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"UCSB Library Acquires Rare Chinese Language Audio Cylinder Recordings", UCSB Library Newsletter (September, 2024)

The UC Santa Barbara Library is excited to announce the recent acquisition of the Paul Georg von Möllendorff Chinese Cylinders, a collection of wax cylinders widely considered to be the first audio recordings from China. The cylinders, recorded in the late 1800s by linguist Möllendorff, contain sixteen recitations of a popular, celebrated poem "Returning Home"' by Tao Yuanming. Möllendorff recorded the poem in various Chinese dialects to document the differences in regional languages at the time. Today, the cylinders provide a rare glimpse into the history of Chinese language and include dialects that are considered critically endangered or extinct.

Like many late 19th-century diplomats and Sinologists, Möllendorff was an extraordinary scholar.  I will spend the remainder of this post describing his aims, abilities, and achievements.

Möllendorff (1847–1901) was a German linguist and renowned diplomat in East Asia. While serving as Commissioner of Customs at Ningbo, China, in the 1890s, Möllendorff undertook an ambitious project to document and classify Chinese languages for the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. He asked speakers representing various Chinese languages to recite the same poem into a graphophone and then transcribed the results phonetically. Möllendorff sent the cylinders to Léon Azoulay, a prominent figure in the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, to feature at the exposition as part of a "phonographic museum" where visitors could take an audio tour of cultures around the world. After the exposition, Azoulay published a full catalog of the contents of the phonographic museum, including the donated Chinese cylinders, which were explicitly identified with Möllendorff.

From Wikipedia:

Möllendorff is mostly known for his service as an adviser to the Korean king Gojong in the late nineteenth century and for his contributions to Sinology. In English-language publications, Möllendorff is often credited with having designed a system for romanizing the Manchu language, which was in fact the creation of his compatriot Hans Conon von der Gabelentz.

Since Wikipedia says that a citation is needed for that last sentence, and I've been hearing about this uncertainty for the last half-century, I'm hoping that some of the Manchu specialists who read Language Log will finally clarify the situation regarding the romanization of Manchu.

Half a century ago, I knew Möllendorff primarily as the author of A Manchu Grammar (Shanghai:  Printed at the American Presbyterian mission press, 1892).  In the course of preparation of this post, however, I've come to learn a great deal more about Möllendorff's accomplishments during the course of his life, such as learning Hebrew while still a young man, joining the Imperial Maritime Customs Service in Shanghai, becoming proficient in "Chinese", and joining the German consular service as interpreter and later vice-consul in Tianjin.

Something of great significance for me occurred during Möllendorff's service in the German consulate.  Namely, he became a friend of the Qing scholar, Ma Jianzhong (1845-1900), who was an official in the secretariat of the powerful statesman, governor-general Li Hongzhang (1823-1901).  What brought me to a standstill upon seeing the name of Ma Jianzhong was that he was the first Chinese to write a grammar of "Chinese", published in 1898.

Victor H. Mair (1997), "Ma Jianzhong and the Invention of Chinese Grammar", in Chaofen Sun, ed., Studies on the History of Chinese Syntax. Monograph Series Number 10 of Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 5-26.

I had always wondered why any Chinese — before the introduction of modern linguistics — would undertake the improbable task of writing a grammar of Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic, even though Westerners had previously written grammars of vernacular Sinitic languages.  Naturally, I had several times attempted to read Ma Jianzhong's Mǎ shì wéntōng 馬氏文通 (Ma's Literary Expositor [ironically rendered as "Basic principles for writing clearly and coherently by Mister Ma" here), but I always found it unintelligible, and I have never met anyone, Chinese or foreigner, who could render it into comprehensible English, French, German, Russian, etc.

When explained rigorously and analytically, as Harold Shadick did for his A first course in literary Chinese, 3 vols. (Cornell University Press, 1968), which I still use for my introduction to Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic course, it is possible to write a useful "grammar" of the language.

Cf. Aṣṭādhyāyī by Pāṇini पाणिनि (between 7th c. and 4th c. BC), the world's first grammar.  At the University of Washington, all graduate students in linguistics used to be required to take a special course on Paninian grammar.  I don't know if that's still the case.

Knowing that Ma Jianzhong was a close associate of Möllendorff makes me wonder whether it was the latter who put a grammar bee in the bonnet of the former.

We started this post with the earliest recordings of Sinitic dialects / topolects and ended with the first grammar of Literary Sinitic by a Chinese scholar, and Paul Georg von Möllendorff was right there at the heart of both these pathbreaking enterprises, and much else of great consequence besides — such as helping the formidable Li Hongzhang obtain munitions and warships from the German industrial firms Vulkan and Krupp, and then going head to head with Li over his attempts to gain greater independence for Korea from China — a formidable intellect and redoubtable personality that belies the wonky-nerdy appearance we see in some of his photographs.

Selected readings

• "'In Pāṇini We Trust;" (12/15/22)
• "Implementing Pāṇini's grammar" (12/1/23)
• "A new grammar of Mandarin" (10/18/15)

[Thanks to Martin Schwartz]

September 5, 2024 @ 8:54 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Grammar, Language and literature, Language and politics, Romanization, Topolects

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