Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 51, Issue 1-3, 2024

The Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 [Kangxi Dictionary] was without doubt the most influential and widely used dictionary in China during the past three centuries, and its impact on education, scholarship, and intellectual life in general, cannot be overstated. The dictionary’s compilation was a major step in the development of Chinese lexicography, and it has been at the foundation of all large dictionary projects ever since. This paper addresses the editors’ tendency to misquote and misattribute quotations, which has been among the most commonly criticized issues. My aim here is not to identify further mistakes but to document the patterns of misquotations, as these can help understand the process of the dictionary’s compilation. One noteworthy find is that in many cases members of the editorial team quoted their sources indirectly, relying on more recent encyclopedias and miscellanea.

This article provides some preliminary observations on the Vocabulario de Lengua Mandarina (1702) held at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Genova, which, to my knowledge, has not been studied before. It proposes hypotheses about its arrival in Genova, its likely authorship and examines the prologue, which provides helpful information about the intended use of the dictionary. An analysis of the contents of the Vocabulario yields insights into its romanization, the languages used in its translations, and the words it selects. The article includes a brief comparison with two other dictionaries compiled in the 17th century. Throughout the article, an attempt is made to place the Vocabulario in its historical context — that is, its production in Manila at the beginning of the 18th century — and to consider critically the claim that the Vocabulario’s use was for the reading of books.

This article analyzes the anonymous and undated dictionary Breve compendio del vocabulario de compuestos en lengua mandarina, a work that was most likely written by a Dominican. The Dominicans not only compiled bilingual dictionaries translating from Spanish to Chinese but also from Chinese to Spanish. The dictionaries attributed to Francisco Díaz contain Chinese characters, with each lemma featuring a single character, arranged alphabetically according to the romanization of these characters. The lemmas often include examples in which these characters appear in combination with others. These polysyllabic examples were referred to at the time as complexos or compuestos. The Breve compendio, as the title indicates, is a dictionary aimed to include exclusively these so-called compuestos. This article is a first attempt to analyze these compuestos. What criteria did the author use to select these compuestos? What were his pedagogical-didactic intentions? Finally, we will compare a selection of lemmas with two versions of Francisco Díaz’s Vocabulario de letra China, and one version of Basilio Brollo’s Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum to gain a better understanding of the diffusion of knowledge in the field of Western bilingual lexicography in China.

This article analyses the original contribution of the Franciscan missionary Basilio Brollo (Ye Zunxiao 葉尊孝 or Ye Zongxian 葉宗賢, Gemona, 1648–Xi’an, 1704) to the description of Chinese toponyms and geographically relevant terms included in his Dictionarium sinico-latinum (1694, 1699), regarded as one of the most noteworthy earliest dictionaries compiled by foreign missionaries in China. The article first provides an overview of the list of toponyms included in the dictionary, describing their Chinese, romanised, and Latin renditions. Secondly, it compares selected terms with the corresponding toponymic occurrences in the Chinese sources Brollo used as references when compiling the manuscript. The article concludes with a discussion of the lexicographical and lexicological efforts involved in this process, as well as the intercultural dialogue involved in them, highlighting Brollo’s personal and original contribution to the description of 17th-century Chinese geographical elements, with special reference to the terms related to the Chinese geographical regions where he lived and worked.

When missionaries first arrived in China, they encountered important challenges in translating Chinese terms into Western languages and Christian concepts into Chinese. This complex process involved numerous contributors over time, leading to translational choices that were often revised as they proved inadequate. The journey of translation varied in complexity for different terms. Mandarin-European dictionaries compiled by missionaries provide valuable insights into these processes. These dictionaries capture the definitions of Chinese characters at specific historical moments, reflecting the authors’ intentions. This article examines the character ren 仁, central to Chinese philosophy, to illustrate how comparing entries in Chinese-European dictionaries reveals insights into both the history of the dictionaries and the translation processes. We analyze ren’s definitions in various lexicographic sources, from early Sino-Portuguese dictionaries by Jesuits to Mandarin-Spanish dictionaries by Dominicans, and finally to the Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum by Franciscan Basilio Brollo (1648–1704). This comparative analysis highlights differences and connections between dictionaries, assesses their informative value regarding authorship and dating, and explores the missionaries’ diverse translation strategies.

A manuscript written by the Portuguese Jesuit José Monteiro (1646–1720) and a later one by his French confrère Jean-François Foucquet (1665–1741) shed new light on the didactic materials used in the China mission during the initial stage of learning Chinese Mandarin as a second language. These manuscripts, which are written in Portuguese and romanised Mandarin, are the only surviving copies we know of, although others have existed. This paper argues that the two documents prove the existence of an earlier common model, even though they were written independently. This model lost to history circulated at least in the Fujian Province from the late 17th century onwards. It was partly the result of the compilation of several earlier materials produced since the beginning of the China mission, which had the same purpose of training new learners in the Chinese language. José Monteiro’s document further reveals his intention to systematise the original version and disseminate his manual more widely throughout the mission, probably by printing it.

The Bocabulario de la Lengua Sangleya por las Letraz de el A.B.C. stands out among the Spanish missionary oeuvres dedicated to the documentation of the Chinese vernacular spoken by the Sangley community in Manila around the year 1600. As opposed to other vocabularies and dictionaries of the same epoch, it contains not only single line Hokkien-Spanish entries, but many additional pieces of linguistic and cultural information including example sentences selected and designed for conversational use during field work regarding proselytization. The Bocabulario is a complex text where several discourse layers can be distinguished, one traced back to the sources utilized by the compilers, another one implemented by the compilers themselves while following their didactic and practical goals, and a last one by the copyists who do not seem to have grown up with the European tradition of scripturality.

This article provides a brief description of a Hokkien grammar held in the Archives of the University of Santo Tomás in Manila which, as far as I am aware, has not been studied before. The article is only meant to provide a brief description of the Arte Sangley and some preliminary observations pending a more thorough study of the grammar. It contains some suggestions about its authorship and the date on which it was produced. It also compares, where appropriate and within the constraints of its limited scope, the Arte Sangley with the Arte de la lengua Chio Chu and Francisco Varo’s Arte de la lengua mandarina.

The Dictionnaire Chinois & François appended to La Chine illustrée (1670) was the first printed Chinese-European dictionary, but its authorship and sources remain unknown. This article investigates this printed Chinese-French dictionary and argues that an anonymous manuscript dictionary (Ms Marsh 111) kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford is related to it. The connection between the printed dictionary and Marsh 111 enables us to identify more entries in Dictionnaire Chinois & François with incorrect romanization and translations.

This article presents an integrated perspective on the history of Chinese linguistics in Europe by examining the interplay of logistic, material, and institutional factors. Asking how knowledge related to the Chinese language was obtained, diffused, and preserved, it examines linguistic historiography through the prism of accessibility to China and its resulting corollaries for formulating and testing hypotheses about the Chinese language. The nineteenth century is seen as a time of professionalisation characterized by increased opportunities for engagement with China and its language, the creation of academic positions and teaching programs, technical advances in digraphic printing, and the return of competent speakers of the Chinese language.

The publication of Wilhelm Lobscheid’s (1822–1893) English and Chinese Dictionary, with the Punti and Mandarin Pronunciation (1866–1869) marked a turning point in the history of English-Chinese lexicography. This article traces the genealogy of Lobscheid’s English and Chinese Dictionary by examining its multiple sources and discusses how the lexicographical tradition of English-Chinese dictionaries was built on previous dictionaries in the East and the West.

James Summers (1828–1891) is distinguished as the first professor of Chinese in Britain to conduct systematic research on the Chinese language. During his tenure as a Chinese professor, Summers’s research on the Chinese language demonstrated a pronounced didactic emphasis. This was evident in his departure from rigidly following linguistic theories, his adoption of diverse linguistic ideas and methodologies from scholars of varied backgrounds, and his inclusion of multiple varieties of Chinese as target languages, particularly Nanjing Mandarin. Summers’s early missionary work in China, along with his role at King’s College London, where he trained student interpreters for the British Foreign Office, greatly shaped his pedagogical focus. The didactic feature of his works aligns with the broader pragmatic approach of British sinology, reflecting the trend of recruiting retired missionaries and diplomats with experience in China into European university faculties after the mid-19th century.