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Kircher's CHINA ILLUSTRATA
2025-04-26 11:26 pmIt came up in conversation earlier today, "what style of Chinese romanization did 'Confucius' come from?" So, of course, I had to go on a Wikipedia scavenger hunt.
The first notable English translation of Confucius's Analects was was published in 1861, according to Wiki laoshi. The first French one was in 1930. That doesn't seem right. The first Opium war predates that by nearly 20 years.
If you guessed "Jesuit missionaries", give yourself a gold star. The first credited standardized Romanization of Chinese was done by Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri for a Portuguese<-->Chinese dictionary in the 1580's. I guess that makes sense, since Macao was a Portuguese territory for a while. Their dictionary proceeded to get misplaced in the archives for 400 years. Whoops. Ruggieri is credited for being the first "sinologist", and it appears his is the first translation of the Analects of Confucius, into Latin, obviously.
The next monk credited with a standardized Romanization system was Lazzaro Cattaneo, one of their contemporaries. His work is lost in the void, but several of his contemporaries used his system in their own books about China. I tried roping an Italian friend into this little research quest hoping to possibly find anything more specific from a non-English angle. It doesn't appear that anyone's really looked into Cattaneo Romanization, and why would they? We have Hanyu Pinyin now.
I'll stick a pin in that for if I ever get into grad school. This is bound to give scholars in both the Asian studies and the Classics departments aneurysms.
My aforementioned friend sent me a link to a Google Books scan of Athanasius Kircher's China monumentis, qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis naturae & artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata
I wish my Latin wasn't so rusty. This thing has some crimes against orthography in the last couple chapters that look absolutely hilarious and especially cringe.
( Read more... )
It kind of sucks that all this cool parts of linguistics happens in the Jesus fandom.
But I always find this sort of manuscript intersectionalism (??) really fascinating. Like, the part where two totally different cultures butt up against each other and you can see the places where the inevitable struggle to communicate crops up, and what each side takes away from the other trying to explain it. Human just want to talk to each other.
The first notable English translation of Confucius's Analects was was published in 1861, according to Wiki laoshi. The first French one was in 1930. That doesn't seem right. The first Opium war predates that by nearly 20 years.
If you guessed "Jesuit missionaries", give yourself a gold star. The first credited standardized Romanization of Chinese was done by Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri for a Portuguese<-->Chinese dictionary in the 1580's. I guess that makes sense, since Macao was a Portuguese territory for a while. Their dictionary proceeded to get misplaced in the archives for 400 years. Whoops. Ruggieri is credited for being the first "sinologist", and it appears his is the first translation of the Analects of Confucius, into Latin, obviously.
The next monk credited with a standardized Romanization system was Lazzaro Cattaneo, one of their contemporaries. His work is lost in the void, but several of his contemporaries used his system in their own books about China. I tried roping an Italian friend into this little research quest hoping to possibly find anything more specific from a non-English angle. It doesn't appear that anyone's really looked into Cattaneo Romanization, and why would they? We have Hanyu Pinyin now.
I'll stick a pin in that for if I ever get into grad school. This is bound to give scholars in both the Asian studies and the Classics departments aneurysms.
My aforementioned friend sent me a link to a Google Books scan of Athanasius Kircher's China monumentis, qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis naturae & artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata
I wish my Latin wasn't so rusty. This thing has some crimes against orthography in the last couple chapters that look absolutely hilarious and especially cringe.
( Read more... )
It kind of sucks that all this cool parts of linguistics happens in the Jesus fandom.
But I always find this sort of manuscript intersectionalism (??) really fascinating. Like, the part where two totally different cultures butt up against each other and you can see the places where the inevitable struggle to communicate crops up, and what each side takes away from the other trying to explain it. Human just want to talk to each other.
