Endangered language challenge #3: Manchu language
Manchu (ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ manju gisun) is a language of the Tungusic language family that consists of twelve relatively closely related language. It belongs to the southwestern branch together with the Xibe language and the Jurchen language which was the predecessor of the Manchu language when in 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchen people and their language to “Manchu”. The Xibe language is often considered a dialect of Manchu and has 30.000 speakers. The Manchu itself is a highly endangered language and has only 10 speakers left, according to the UNESCO, while there are 10.7 million ethnic Manchu people that speak mostly Mandarin Chinese now.
Manchu is of high historical value, it was one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty and still offers a lot of information that is not available in Chinese. But it was replaced more and more by Mandarin due to the increasing sinicisation of Qing officials. It was/is spoken in Manchuria in Northeast Asia.
Manchu is an agglutinative language and has a limited vowel harmony. It is written in the Manchu alphabet that derives from the Mongolian script and is written vertically, digitally it is often displayed horizontally, however.
Some scholars assume that Manchu and, thus, the Tungusic languages belong to the Altaic language family, but the Altaic family is probably rather a group of languages that have similarity to each other due to language contact and constitute a sprachbund rather than having a genetic history. Manchu resembles Korean and Mongolian in many grammar features.
Manchu grammar
Syntax
Manchu is strictly head-final, meaning that every phrase in a sentence has its head in final position resulting in a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order. In English this would look like this:
Adjectives are part of a noun phrase, so the noun is the head and comes at the end and the adjective precedes it, like in English: (the) beautiful flower.
In an adjective phrase there can occur adverbs, which precede the adjective, because the adjective is the head, like in English: very good.
The object is a part of the verb phrase, the verb is the head, and comes at the end, the object in front of it: (I) the book read. (Unlike English)
Here is a Manchu example, taken from Wikipedia (Manchu > interlinear translation > English):
bi tere niyalma+i emgi gene+he I that person+GEN with go+PAST I went with that person.
You can see that in the verb phrase “went with that person” the verb comes at the end, in the prepositional phrase “with that person” the preposition comes at the end of the phrase and in the noun phrase “that person” the noun comes at the last position. (The preposition “emgi” requires the genitive case.)
Manchu also has a lot of converbal structures. A converb is a form of a verb that is non-finite, like an infinitive, so it is not governed by a subject. In Manchu they are used to combine a subordinate clause and a following finite verb, which can be often translated with English “-ing” forms.
Here we have two finite sentences: (ABL=Ablative: out of/from)
tere sargan boo ci tuci+ke that woman house ABL go.out+PAST.FINITE That woman came out of the house.
tere sargan hoton de gene+he that woman town DAT go+PAST.FINITE That woman went to town.
In the first sentence, we have the verb stem tuci+ and now we can add converb endings to this stem, for example these meanings: +fi - past.converb; +me - imperfect.converb; +cibe - concessive.converb
We can then place the clause with the converb in front of another clause with a finite verb and get the following structure describing the circumstances:
tere sargan boo ci tuci+fi, hoton de gene+he. That woman, having come out of the house, went to town.
tere sargan boo ci tuci+me, hoton de gene+he That woman, coming out of the house, went to town.
tere sargan boo ci tuci+cibe, hoton de gene+he That woman, though she came out of the house, went to town.
Manchu cases
Manchu has five cases, expressed by particles, that follow the noun and are not affected by vowel harmony.
The nominative has no marking. Sargan tuci+ke. - (The) woman went out (of something).
The accusative is marked by be or stays unmarked. I boo be weile+mbi. - He builds a house. (It is used to indicate the direct object of a verb.)
The genitive is marked by i or ni. han i jui - khan’s wife, boo i ejen - the house’s master/master of the house (It is used to indicate possession/the possessor.)
The dative is marked by de. I boo be ere niyalma de bu-mbi. - He gives a book to this man. (It is used to indicate the location in time or space or an indirect object/recipient.)
The ablative is marked by ci and in Classical manchu by deri. I boo ci tuci+ke. - He went away from/out of the house. (It is used to indicate the origin of an action and for comparions.)
There are also plenty of other endings and particles that could be interpreted as case markings.
Baniha, sirame achaki - Thank you, goodbye
Further reading
Omniglot: Manchu alphabet Manchu-English dictionary (wayback archive) Manchu-Chinese dictionary Swadesh list with Manchu Short introduction to Manchu in Simplified Chinese Website of the Manchu Studies Group Bible: Gospel of Mark in Manchu Wikipedia (Incubator) in Manchu