The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Mauro]

I’m curious if anyone has found a historical document where a foreign explorer didn’t use their own script when first learning the language of the indigenous locals. I think every instance from North America, the Latin alphabet was used. This is where a lot of borrowed words in North America come from and quite a number of place names.

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. syllabaries are example of a non-Latin-based script for a foreign language that was developed recently (mid 1800s) by European missionaries. 

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was developed locally in what is now Liberia, but it seems to have followed attempts by American or European missionaries to adapt the Cree/Inukitut syllabaries to the local languages.  

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.t formerly used in Somalia was invented by a prince who was literate in Arabic.

All the best, --stolfi

All these scripts are little relevant, having been created after 1800 to the late 1900, when phonetics and phonology were well understood, mature sciences. They are not surprising, while an ex-novo phonetic script in medieval times is.

Going back some time, there are the examples of Greek-literate priests or monks developing the Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Armenian, and Georgian scripts for the speakers of those languages.  While Cyrillic shows clear influence from the Greek alphabet, that is not the case of the last two.

These are much more pertinent. However, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was invented by local speakers, Bulgarians in this case (who, being literate, also knew Greek and Glagolitic, I surmise). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was invented by Armenian speakers. The origin of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is unknown, so it cannot be used to argue one way or the other. It's possible the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was invented by foreign missionaries, but we actually don't know it, the attribution to Saints Cyril and Methodius is  just 'traditional', and in any case it was a modification of the Greek alphabet, not a fully ex-novo script.

So it's quite exceptional, to say the least, that someone in pre-modern times decides to invent a novel phonetic script to transcribe a foreign language. The VMS being a phonetic transcription of 'Chinese sensu lato' would be exceptional: possible of course, but not probable.



Another, unrelated thing I find hard to accept is that someone can spend enough time in 'China sensu lato' to learn the spoken language and then fail to learn to write even one Chinese character. I'm pretty much sure that learning the Chinese writing is a daunting task, but where's the problem in learning some dozens characters? Spend a couple years in China and you're bound to learn some, how could that not happen? So why no Chinese characters at all in the whole manuscript (the wiggles on the first page could be anything and they surely do not cry 'Chinese')? This too is possible, but weird, that is to say, improbable.