From Mandarin to Cantonese Lexicography: A genealogical study of Robert Morrison’s Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (1828)

Mandarin Chinese, as seen in dictionaries and other written materials, was traditionally recorded mostly in the form of classical Chinese. Spoken Mandarin was seldom recorded in official documents. However, the 16th century saw a significant change with the arrival of western missionaries in China. They broke away from traditional lexicographical practices by compiling bilingual dictionaries, both published and unpublished, recording spoken Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese with glosses in Western languages. Instead of using fǎnqiè 反切 , a traditional method in Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, the first having the same consonant and the second having the same vowel and tone, Catholic missionaries, particularly Jesuits, focused mainly on Guānhuà 官話, also called Mandarin, the language of the officials, which was an official “language common to the whole Empire”, rather than on “the various dialects of the different provinces” (Ricci 1953 [1615]: 28). The Protestants, especially after the Opium War, placed great emphasis on the description of major southern dialects in their dictionary-making work, distinguishing themselves from the Catholic tradition.