The Rise and Development of Lexicography & Dictionary Craft in Tiechiu-Swatow Dialect during Late Qing Dynasty

Abstract

In the first half of the 19th century, the Christian churches of Britain and America successively sent missionaries to the southeast Asia. American Baptist missionaries William Dean and Josiah Goddard, who preached in Bangkok, published First Lessons in the Tiechiw Dialect 1841 and A Chinese and English Vocabulary in the Tiechiu Dialect in 1847. They started the activities of missionaries and foreigners in China to compile dictionaries of Tiechiw-Swatow dialects. After the second Opium War, missionaries went deep into the hinterland of China, and the activities of compiling dictionaries of Chinese dialects became more active. The compilation techniques such as content design, Roman pronunciation scheme and tone annotation, and Chinese-English comparison, became more perfect. From the 1870s to 1911, foreign missionaries in Tiechiw-Swatow area compiled and published nine dictionaries. The purpose of this paper is to sort out the compilation process of Tiechiw-Swatow dialect dictionaries in the late Qing dynasty and the recognition of the regularity of compilation techniques, so as to provide reference for the study of compilation techniques of Tiechiw-Swatow dialect dictionaries and the dissemination of Tiechiw-Swatow regional culture in the English world.