Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia

Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia PDF Author: Peter Francis Kornicki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192518690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia - not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.

Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia

Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia PDF Author: Peter Francis Kornicki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192518690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia - not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.

Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000–1919

Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000–1919 PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900427927X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This volume presents a new conceptual framework that recognizes that in East Asia the literary and vernacular registers historically interacted and influenced each other as part of a unified, if hybrid, language system that was mastered by Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese according to their own unique linguistic resources.

Language Change in East Asia

Language Change in East Asia PDF Author: T. E. McAuley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136844619
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This book adopts a wide focus on the range of East Asian languages, in both their pre-modern and modern forms, within the specific topic area of language change. It contains sections on dialect studies, contact linguistics, socio-linguistics and syntax/phonology and deals with all three major languages of East Asia: Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Individual chapters cover pre-Sino-Japanese phonology, nominalizers in Chinese, Japanese and Korean; Japanese loanwords in Taiwan Mandarin; changes in Korean honorifics; the tense and aspect system of Japanese; and language policy in Japan. The book will be of interest to linguists working on East Asian languages, and will be of value to a range of general linguists working in comparative or historical linguistics, socio-linguistics, language typology and language contact.

Asia's Orthographic Dilemma

Asia's Orthographic Dilemma PDF Author: William C. Hannas
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824818920
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
With the advent of computers and the rise of East Asian economies, the complicated character-based writing systems of East Asia have reached a stage of crisis that may be described as truly millennial in scope and implications. In what is perhaps the most wide-ranging critique of the sinographic script ever written, William C. Hannas assesses the usefulness of Chinese character-based writing in East Asia today.

Linguistics in East Asia and South East Asia

Linguistics in East Asia and South East Asia PDF Author: Chao Yuen Ren
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110814633
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1004

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Book Description
To celebrate the 270th anniversary of the De Gruyter publishing house, the company is providing permanent open access to 270 selected treasures from the De Gruyter Book Archive. Titles will be made available to anyone, anywhere at any time that might be interested. The DGBA project seeks to digitize the entire backlist of titles published since 1749 to ensure that future generations have digital access to the high-quality primary sources that De Gruyter has published over the centuries.

Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia

Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia PDF Author: Peter Francis Kornicki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192518682
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia - not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.

South-East Asia

South-East Asia PDF Author: Patricia Herbert
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824812676
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description


The Major Languages of East and South-East Asia

The Major Languages of East and South-East Asia PDF Author: Bernard Comrie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136898034
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Based on Bernard Comrie's much praised The World's Major Languages, this is a key guide to an important language family. The areas covered include Chinese, Japanese and Sino-Tibetan languages.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) PDF Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

中国语文的时代演进

中国语文的时代演进 PDF Author: Youguang Zhou
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780874153491
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This bilingual text by Zhou Youguang (in Chinese) with English translation by Zhang Liqing makes it easier for English speakers to gain advanced level skills in East Asian languages. It also exposes learners at or above intermediate skill levels to the vocabulary and discourses of academic disciplines and provides entries into discussions with oral and written presentations in these concentrations. This concise treatment of a field is done by an excellent scholar with outstanding English translation. This book offers an overview of a particular situation regarding the development and problems concerning Chinese languages and scripts.