Manchu Language Resources

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The resources in this repository are not my own; I've just compiled the digital resources and pedagogical texts that I've come across. For that reason, I have not included a license–links and files belong to their respective owners. If you spotted any mistakes or have anything to contribute, please feel free to leave an issue :D

I want to extend my gratitude to the Manchu Discord and tyotakuki for many of the resource suggestions.

Note: External links are marked with "＊".

Catalogue

Abbreviations

• MNC: Language code for Manchu.
• Manju Gisun, ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ, 満州語, 滿語/满语 all refer to Manchu.
• Ligation: the process of forming Ligatures (such as ᠪ+ᠣ=ᠪᠣ)
• Characters in the Manchu script can take (up to) for positional forms:
  • Initial Form (JA: 語頭形, ZH: 詞首/词首)
  • Medial Form (JA: 語中形, ZH: 詞中/词中)
  • Final Form (JA: 語末形, ZH: 詞尾/词尾)
  • Isolated Form (JA: 単独形, ZH: 獨立/独立), i.e., Independent Form.

Pedagogical Resources

Grammars

• Gorelova (Горелова) Manchu (Sibe) Grammar (2002)
  • Dicusses Modern Manchu (MM; i.e., Sibe)
  • [＊] (Chinese) See tyotakuki's explanation of advanced grammar (verbal suffixes) from Gorelova.
• Möllendorf's Manchu Grammar (1892), the original text.
• (Chinese) Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun's Manchu Grammar (満語語法).
• (Japanese) Introduction to Classical Manchu (満州語文語入門) by 河内良弘 (Kawachi Yoshihiro).
• Manju Tacire, a Manchu tutorial by Robert Autry, a native speaker, with some interesting discussions about the modernization of Manchu as a contemporary language (e.g., new vocabulary). (Links: hdl.)

Readers

• Getrude Roth Li's Manchu Textbook for Reading Documents (2001)
  • Contains many real documents with transliteration/translations paired with explanations of grammatical concepts and vocabulary.
• (Chinese) Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun's Manchu Reader/Primer (満語読本).

Orthography

• The 12 uju–Chinese syllabic teaching method for Manchu Orthography–curated by accredited Manchu teacher 王硕 (High Quality).
• ＊ tyotakuki's Youtube Lecture Series (in Mandarin) about the history and formation of the Manchu alphabet and the origins of some writing conventions. You can find the presentation slides here.

References

Historical Records

• A resource directory for digitized texts (Manjurist).
• ＊ The Historical Phonologies of Manchu Dialects, a 2018 PhD Dissertation by Andrew J. Joseph, a close friend of the late Jerry Norman. Contains a comparative discussion, linguistic analyses, and a brief history of Manchu dialects. (Links: doi, hdl.)
• Saarela's Discussion and Chronology of Jurchen/Manchu's various orthographies and politics.
• (Chinese) An anthology of Old Manchu Myths (満族古神話) by Ulhicun Aisin-Gioro.

Dictionaries/Corpa

• ＊ Bukelu.org online dictionary (API Available), subsidiary of Manc.hu.
• Norman Dictionary (as a .txt file).
• [＊] youhyunjo/manchu-spell: Large corpus for implementing spellcheck and related digital/data tools for Manchu.
• Manchu terms by etymology (Wiktionary).

Jurchen Studies

The Jurchen language is widely considered the ancestor language of Manchu, historically spoken by the Jurchen people in northeastern China during the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234). It has a well-documented writing system similar to the Khitan scripts, both derived from Chinese characters.

• ＊ 今古文字集成 "The Complete Collection of Ancient and Modern Characters" curates a list of Jurchen characters. These characters use the Unicode private sector to display, as they have not been officially inducted to the unicode standard.

Digital Tools

Typography and Rendering

• Working with Editors
• The Unicode Standard

Keyboards and Input Methods

• ＊ (MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android) Keyman-based Keyboard Layout from Manchu Studies Group. Has a few idiosyncracies.
• [＊] (MacOS) (My own) Native MacOS ManjuGisun Input Method (Repo).
• ＊ (iOS) Durja (都尔佳) Keyboard.

Fonts

お知らせ・Warning: Generally, fonts made specifically for Manchu will ensure that Manchu text is rendered correctly when inputted as-is. However, this is not the case in general. [Read more]

The various positional and variant glyph forms of a letter are considered presentation forms and are not encoded separately. It is the responsibility of the rendering system to select the correct glyph form for a letter according to its context.

(The Unicode® Standard: Version 15.0 – Core Specification, chapter 13.5)

It is recommended that either a Manchu-specific font (in MNCFonts) be used or Unicode's StandardVariations be applied via Free Variant Selectors.

• Fonts specifically designed for the Manchu script/language.
• ＊ Noto Sans Mongolian – Standard font used by Wikipedia and many others. Should test behaviors of Mongolian Free Variation Selector unicode characters against this font.
• [＊] shenyileirob/hanshi: a font designed to typeset Mongolian, Sibe, Manchu, and Manchu Ali Gali. Usage instructions (i.e., with Free Variant Selectors) are included for typesetting each of the aforementioned languages/scripts.
• [＊] Source for fonts used in tyotakuki/manjuhergenhtml.

Miscellaneous

• [＊] tyotakuki/ManchuOCR: OCR for printed and handwritten Manchu text.

Todos

• Organize the other_links.md file.