如何讀懂滿文？第一講︰介紹文 How to Read Manchu? First Lesson: An Introduction

滿文就是旁邊那些蟲蟲似的文字
The left-hand side is Chinese and the other side is Manchu

此分享是基於河內良弘和清瀨義三郎則府合編的《滿洲語文語入門》(2002)及Jerry Norman羅傑瑞的A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary [滿英大詞典] (2013)而寫的。

This is a sharing based on the Introduction to Literary Manchu (2002) co-edited by Kawachi Yoshihiro and Kiyose Gisaburo Norikura and Jerry Norman’s A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary (2013).

首先我要說我不是專家，我只要一個自學滿文的小人物，既不是大師、也說不上滿文能力非常好。兩年前我開始自己學習滿文，發現自學也不是特別困難，所以有了想跟大家分享一下學習方法這個念頭。如果可以引起大家對滿文的興趣或者是能把這個語言介紹給大家，我已經很高興啦！文章中如果有錯誤的地方，歡迎大家指出，也歡迎大家留言討論！

First of all, I am not an expert. I am just a learner of Manchu and I am still learning. I started my self-study on Manchu about two years ago. I found that self-studying Manchu was not as difficult as I have imagined and I wanted to share the way how I learn. If this post can promote the learning of Manchu or whatsoever about Manchu, then I would be very pleased. If there are any mistakes, they are solely mine. Comments are highly welcome.

甚麼是滿文？

What is Manchu?

滿文是滿洲族的語言「滿語」的文字，清朝時叫做「清文」或「國語」。滿洲族的直系先祖是明朝時住在松花江、黑龍江、牡丹江等流域的女真族，遠古先祖可以追溯到遼金時代的女真、隋唐時代的靺鞨、北朝時代的勿吉。清太宗於天聰9年（1635）正式使用「滿洲」這個名稱，後稱「滿族」。滿語屬阿爾泰語系‧滿-通古斯語族‧滿語支，是多音節語言。2007年的統計中，以滿語為母語的使用者為17人，屬瀕危語言。

Manchu is the language of the Manchu people. It was the national language of the Qing Dynasty. The ancestors of Manchu people were the Jurchen people living in the Northeast of China. Manchu is a Tungustic language belonging to the Altaic language family. The number of its native speakers is about 17. 

滿文取鑑蒙古字體，以下最左邊是蒙古文，最右邊是滿文，看起來就很像。(我也很想學蒙古文！)

The creation of Manchu was based on the Mongolian and they just look alike!

從左至右分別為蒙古文、藏文、漢文和滿文。
From left to right: Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese and Manchu

滿文還有分有圈點和無圈點，這個我們以後再討論。

Manchu has two variants: with dots and without dots, but we will leave it for future discussion.

以下是滿文文字範例︰

Sample Text:

取自胡格金台《達斡爾故事》(1977) 的第九章

Excerpts from the Chapter 9 of Kūkejintai (Hugejintai)’s A Dagur Story (1977)

滿語的閱讀方法為上至下、左至右。左邊第一行就是第一句標題︰

The way to read Manchu is: from top to bottom, from left to right.  The first sentence would be the title:

跟一般字典用法無異
just use the Manchu-English dictionary the way you used to do

在閱讀滿文時，我們會先將其文字以穆麟德轉寫法（Möllendorff system）轉寫成羅馬拼音，如此一來，圈起的文字就是︰uyuci; mama eršere be kanagan arame ai hoi ci aljaha。其後我們就可以用這個羅馬拼音在字典裡查到字詞的意思了。第一個字就是uyuci（見上圖）翻開字典(使用方法和一般英文字典無異，在u欄找即可)就得出，uyuci: ninth。利用字典，可以得出整句意思就是“第九(話)︰藉天花為由離開曖暉”。
We would adopt the Möllendorff system to convert the Manchu text into Romanized form and the circled text would be “uyuci; mama eršere be kanagan arame ai hoi ci aljaha”. With a Manchu-English/Manchu-Chinese dictionary, we know the first word is uyuci (see the above image) which means “ninth” (the use of Manchu-English dictionary is no different from the use of normal English dictionary and you search through the “u” section for “uyuci”). Using the dictionary, we know that this whole sentence means “Ninth (Chapter nine): Leave Aihun with the Excuse of Small-pox”.

當然不是每個字都可以在字典中找到的，因為有語文文法、動詞變化、數量詞化、專有名詞等因素。但若要做到轉寫這步首先我們需具備閱讀滿文文字的能力（當然，滿文大師們都可以省略轉寫這步），所以我們下一課就是開始學習轉寫。簡而言之，我學習閱讀滿文的基本順序為︰先學轉寫、再學詞彙、文法。
Of course, not every word can be found in the dictionary as there are grammar, verb conjugations, numbers as adjectives, personal nouns, etc. Nevertheless, in order to proceed to the step of converting into Romanized form, we should, first of all, know how to read Manchu text (Professionals can skip this step of converting into Romanized form). Therefore, the first lesson on Manchu is to learn how to read Manchu and convert it into Romanized form. Simply speaking, the order of learning Manchu is: to learn how to convert the Manchu text into Romanized form, then the vocabulary and grammar.  

我會在下一講介紹組成滿文的母音和子音、並進一步討論母音「a」。

In next post, I will write about the vowels and consonants of Manchu and will discuss about the vowel “a”.