve it many generations without national character literature.|year=1897|pages=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.279856/page/n540 255]–}}</ref> and the Bureau of Interpreters ({{lang-zh|t=會同館|p=Huìtóng Guǎn|labels=no}}). Both dictionaries were found as sections of the manuscripts prepared by those two agencies, whose job was to help the imperial government to communicate with foreign nations or ethnic minorities, in writing or orally, respectively.<ref>Kane (1989); pp. 90–98, as well as most of the rest of the book</ref>

Although the Bureau of Translators' multilingual dictionary ({{lang-zh|t=華夷譯語|p=Huá-[[夷|Yí]] yìyǔ|l=Sino-Barbarian Dictionary|labels=no}}) was known to Europeans since 1789 (thanks to [[Jean Joseph Marie Amiot]]), a copy of the {{lang|zh-Latn|Huá-Yí yìyǔ}} with a Jurchen section was not discovered until the late 19th century, when it was studied and published by [[Wilhelm Grube]] in 1896. Soon research continued in Japan and China as well. It was this dictionary which first made serious study of the Jurchen language possible. This dictionary contained translation of Chinese words into Jurchen, given in [[Jurchen script|Jurchen characters]] and in phonetic [[transcription into Chinese characters]] (rather imprecise, since the transcription was done by means of [[Chinese characters]]).<ref>Kane (1989); pp. 90–95.</ref>

The vocabulary lists compiled by the Bureau of Interpreters became first known to the Western scholars in 1910, and in 1912 L. Aurousseau reported the existence of a manuscript of it with a Jurchen section, supplied to him by [[Yang Shoujing]].<ref>Kane (1989); p. 96.</ref> This dictionary is similar in its structure to the one from the Bureau of Translators, but it only gives the "phonetic" transcription of Jurchen words (by means of Chinese characters) and not their writing in Jurchen script.<ref>Franke (1994), p. 688</ref>
The time of its creation is not certain; various scholars thought that it could have been created as late as {{circa|1601}} (by [[Mao Ruicheng]]) or as early as 1450–1500;<ref name=kane99>Kane (1989); p. 99–100.</ref> [[Daniel Kane (linguist)|Daniel Kane]]'s analysis of the dictionary, published in 1989, surmises that it may have been written in the first half of the 16th century, based on the way the Jurchen words are transcribed into Chinese.<ref name=kane129>Kane (1989); p. 129.</ref>

Both dictionaries record very similar forms of the language, which can be considered a late form of Jurchen, or an early form of [[Manchu language|Manchu]].<ref name=kane99/>

According to modern researchers, both dictionaries were compiled by the two Bureaus' staff, who were not very competent in Jurchen. The compilers of the two dictionaries were apparently not very familiar with Jurchen grammar. The language, in [[Daniel Kane (linguist)|Daniel Kane]]'s words, was geared to basic communications "with 'barbarians', when this was absolutely inevitable, or when they brought tribute to the Court".<ref name=kane99/>