On the regional origin of the eighteenth-century "Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum".

• Author: Coblin, W. South

1. INTRODUCTION

   The Archives des Missions etrangeres de Paris hold a manuscript entitled "Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum" and catalogued as V. 1149-03 "Dictionnaire Chinois-Latin." The work is anonymous and undated but is written in a typically seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand. In an earlier study (Coblin 2007) we concluded that the text was composed during the reign of the Yongzheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] emperor (r. 1722-1735) and was probably written by a Frenchman. However, we were unable to determine where the work originated. In the present paper we shall use linguistic evidence to throw light on the regional origin of the text.

2. DATA

   A close examination of the "Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum" (hereafter: DSL) reveals that it attempts to record the standard form of southern Guanhua [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] pronunciation found in various European alphabetic sources of late Ming and early Qing times and traditionally known in Chinese as the Nanyin [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] or "Southern Pronunciation." A notable characteristic of this form of Guanhua was that a number of syllable types had dental sibilant initials where the corresponding Beiyin [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] or northern Guanhua readings had retrotlex initials. This is illustrated in the following examples, where the Nanyin readings are taken from the "Vo-cabulario de la Lengua Mandarina" of Francisco Varo (1627-1687; see Coblin 2006) and the Beiyin ones come from the somewhat later Chinese-English Dictionary of Herbert Giles (Giles 1892):

   Varo Giles [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] CU [ Sl] shih4 [sl] [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] seng [sen] sheng1 [san] [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] cheu' [ts'eu] ch'ou2 [ts'ou] [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] chu' [ts'u] ch'u1 [ts'u] The DSL generally makes this distinction as expected. However, there are exceptions to this, as illustrated in the following examples:

   Varo Giles DSL [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] chu [tsu] chu4 [tsu] tsou [tsu]. chu [tsu] In this example and the following one, DSL gives alternate southern and northern readings.

   [TEXT NOT chuon [tsuon] chuan(4) [tsuan] can [tsan], REPRODUSIBLE IN tchan [tsan] ASCII] [TEXT NOT ch'en(1) [ts'an] ch'en [ts'en] REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] Varo does not give this word. However, in the Xiru ermuzi [TEXT NOT REPRODUSIBLE IN ASCII] of Nicolas Trigault (Trigault 1626) it is given two readings, a southern one: e'en [ts'en], and a northern-like one...