Introduction to Manchu

An Online Self-Study Introduction to Manchu in 21 Lessons

The following lessons were originally prepared by David Porter for a Fall 2016 introductory Manchu course at Harvard University. Completing all 21 lessons should provide you with a sufficient basis to begin reading Manchu documents on your own. Gertraude Roth-Li’s Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents would be a great choice for some readings to get started with (by around lesson 8 you should be ready to attempt some authentic readings, though they will still have some elements to which you have not yet been introduced). In addition, you will probably want to consult dictionary resources to help you with both completing the lessons and any other reading you undertake. For this purpose, the most comprehensive resource is Buleku, an online tool that provides easily searchable access to entries from Manchu-English, Manchu-Chinese, Manchu-French, and Manchu-Manchu dictionaries.

Each lesson comes in two parts, a handout introducing and explaining the topic covered, which concludes with a series of (mostly) authentic Manchu sentences making use of the concepts covered, for you to practice transcribing and translating (the initial few lessons are an exception, containing instead exercises focused on learning to read Manchu script). The second part of each lesson is an answer key, providing you with a correct transcription and translation of the example sentences, and, in many cases, explanation of some of the sentence’s distinctive features or difficult points.

If you find any errors in these materials, please contact David Porter at [email protected].

Part I: The Script

For all of the lessons on the script, you should make reference to the charts in Roth-Li, pages 23-27, provided here. These will allow you to see the form of each letter independently (the lessons, particularly after Lesson 1, focus on the letters as used in words). Look at these charts as you read the explanations of how each letter works.

Lesson 1: Script I, Vowels

This lesson provides an initial introduction to the Manchu script, focused on learning to recognize 5 of the 6 Manchu vowels (a, e, i, o, and u; ū is introduced, but will be dealt with more in Lesson 2), in conjunction with 3 Manchu consonants (b, l, and m).

Lesson 2: Script II, Consonants

This lesson introduces the remaining Manchu consonants (with the exception of those used exclusively in loanwords), and introduces the distinction between “front vowels” and “back vowels” in Manchu, an important part of the language’s limited vowel harmony, and an important part of the writing system.

Lesson 3: Script III, Consonant Finals and Letters for Loanwords

This lesson focuses on words ending in consonants (other than n/ng) and recognizing the shapes that consonants take at the end of words. One of the exercises to help you practice this, created by Princeton historian and current MSG president He Bian, is a fun look at Manchu onomatopoeia. In addition, the lesson introduces a handful of special letters used exclusively to represent sounds not found natively in Manchu that appear in Chinese names and loanwords. More practice reading Chinese terms and names that have been written in Manchu can be found in Lesson 21.

Lesson 4: Numbers I

This lesson introduces Manchu number words, giving you another opportunity to practice reading Manchu script before beginning to worry about grammar.

Part II: Grammar

The remainder of the self-study course focuses on Manchu grammar, introducing all of the concepts necessary to read any Manchu text.

Lesson 5: Pronouns and Question Words

This lesson explains the basic structure of a Manchu sentence, focusing on the copula bi. It introduces the 7 Manchu pronouns and some basic question words. The second of two practice exercises gives you the chance to read some simple sentences from a 19th century notebook of a young Manchu student.

Lesson 6: Noun Cases

This lesson covers a lot of ground; make sure to take your time with it. It introduces each of the five Manchu noun cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, and ablative. But don’t get too scared! Except for pronouns, these aren’t real cases of the sort you might be familiar with from Latin or other European languages; each case is formed simply by adding a single simple case particle (except the nominative case, which is unmarked).

Lesson 7: Verbs I

Sorry, this is a second straight super-sized lesson. It introduces the six most important Manchu verb forms; luckily you’ll continue to get lots of practice with them through the remainder of this self-study course. First you’ll encounter the imperfective finite form (the form that usually appears in dictionaries and which you’ve already met in earlier exercises) –mbi. In addition, you’ll learn about a very important feature of Manchu: the use of verb participles to directly modify nouns. In this lesson you meet the imperfective participle (-ra/-re/-ro, depending on vowel harmony! remember that?) and the perfective participle (-ha/-he/-ho/-ka/-ke/-ko). You’ll also learn the imperative form, which uses the bare verbal stem.

One term you’ll see pop up starting in this lesson, but continuing through many future ones, is “converb,” a grammatical term coined to describe a feature of Mongolian that is also super prevalent in Manchu. Basically, converbs are verbs that cannot end a sentence, but must be subordinate to another main verb. You’ll meet two converbial forms in this lesson: –fi and –me, both of which are extremely common in Manchu. The imperfective converb –me, though introduced at the start of your Manchu education, is likely to cause you difficulties in translating Manchu texts even after you become an expert. So pay a lot of attention to this lesson! (And make sure to use the answer key to check your translations!)

Lesson 8: Verbs II

In this lesson you’ll learn how Manchu expresses conditionality (if statements), as well as how it expresses desire and intention, as you cover 4 verb forms, 2 of them (-ci and –ki) extremely common, one somewhat less common but very important (-kini), and one quite rare (-cina).

Lesson 9: Quotation

As you will discover if you hope to read Qing bureaucratic documents, understanding quotation is essential to understanding Manchu texts. Unfortunately, Manchu doesn’t use quotation marks, so you need to learn the signs that let you tell when a quote begins and ends. You’ll also see quotation in practice in a very short story about two goats trying to cross a log. We’ll also use the story to review some of the other grammar points you’ve covered so far.

Lesson 10: Postpositions and Final Particles

As you know, prepositions are an important part of English, needed to express a lot of basic concepts and show how the nouns and verbs of a sentence are connected to one another. Since Manchu puts its verbs at the end of clauses and sentences, instead of prepositions (which precede the noun to which they refer), it has postpositions (which follow them). In this lesson you’ll learn how postpositions work. You’ll also be introduce to some of the final particles used in Manchu, which appear at the ends of sentences to alter the mood of the sentence.

Lesson 11: Negation

Learn how Manchu expresses negatives, most importantly with the verbal ending -akū, but also with important words like waka, ume, and unde.

Lesson 12: Numbers II, Ordinal and Distributive Numbers and Dates

This is an easier lesson than some of the grammar-packed ones we’ve had recently. Learn how Manchu expresses ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) with the suffix –ci, and how it expresses distributive numbers (1 each, 2 each, 3 each, etc) with the suffix –ta/-te. Tied into the lesson on ordinal numbers, you’ll learn how Manchu expresses dates.

Lesson 13: Verbs III, Complex Past Tenses

You might have thought you were done with learning about how Manchu talks about things that happened in the past after learning about the perfective participle (-ha/-he/-ho/-ka/-ke/-ko) back in Lesson 7. In fact, Manchu has a variety of ways to talk about the past, conveying slightly different nuances. In this lesson you learn the past indefinite form (-habi/-hebi/-hobi), the past perfect form (perfective participle + bihe, e.g. ha bihe or he bihe), and the past continuous form (-mbihe). There’s also an appearance of the rare form –mbihebi and the example sentences include a use of –he bihebi, which is so rare that it doesn’t even appear in most explanations of Manchu grammar.

Lesson 14: Verbs IV, Derivational Suffixes

As you have probably noticed, Manchu is an agglutinative language, meaning, more or less, that it likes to just keep adding bits on to the ends of verbs to change their meaning. So far, you’ve seen how Manchu adds endings to verbs to convey tense or aspect and negation. But there are a whole range of other sorts of meanings that can be added to the verb stem via derivational suffixes. The most important of these, which you will encounter constantly in Manchu texts, is -bu-, which makes a verb take on either a passive or a causative meaning (so jembi means “to eat” and jebumbi means either “to be eaten” or “to make (someone) eat.” In addition to –bu-, you’ll meet the directional suffixes –nji- and -na-/-ne-/-no-, and the associative/reciprocal suffixes -nu-, -ca-/-ce-/-co-, and -ndu-.

Lesson 15: Verbs V

This lesson deals with a mix of topics. First you encounter the very important concessive converb -cibe, which expresses the sense of “although.” Next you will learn about a few more derivational suffixes, including productive suffixes that allow nouns to be turned into verbs (-la-/-le-/-lo- and -ra-/-re-/-ro-), durative suffixes that make the action of a verb go on for a long time (-ša-/-še-/-šo-, –ja-/-je-/-jo-, and -ta-/-te-), the decausative suffix that makes transitive verbs intransitive (-ja-/-je-/-jo-), and the deputative suffix that means someone is sending someone else to do something (-nggi-). Don’t worry if this sounds like a lot; most verbs formed with these derivational suffixes will have their own entries in dictionaries. Learning them can spare you a trip to the dictionary sometimes, but you don’t need to remember them to be able to read Manchu texts.

Lesson 16: Verbs VI, Nominalization

Manchu loves to switch parts of speech around, and its favorite way to do so is with the substantive suffix –ngge, understanding of which is essential to making sense of many Manchu texts. In addition to -ngge‘s use as a nominalizer, you’ll learn about a couple of other uses of it (or similar endings) that can lead to confusion if you’re not careful.

Lesson 17: Plurals + Verbs VII, The Terminal Converb

A lot of the time Manchu, like Chinese, doesn’t bother to tell you whether a noun is plural or singular. But sometimes it does, and this lesson will teach you how to recognize plurals.

Why are plurals combined with the terminal converb -tala/-tele/-tolo, which expresses the meaning of “until”? There’s no very good reason; the terminal converb just happened to come up in a reading assigned to the class for which these handouts were first prepared. The terminal converb is fairly rare, and not super important to know well, but there’s an explanation and some examples of it in this lesson, which you may find yourself referring to on the rare occasions on which you encounter it.

Lesson 18: Verbs VIII, Simultaneous Action

The imperfective converb –me is usually sufficient for Manchu sentences to convey that two actions occur at the same time (and if not, it will usually be expressed more directly by saying “at the time when” – -ra erin de or something similar). But occasionally Manchu writers want to throw particular shades of meaning into their simultaneity. So this lesson will introduce to you a few new converbs. The most common of them is the simultaneous converb –mbime, often used to express simultaneity combined with a mild sense of contrast (like –cibe, but much less strong). You’ll also meet the much rarer durative converb (-hai/-hei/-hoi/-kai/-kei/-koi) and alternative converb (-ralame/-relame/-rolame).

Lesson 19: Verbs IX

We’re getting to a few stragglers among the set of Manchu verb forms. As was the case in the past couple lessons, these are both extremely rare. You’ll occasionally see the instrumental converb (-tai/-tei/-toi) used to express an extreme degree of action (as in bucetei, meaning “to the death“). You’re even less likely to encounter the prefatory converb (-nggala/-nggele/-nggolo), which lets you know that one action occurred while another was still uncompleted, though you will frequently see the word onggolo, meaning “before,” which was originally the prefatory form of the common Manchu verb ombi.

Lesson 20: Verbs X

The final grammatical lesson in your Manchu self-study. Here you’ll meet one last verb form, the apprehensive converb –rahū, used to express a sense of worry. You’ll only encounter it occasionally (as you may note in the example sentences, one of its most common uses in Qing government documents was to express imperial worries about Manchus becoming Sinicized), but be careful not to forget about it, or you’re likely to misread it as the common negative ending –rakū!

Part III: Manjurifying Chinese

Lesson 21: Script IV, Transliterating Chinese

You can probably complete this lesson at pretty much any point in your sequence of Manchu self-study. Its goal is to help you figure out the Chinese words and names that are used in Manchu documents. If a document tells you that something happened in Si An or U Cang, you probably want to know what places those actually are (Xi’an and Wuchang). If Dzeng Guwe Fan does something, you’d probably like to know that he’s the same guy as Zeng Guofan. If someone is referred to as a gioi žen, you might like to know that he is a juren degree holder. This lesson will help you learn how to figure such things out.