Early Manila Hokkien

Digital Edition of the Bocabulario de lengua sangleya

Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinUniversität TübingenUniversität Graz

Early Manila Hokkien

早期马尼拉福建话

The EMHo (Early Manila Hokkien) project focuses on digitising and analysing a 17th-century Chinese-Spanish dictionary, "Bocabulario de lengua sangleya por las letraz de el A.B.C.". Authored by an anonymous Spanish missionary, this manuscript offers insight into the Southern Min language, also known as Hokkien, as utilised by Chinese immigrants in early Manila.

We aim to make this historical document openly accessible as a digital edition. This includes digital facsimiles, a diplomatic as well as critical transcription, and an English translation, augmented with linguistic annotations including tone, and Chinese characters. These enrichments aim to make the work beneficial for a wider linguistic audience. The endeavour entails examining the manuscript through three lenses: language history, missionary linguistics, and historical sociolinguistics. We seek to understand the status of Early Manila Hokkien, the linguistic methods of the missionaries, and the socio-historical context of early Chinese migration and Spanish colonialism in Manila.

Utilising the Text Encoding Initiative standard, the project emphasises careful transcription and annotation, particularly of linguistic and tonal features. The approach combines transcription and editing with historical sociolinguistic methods and comparison with contemporary sources. Through this endeavour, we aim to contribute to the digital documentation and open-access publication of non-European language resources and offer new insights into Chinese-Spanish lexicography and the history of the Chinese language, with a particular focus on marginalised groups.

Bocabulario