Russian-based Pidgins:

new findings

Elena Perekhvalskaya (Institute for Linguistic Studies, St.

Petersburg )

SLE 2016

New sources

• 1. Citations in fiction.

• 2. Modern recordings

• 3. Archive materials

Archive materials

• The most valuable source of new

information on Chinese Russian pidgin is

three handwritten dictionaries of

“Russian” made for Chinese merchants

in Kyakhta.

Kyakhta

The settlement of Kyakhta, founded in 1727,

became the main centre of Russian Chinese

barter trade.

The Chinese (Quin Manchu dynasty) built for

Chinese merchants a settlement of

Mainmaicheng.

The interaction of the two counterparts was

limited to the trade. The merchants had to cross

the state border to make their business.

Russian merchants could be present in

Maimaicheng only till the sunset.

Kyakhta

Maimaicheng

Russian dictionaries

• It was reported that the Chinese merchant had to learn Russian in order to be engaged in the trade and even had to pass an exam in Kalgan (Zhangjiakou).

• Dictionaries of Russian were compelled for the needs of Chinese merchants.

• The existence of such dictionaries was mentioned by several travelers who made the description of Kyahta.

• Russian sinologist A. Shprintsyn (who made one of the first linguistic descriptions of the ChPR) mentioned in his notes that he used to see four of such dictionaries.

printed dictionaries of foreign

languages 5

• were made in China for English and Portuguese and were used in the areas of interference.

• ...the native vocabularies published for the benefit of compradores and servants entering the service of English masters. One specimen of this class of work is a little volume of twelve or fifteen pages, and 'is entitled “A Vocabulary of Words in Use among the Red-Haired People” (Charles Godfrey Leland, 1876).

• These vocabularies were printed in the Chinese printing manner when the whole page was carved in wood.

• Were there RUSSIAN printed vocabularies?

The first citation • Konstantin K. Flug: “Overview of the Chinese non-

Buddhist manuscript collection of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences”, 1934.

• “Among handwritten manuals and dictionaries for translators there is an interesting Chinese Russian tematic dictionary, meant probably for the Chinese merchants. The second part contains Russian phrases, transmitted by means of Chinese characters, the meaning of these phrases is sometimes quite difficult to realize. For example, the phrase sounds in Beijing pronunciation: du-lu-guay ma-nyang-er nyang-du, means “other manners (varieties) are not present”, and di-bi ge-dao-er-li chi-lao-wei-ke reads as “you which people” and probably corresponds to Russian “where are from from” etc.

The dictionaries

• The dictionary of the Kyakhta Pidgin.

Publication, research and translation of

Irina F. Popova, and Takata Tokyo.

Moscow, forthcoming.

1. Institute of Oriental Manuscripts RAS

2. Library of the St. Petersburg State

University

3. Library of the Irkutsk State museum.

Three manuscript dictionaries

• All the three found dictionaries are manuscripts, so probably printed version just did not exist.

• Russian words were written with the help of Chinese characters, so the transliteration of these words is rather complicated. Besides, the dictionaries contain archaic or local variants of Chinese signs which reading is unclear. Popova and Tokio made a full transliteration of Russian words taking into account the peculiarities of the Shansi (Northern) Chinese dialect which was, most probably, spoken by Chinese merchants. They also found Russian correspondences for the words.

Example Chinese word Russian word transliteration Russian

corresponde

nce

English

translation

貂皮 捎不利 sau-pəʔ-li соболь sable

牙狗 色垻坎 səʔ-pa-

k'æ˜

собака dog

壹個 各必各 kəʔ-pieʔ-

kəʔ

копейка kopeck

東街 未兒內悞里子

vei-ər-

nuei u-li-

tsɪ

верхняя

улица

upper

street

The dictionary consists of two parts

• lexicon which contains single words or group

of words designing a single notion;

• phrase book that contains sentences or current expressions.

Lexical items from the first part (lexicon) are generally closer to Standard Russian than the Phrase book material which presents Pidgin forms:

Lexicon: olivkovyj ‘olive green’ - γo-lieʔ-fəʔ-ko-vai

Phrase book: ti-pieʔ kəʔ-tau pəʔ-zəʔ-u (tibe gde pozhivu) ‘Where do you live?’ (Rus. ty gde zhvivesh?).

Lexicon

• The overwhelming amount of lexical items are of Russian origin. There are some Mongolian, Chinese and Tungus-Manchu words.

• The largest part of the dictionary are items designing different types of good: sorts of tea and tobacco, names for types and color of cloths, furs, there are also terms for monetary units, units of measure, numerals, names officials and so on.

• Among Russian words there are many archaic words, informal or regional lexical items, cf. unlike transliteration of similar Russian words:

• zavtra ‘tomorrow’ - tsəʔ-fəʔ-tuəʔ-ər

• vchera ‘yesterday’ - ts'əʔ-la-sɪ (< Rus. nonlit. vcheras’)

typical Pidgin items

• liudi ‘person’ (< Russ. Pl. lyudi ‘people’);

• lamaila ‘to break’, ‘to spoil’ (< Rus. lomat’ ‘to break’);

• adali ‘similar, like’ (< Mongolian);

• karapchi ‘to steal’ (< Chinese);

• shipko ‘very’, ‘very much’, ‘very fast’ (word of unknown origin);

• suffix -hu: spi-hu ‘to sleep’, kusha-hu ‘to eat’ (< Mongolian)

Pidgin vs Russian

• Standard Russian forms are also found in the dictionaries equally with the Pidgin forms as if the dictionaries were compelled by different people who used different sources: cf. adjectives. Some forms are transliteration of Russian “dictionary form” (Sigular, Masculine, Nominative) ending with -yj/-ij, others are given in Pidgin forms ending with -ə, -ŋ:

• krasnyj ‘red’ - kəʔ-la-sɪ-nuei

• zelenyj ‘green’ - ʨiaʔ-liau-nuei

• dikij ‘wild’ - ti-k'əŋ

Phonetics

Russian words were pronounces according to the

phonotactic rules of Chinese.

Only vowels or sonants ŋ, r can be in the end of a

syllable . The clusters of consonants were

either simplified or spitted by an epenthetic

vowel :

• barhat ‘velvet’ - pa-ər-xəʔ

• grosh ‘half-kopeck’ - kəʔ-lɐ˜-səʔ

• stul ‘chair’ - sɪ-ər

• volk ‘wolf’ - vɐ˜-k'æ˜

Morphology. Word classes.

• Verbs. In ChPR the majority of verbs have the outcome -j / -i: bolej ‘to be ill’ vygoni ‘to chase’, zahoroni ‘to bury’, niznaj ‘not to know’, sadi ‘to plant’, formally they coincide with the Russian Imperative. There are exceptions: plákaj ‘to cry’, krichái ‘to scream’, ohótaj ‘to hunt’.

• In the present dictionaries the verbs also often coincide with the Russain Imperative

Verb forms Chinese word Russian word transliteration Russian

corresponde

nce

English

translation

替辦 不色被 pəʔ-səʔ-

pei

posobi to help

脱了 塞賣 səʔ-mai symai to take off

種力 不色地 pəʔ-səʔ-ti posadi to plant

睡着了 吾束怒 u-suəʔ-nəu usnu to fell

asleep

听着 数什／四什

su-səʔ-／sɪ-səʔ

sush /

sysh

to hear

Personal pronouns Chinese word Russian word transliteration Russian

corresponde

nce

English

translation

我 門牙 məŋ-ia minya I, me, my

你 地白 ti-pieʔ tibe you (Sg.),

your

他 堯旺 iau-vɐ˜ ivo (jego) he, she, it

我家 那什 na-səʔ nasha we, us,

our

你家 凹什 γau-səʔ vasha you, your

• There are double forms loaned from Russian: ja, ty, on, my, vy. They are widely used in the phrasebook, e.g.:

• It is worth mentioning that personal pronouns of the 1 and 2 persons Sg in most pidgins have the forms maja ‘I, me, my’ and tvaja ‘you, your’; the forms menia and tebya/tibi were registered only for the Ussuri Russian Pidgin, which was spread among Udihe and Nanai.

Word order • The main word order of the ChPR as presented in the

dictionaries is

S O V

• while both Russian and Chinese have S V O word order. It is a characteristic feature of Tungus-Manchurian and generally of Altaic languages. Taking into account that a Mongolian variety or a Mongolian-based pidgin was primarily was used for Chinese-Russian trade the appearance of the S O V word-order could be due to the influence of Mongolian.

• liəu-ti næ˜-ʨiŋ-sɪ-k'æ˜ tuəʔ-γau-ər-γo-tai

liudi nantsishka torgovaj

• məŋ-ia pieʔ-ʨiŋ-sɪ-k'æ˜ tuəʔ-γau-ər-γo-tai

menya pekinski torgovaj

“Others sell Nanking cloth, I sell Peking one”.

affirmative-negative question The most prominent feature in the syntax, which

without any doubt copies the Chinese word

order

• xo-ts'ɪ nəʔ xo-ts'ɪ

xochi ne xochi ‘Decide, do you need it’

• xo-ti pu-ti nie-pu-ti

xodi budu ne budu ‘Will you come or not?’

• ɕiau-vəŋ-kəŋ pu-ti nie pu-ti

segodnya budi ne budi “Will he come today”

It is the most prominent feature in the syntax,

which obviousely goes back to Chinese

Complex words ko-ni-xəʔ xuei-sɪ kon’ xvost ‘horse tail’

vei-nɐ˜ luəʔ-fəʔ-k'æ˜ vino lafka ‘wine shop’

sɪ-vəŋ-ia sa-məʔ svoja sam ‘master, boss’

suŋ-tsɪ su-xai sontse suxoj ‘sunny place’

kəʔ-la-ti pəʔ-sau kradi poshol ‘to hide oneself’

lieʔ-pəʔ-lieʔ ts'əʔ-lau-vei-k'o lyublyu chelovek

‘nice, good person’

As there is no inflectional morphology, there no clear cut between word classes, c.f. the word torgovəj (< Rus. adj. torgovyj ‘trade’):

Adjective:

t'au-ər-ko-vai ta-pu torgovyj daba ‘type of cloth’

t'au-ər-ko-vai ts'a torgovyj tsaj ‘tea in sacks’.

Verb:

ti t'au-ər-ko-vai nie u-mie-səʔ ia ti u-ts'ɪ-tsɪ

ty torgovaj ne umesha ja ty uchisi

‘You do not know how trade, I will teach you’.

Questions

• At the same time, I can not agree with

Popova and Tokio who write that «In

contrast to the lexicon of the Kyahta

Pidgin, the basis of its grammar is the

Chinese language» (p. 47).

Conclusions

• 1. Stabilization of the ChPR was due

mainly to the Chinese counterpart.

• 2. Many typical Pidgin features were

learned by Chinese merchants who

probably believed that they learned

“Russian”.

• 3. Mongolian influence was significant.