Jurchen language
| Jurchen | |
|---|---|
| Region | Southwest Manchuria (Northeastern China) |
| Ethnicity | Jurchen people |
| Era | developed into Manchu c. 17th century |
|
Tungusic
|
|
| Jurchen script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | jurc1239 |
Jurchen language (Chinese: 女真語; pinyin: Nǚzhēn Yǔ) is the Tungusic language of the Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the founders of the Jin Empire in northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is ancestral to Manchu. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchen people and Jurchen language as "Manchu".
A writing system for Jurchen language was developed in 1119 by Wanyan Xiyin. A number of books were translated into Jurchen, but none have survived, even in fragments. Surviving samples of Jurchen writing are quite scarce.
One of the most important extant texts in Jurchen is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (Chinese: 大金得勝陀頌碑; pinyin: Dà jīn déshèngtuó sòngbēi), which was erected in 1185, during the reign of Emperor Shizong. It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele.
A number of other Jurchen inscriptions exist as well. For example, in the 1950s a tablet was found in Penglai, Shandong, containing a poem in Jurchen by a poet called (in Chinese transcription) Aotun Liangbi. Although written in Jurchen, the poem was composed using the Chinese "regulated verse" format known as qiyan lüshi. It is speculated that the choice of this format—rather than something closer to the Jurchen folk poetry was due to the influence of the Chinese literature on the educated class of the Jurchens.
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) and the Bureau of Interpreters (会同馆, Huitong Guan). 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.
...
Wikipedia