華夷譯語丙種本『韃靼譯語』におけるモンゴル語について

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the phones of middle Mongolian transcribed by Chinese characters in the glossary 『韃靼譯語(Da-da yi-yu)』. This text is the Mongolian part of the type 丙 of the glossaries ｢華夷譯語(Hua-yi yi-yu)｣ in which words of Chinese were contrasted with those of some foreign languages in Ming and Qing dynasties. 『韃靼譯語』was written for interpreters to study the Mongolian language. So it is expected that the phones of colloquial Mongolian were described more naturally in this text than in the other texts. In this paper, we reconstructed the phones of middle Mongolian in 『韃靼譯語』 and revealed the system of transcription using the phones of Chinese in 『重訂司馬温公等韻図経』 written in 1606. Consequently we found the following features peculiar to 『韃靼譯語』. (i) t, k, ɣ, l at the end of syllables are not transcribed frequently. (ii) ɣ preceded by l, r and ŋ is often transcribed by a Chinese consonant zero (影母). (iii) The phone ər of Chinese is used for the transcription of liquids. These features show that the author of 『韃靼譯語』 heard the phones of colloquial Mongolian and transcribed them naturally using the phones of his own Chinese, not artificially through written Mongolian.