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It is not Chinese
- It is not Chinese
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RE: It is not Chinese
countingtls > 25-06-2025, 10:50 PM
(18-06-2025, 07:55 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here are the lines of the Starred Parags section (SPS; from page 105r to page 116r line 30) that I am currrently considering to be "titles":
<f105r.T1.9a>
This is very interesting, consider the formatting and fonts are key structure and features in denoting subsections and types of materials, often placed not in the front, but as footnote-like at the end of a list of entries. They might be intentional, instead of errors or transcription quirks. They are supposedly to be there, just poorly formatted from someone who saw a printed version. -
RE: It is not Chinese
countingtls > 25-06-2025, 11:47 PM
As someone who speaks not just one but several Chinese sub-groups (a dialect in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 閩/福建話 family, a dialect in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 客家話, and some Cantonese, and ofc, Mandarin), I can safely say that they are as far apart as any European language and mutually unintelligible to each other. However, the same texts can be spoken out loud in any of them without changing the written words. This convenience even extended to ancient Japanese, Korean, and surrounding regions influenced by Chinese culture. They can see the exact same texts and just pronounce them as they like locally. (and within the proper Chinese dynasty regions as well, the dialects are as varied in the past and maybe even more)
And for traders across Southeast Asia and South Asia, there were several language families in these sub-groups, usually the coastal variations were adapted by the locals as some kind of traders' languages, since traders and sailors would come from these coastal regions (Min languages were one of them and spread to South and SouthEast Asia, and still You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). One historical event brought the spread of knowledge and crucially medical practices and physicians to the whole South Asia coastal region, even as far as the Middle East, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (known in the Chinese sources as 鄭和下西洋). Started in 1405 till 1433, with 7 voyages total. And part of the fleets travelled as far as the Mamluk Sultanate (most believe started from the 5th voyage in 1416)
One of the key features that differs from other "discovery voyages" is the size of the fleet (60+ main vessels and countless small boats) and the number of people in the whole fleet (~25000 people or more). Also, crucially, they brought 180 "physicians"(醫士) and "medical officers"(醫官) who hold government positions and were more akin to "science officers" who record and collect materials/plants/animals along the voyages, which almost every main vessel would have at least one. They were not just doctors, but had missions to "spread" influence to locals, and heal them if need be. There are practices in the middle-east can trace their origins to this event.
The time frame is also crucial, where the Yuan Dynasty (the Mongols) were defeated not long ago (in the previous century), and the land trade was mostly blocked by the remnants of the Mongol Empire. And the transmission and translation switched from Mongolian, Persian, and Arabic to the Chinese coastal language families for the traders. And the Ming Dynasty was extremely xenophobic (mostly due to the Mongols), however, they also realized the need for translators to spread their influence in South Asia and even the Middle East. They recruited many translators and traders in the treasure fleets (通事), and they often employed multiple translators from various regions to lead the sub-fleets when they branched out to further and further locations (all the ways to East Africa).
There was no doubt that the medical practitioners and officers would carry medical books with them, and document what they saw (there were historical records of several of these "doctors" who came back and published their journals). It stands to reason that among so many traders who act as translators, who might only know a dialect of a Middle East or South Asia trader's languages would communicate via another translator/trader from Southeast Asia who knew the coastal languages in order to communicate with these doctors abroad. And the treasure fleets didn't "trade" in the normal commercial trading fashion, but more acted like a tributary system. They would send out a sub-fleet to a local government by "gifting" them goods like porcelain, and in return ask for "tributes" of local goods (we know from records that there were many animal tributes, even as far as East Africa). However, since there are many middlemen, it is likely that these middlemen who act as translators as well, often profit from these tributes and pretend they are local officials from these far-away regions.
One scenario would be some Venetian merchants who might have Middle Eastern roots who trade with the Mamluk, realize there is profit to be made if they can produce a translation between the Royal courts in the Middle East or even European courts, and didn't care much about the accuracy, but the format (maybe just askin one of the secondary translator who aren't even native speaker of the Chinese coastal language families to help prounce words for the transcriptions, and the process might have happened not in regions around China, but on a vessel or in the extended guard posts, trading posts established for the sub-fleets in the early 1400s). Or they might have tried to fake a "European version" of a similar format and structure and want to use it as a tribute to gain favor (since they only saw the format, and assume medical books would need to look alike to be "accepted"). And the window is pretty short, since the treasure fleet suddenly stopped in 1433, and maybe one that was in production but never made it back to the main fleet for the last round (or assumed there would be an 8th voyage, but never came). -
RE: It is not Chinese
countingtls > 26-06-2025, 01:05 AM
(13-06-2025, 09:29 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are small oddities, perfectly explainable as mistakes, spelling variants, abbreviations, etc. and then there are massive inconsistencies, much less explainable: the big differences between Currier "languages" and all the many "dialects" on a smaller scale.
One of the interesting "quirks" of a BenCao book in the time period around the 12th to 14th century printed versions is that they were effectively like a "dictionary" of references across multiple eras, and mainly the Old Chinese with classical Chinese writing in the core, and Middle Chinese about to transition to Early Mandarin added to expand the work. The core entries would come from the oldest sources of classical Chinese and Old Chinese (before the 6th century, and the first massive rewrite/compile), while the later references attached to them by authors mainly in the 10th to 12th centuries (the second massive rewrite/recompile). They are related, but very different in their grammar and structure. And they would include dialects and aliases across many different regions in the later expansion (the earlier scripts would be more "pure" and highly "stylised" since they've been copied more times and streamlined across many editions). It is a feature of a long-lasting tradition of recording and expanding/reinterpreting the same work across hundreds of years.
Then imagine someone who just know how to pronounce the words in just one dialect in a remotely related language family and record/translate them, and not able to properly distinguish tones as an intermediary translator/trader.