36.1520, Reviews: Missionary Grammars and Dictionaries of Chinese: Wang (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-1520. Wed May 14 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.1520, Reviews: Missionary Grammars and Dictionaries of Chinese: Wang (2025)

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Date: 13-May-2025
From: Yuhong Wang [wyh_red at 126.com]
Subject: Historical Linguistics; Missionary Grammars and Dictionaries of Chinese: Wang (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-2443

Title: Missionary Grammars and Dictionaries of Chinese
Subtitle: The contribution of seventeenth century Spanish Dominicans
Series Title: Studies in the History of the Language Sciences   131
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: John Benjamins
           http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/sihols.131

Author(s): Otto Zwartjes

Reviewer: Yuhong Wang

SUMMARY
Missionary Grammars and Dictionaries of Chinese by Otto Zwartjes
focuses on the Dominicans’ contribution to Chinese grammar and
dictionaries, notably their lexicographic tools, the writing of
grammars, and the creation of a romanization system to describe Manila
Hokkien, i.e., a dialect in Southern Min.
The whole book consists of 7 chapters, 7 appendixes, 1 list of indexes
and 1 list of toponyms.
Chapter 1 is a brief introduction, identifying the aims of the book as
being 1) to publish and analyze Francisco Varo’s Chinese work, the
Arte, appended to a Chinese-Spanish dictionary known as Marsh 696 that
once belonged to Golius, 2) to provide a brief historical overview of
Dominicans missionary works, and 3) to delineate state-of-art research
on missionary linguistics and Chinese languages, particularly that of
Francisco Díaz.
Chapter 2 presents the facsimile edition, transliteration and English
translation of Marsh 696, makes a descriptive analysis of Marsh 696,
reconstructs the missing parts of Marsh 696, and makes a comparative
analysis between Marsh 696 and earlier works, and a comparison between
Marsh 696 and the Arte of Francisco Varo. The author argues that
Varo’s grammar did not overlap with some other grammars in that
period, and that it is greatly influenced by Francisco Díaz.
Chapter 3 discusses the Arte, including the influence of Antonio de
Nebrija, different versions of the Arte, and the Reglas of Morales.
Zwartjes (2024) delves into Nebrija’s influence, which has not been
explored in previous studies. The key point is that Zwartjes does not
agree that Varo’s grammar adheres to Nebrija’s model; for Varo’s
grammar includes “a great part of material that has not been derived
from any edition of Nebrija” (p.  132).
Chapter 4 is on lexicography, particularly Sino-Hispanic lexicography
and Spanish-Chinese lexicography, showing that Díaz’s dictionary
exhibits distinctive features akin to glossaries, and
encyclopedia-like explanations (Otto 2024:313). It is very meaningful
to see so many pages or folios.
Chapter 5 is on the teaching programs of the Dominicans, stating that
missionaries were often trained in small classes.  It also highlights
the impressive number of grammars, dictionaries and translated texts
designed for autodidacts, showing that Dominicans also aimed at
studying both classical and colloquial Chinese, which is diametrically
opposite from the misconception that Jesuits focused on learning and
reading classical texts whereas Dominicans focused on spoken
varieties. It is also stated in this chapter that Chinese was also
learned and taught by Spanish missionaries in Formosa and Philippines
and even in Mexico for a short time, in addition to  China.
Chapter 6 discusses the reception of Díaz’s work in pre-modern Europe,
by illustrating Díaz’s potential influence on other lexicographic
works produced in China by westerners and then the dissemination of
his work in Europe.
Chapter 7 is the conclusion, presenting positive news about future
studies.
EVALUATION
The first sentence of this monograph is of great importance:
“Westerners began their studies on the Chinese language concurrently
in both China and the Philippines.” (p. 1).
It is easy to understand that westerners began their studies on
Chinese language in China, for there has been considerable literature
on Jesuits’ missionary work in China, particularly on that of the
pioneer members of the China mission, Matteo Ricco (1552-1610),
Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607), and Niklaas Trigault (1577-1628).  The
discussion also discusses  the well-known Rites of Controversy lasting
for over a century and notes that the Jesuits are famous “for their
close cooperation with elite literati” (Henning Klöter:306). That is
also why it is Jesuits who have initiated translating Chinese
Confucian works into their language.
However, this does not mean that Jesuits are the only ones who studied
the Chinese language, even though that is a long-standing impression.
Otto Zwartjes’s monograph uncovers another thread of Chinese
missionary linguistics, that of the Dominicans in the Philippines. And
Zwartjes’s monograph is important in four respects.
First, it presents a precious manuscript, which has been unknown for
quite a long time. It is probably why the Dominicans’ work, among many
other unknown and unpublished materials, remained unstudied. Zwartjes
(2024) presents different versions of the ancient and invaluable Marsh
696, including the facsimile edition, transliteration and English
translation. The history is presented through the description of  real
pages, such as “The manuscript Marsh 696 commences with several folios
with empty columns and ridges.” (p.13) As Zwartjes (p. 314) has
stated, “they are of invaluable importance for the history of
linguistics, dictionaries, the history of Chinese, Early Manila
Hokkien…”.
Second, it differentiates the contributions made by Dominicans from
those made by  Jesuits in Chinese language studies, discussing
particularly the ones that have been completed only by Dominicans.
Contrary  to the postulation that Jesuits concentrated on Mandarin
whereas Dominicans treated spoken varieties, Zwartjes (p. 279)
emphasizes that Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans had to study
Chinese culture by learning both Chinese registers, the official
lingua franca, Mandarin, and the colloquial speech, despite the fact
that Jesuits started their evangelization with Chinese literati but
Dominicans preached among the poor populace. Even the initiator of the
Rites of Controversy, Juan Bautista de Morales (1597-1664) learned
Mandarin and Southern Min. However, the Dominicans in the Philippines
concentrated on Hokkien in the Philippines, a dialect spoken by the
Sangleys, or the Chinese-Hokkien speaking minority; this represents
early work on the heritage language of early Chinese immigrants and
their descendants. Moreover, Dominicans aimed at developing a new tool
to meet the need to talk to the local populace with colloquial
expressions.
Third, Zwartjes succeeds in establishing that Chinese missionary
studies began  at least half a century earlier. In contemporary
Chinese scholarly circles, Francisco Varo has been regarded as the one
who wrote the first book on Chinese grammar, the Arte, which was
written in Spanish and completed in 1683, published in 1703 in Canton;
an English version was published in 2000, and a Chinese version in
2003 (Yao 2001). However, Zwartjes postulates a hypothesis that Marsh
696 is one part of a comprehensive grammar, potentially analogous to
Francisco Varo’s Arte. The manuscript of Marsh 696 juxtaposes the
tonal features of Mandarin Chinese with those of the romanization of
the Hokkien dialect, and “predates Francisco Varo’s Arte” (p.12).
Fourth, Zwartjes presents a Portuguese connection in dictionaries of
that time. Zwartjes talks about a perplexing neglect, for there is a
dearth of literature dealing with dictionaries targeting Spanish, even
though there are a lot of studies on dictionaries translating from
Spanish into indigenous languages. However, the monodirectional
dictionaries targeting Spanish are more comprehensive than the
counterparts sourcing from Spanish, and the former ones have more
historiographical significance (p.6). Zwartjes finds that there is a
clear Portuguese presence  in the tradition of Spanish lexicography
and that the dictionaries translating from Spanish to other languages
followed the precedent set by Nebrija, a famous pioneer in Spain. Even
in Marsh 696, a third of the entries are translated from Chinese to
Portuguese, despite the dictionary being titled as a Chinese-Spanish
dictionary.
Moreover, Jianjun Wang has concluded that the romanization and the
characters grouped other than in radicals are two innovations of
missionaries (Giorgio C. and Mariarosaria G. 2011). Zwartjes clearly
shows the romanization and diacritics of different versions of
Francisco Díaz’s dictionary, even though these have  been overlooked
in academic circles for a long time and have no autograph version.
Last but not least, readers might be impressed and touched by
Zwartjes’ empathy for the missionaries, particularly the Dominicans,
shown,  for instance, in passages like this from his Foreword and
acknowledgements: “I have been fascinated by how missionaries, often
in various parts of world and under unimaginably difficult conditions,
imprisonment, exile, hurricane, shipwrecks, wild animals, and
diseases, were able to conduct remarkable studies of languages that
were until then completely unknown in Europe.” It would be no
exaggeration to say that the missionaries’ devoted their lives to
their enterprise; and it is also fair to say Otto Zwartjes has
contributed a lot in letting us know more about the missionaries and
missionary Chinese linguistics. There are many texts written in
languages other than English, but scholars  should not ignore this
excellent book on missionaries who were able to study alien languages
in difficult conditions.
To all the missionaries in Chinese linguistics. To Otto Zwartjes.
REFERENCES
Otto Zwartjes, Ramon Arzapalo Marin and Thomas S. Smith-Stark (ed.)
2009. Missionary Linguistics Ⅳ: lexicography: selected papers from the
fifth International Conference on Missionary Linguistics.
Otto Zwartjes. 2024. Missionary Grammars and Dictionaries of Chinese.
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Xiaoping Yao. 2001. The Oldest Extant Grammar Book on Chinese—An
Introduction to Francisco Varo’s Arte. Studies of the Chinese
Language.
Giorgio Casacchia and Mariarosaria Gianninoto. 2011. The History of
Chinese in Europe. Shanghai: Xuelin Publishing Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Yuhong Wang gained her Ph.D degree in Central China Normal University.
She is a professor in her university, and her research interests are
Chinese grammar, missionary linguistics and Teaching Chinese to
speakers of other languages.



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