What Connects Mongol Rulers with the Chinese World: Imperial Edicts, a Literal Translation Style, and Spoken Chinese

Funada, Yoshiyuki (2024) What Connects Mongol Rulers with the Chinese World: Imperial Edicts, a Literal Translation Style, and Spoken Chinese. ACTA ORIENTALIA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 77 (3). pp. 415-431. ISSN 0001-6446

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Abstract

This study examines the influence of Mongolian language on spoken Chinese, with a focus on the Sino-Mongolian, or Chinese language translated using the literal translation style (zhiyi-ti 直譯體) from Mongolian. Sino-Mongolian was a type of contact language, based on the Chinese vocabulary and Mongolian syntactic structure. Common linguistic elements are observed between Sino-Mongolian and the Chinese textbook No Gŏltae edited in the Koryŏ Kingdom under Mongol rule. The analysis confirms that No Gŏltae was not translated from Mongolian language but a type of spoken Chinese that was influenced and shaped by Sino-Mongolian through oral dissemination. Although Sino-Mongolian was an artificially translated language, the literal translation style may have been based on Altaic Pidgin Chinese. Hence, it was readily accepted in Northern China and naturally influenced and shaped the spoken Chinese there. It is concluded that the colloquial Chinese influenced by Sino-Mongolian, as observed in No Gŏltae, would be defined as Mongolo-Chinese, a type of Creole language.

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