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Manchu Research Paper

Decent Essays

The Manchu writing system was developed before the Manchu conquest of China, originating from a different language than its spoken form. Due to the close network of alliances with the Mongols in preparation for the conquest of China, the leader of the Manchus, Nurhachi, favored the Mongol writing system with a modified version of the old Uighur script that they were already using. The script was used as the national writing system for Manchu in communication with the Mongols, because it is the most convenient and easy to use for diplomatic and strategic planning. After the death of Nurhachi, more frequent communication took place with China and Korea, which cause the writing system to be modified with additional points and circles to certain …show more content…

The ethnically Manchu people are able to present their culture and customs online for the world to see, with descriptions of experiences of current cultural events and interactive online communication. The activities online can bring more awareness to more ethnically Manchu people and encourage them to embrace the Manchu identity. More online representation also leads to more ethnic empowerment and increased recognition from the Chinese government (Bai 2008:4-6). As Manchus are more confident with the future of their language and ethnic identity, they are able to unite the voices online and request their own autonomous region, much like many other minority ethnic groups in China. However, the extensive reliance on online representation may result with a merely imagined community created without a realistic basis. The ethnic Manchus would have the tendency to only rely on online content to represent the ethnicity and fail to bring change to the real world. Due to the economic advantage of speaking Chinese, ethnic Manchus would continue to use Chinese instead of Manchu on a daily basis, which contradicts with the increasing cultural awareness spread online. The reluctance to speak Manchu either as the primary language or bi-language poses concerns of a potential re-abandonment of the Manchu language. Therefore, the most important step for Manchu language revitalization after successful language transmission and language learning should be to make the language more sustainable. Although it is true that the linguistic scholars might have biased opinions on language revitalization, they should still present the significant joint effect of language revitalization and cultural representation, and the online environment may be the preferred way to spread

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