Two Little English Books

江戸後期の横文字早学び:そ の発音の表記について

Paul Snowden

"It was not until the eighteenth century ... that English exerted any really appreciable influence on other national tongues." Simeon Potter, Our Language.

"If that double -bolted land , Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold." —Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

While it is commonly maintained that Japan was rather "late" in taking to the study of English, it is important not to be carried away entirely with such an idea. Simeon Potter's simple statement, quoted above, should always be borne in mind in any consideration of the relative tardiness or otherwise of Japan in taking up a study that by the end of the nineteenth century had achieved such preeminence. Only in the second half of the eighteenth century, with the decline of Spain and Holland, the independence of the United States and the beginning of British imperial expansion, did the English language start on the road to becoming an international language. Indeed, as George Orwell (1941) points out in his essay "England Your England", the English-speaking world has no great artists, sculptors or musicians from that period, and for a long time English literature was no more than a "family joke". That Japan was late is not to be doubted , but the extent of that lateness may well be less — 79 — EIAKXMAMP. M131- than what is popularly supposed. Similarly, the common belief that Japan was "opened up" in one blow, or one fell swoop, rather like the financial "Big Bangs" of the late twentieth century, should also be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. Neither of the dates frequently proposed for the apocalyptic opening up of the supposedly hermetically sealed nation — 1853 when Perry's Black Ships appeared at Uraga, or 1868 when the Meiji Emperor was restored — will do as definitive points for the beginning of English study in Japan. To be sure, the dates 1853 and 1868 can be seen in hindsight as great watersheds in political movements that had been brewing for decades and threatening, or perhaps rather promising, to revolutionise the nation's external and internal relationships. Herman Melville, quoted above, and in many works old and new on the events of that period, appreciated the process already in 1851, when Moby Dick was published; he was aware that the pressures on the shogunate had already gone on for several decades when he so prophetically foresaw the imminent unlocking of those "double bolts." Thus, although this article concerns two little books published at some time between those two watershed dates of 1853 and 1868, it will be necessary also to put them into their historical context by referring to earlier aspects of English study in Japan, which by the time they appeared on the market could already be traced back for more than half a century. The two works under consideration are: (1) Yokomoji Hayamanabi Speedy Learning of Sideways Writing, published in Yokohama in 1866 by a publishing house that transliterates its name on the inside back cover as Kingkowdow, and (2) -1 J Nanatsu Iroha Seven Iroha Syllabaries, published in 1867 by *Jr;SPc Tokyo Shorin. Actual copies of the works were kindly loaned by Prof. Takeda Katsuhiko of Waseda University. (Snowden 1996) Each is no more than a simple introduction of the Roman alphabet to — 80 — Two Little English Books ordinary citizens faced with the new demands of Westernization and international trade, but in them can be perceived not only the new determination to gain a knowledge of the English language but also the lingering influence of the Dutch language, which had a head start of two centuries or so. The influence of Dutch on early English studies is easy to trace. It was, after all, Hendrik' Doeff, the kapitan of the Dutch settlement in Dejima, who first encouraged the shogunate to expand its studies of Western languages to include English, French and Russian, after repeated and determined attempts by vessels from those nations to gain entry to Japanese ports — with a particularly brazen intrusion by the British frigate the Phaeton in 1808 as the last straw. (Araki 1931) The first Western informant for Motoki Shoei, the hereditary Nagasaki Dutch interpreter set in charge of a team to produce materials for the study of English, was actually a Dutchman, Jan Cock Blomhoff (1779 1853), who had previously done some military service in Ireland and as a result knew some English. In those very early works on which Blomhoff assisted, the Dutch influence is clear phonetically, orthographically and culturally. A few examples will suffice.

Fit 1i Ii Angeria-gengo-wage (literally, interpreting the Anglia language) was a report on English studies published in 1810 by Nagasaki interpreters Iwase, Yoshio and Inomata. The model dialogues in this three- volume manuscript contain such Dutch-style spelling errors as "s" for "z" in "f reeses" and "t" for "d" in "hart"; the subject pronoun "it" is frequently given simply as "t", echoing modern Dutch usage. The katakana transliterations of the sample sentences often follow what is obviously Dutch-style pronunciation of English: "great flakes" is given as — 1- 7 7 4X gun-to furekkisu, showing not only a mispronunciation of the first word but also in the second word the tendency of many non-native speakers of English to substitute a pure — 81 — Ei2V4gtli* M13-1-] vowel for the diphthong [ei]; "lightens" is given as I, 4 reitensu, which is a clear indication of the Dutch diphthong that is cognate with the modern English [ai] — cf. English "Rhine" [rain] and Dutch "Rijn" [rain]; finally, as a third example only from the section on the weather, "that was a terrible clap of thunder" is transcribed as ‘y F r, 7 x. 5- 7° 4- 7 'y / datto uasu e teriburu karappu ofu tsundoru, showing not only the limitations of the strictly consonant+ vowel katakana syllabary but also the Dutch-style resolutions of the two English "th" sounds. (Katsumata 1936) Iff,f1J 14-4/J\I Angeria kogaku shosen (little net for the propitious study of Anglia (Ida 1982)) was the first textbook for English edited in Japan. This is the work on which Motoki and Blomhoff cooperated, and in its ten volumes of vocabulary, phrases and sample dialogues, the culturally bound content is noticeable at a glance. This excerpt (all sic) from the penultimate set of dialogues, "Between an English man and a dutch man coming out of Holland," requires no comment: are you an English man? Yes sir, at your service. How long have you been in holland? but a few months. did you pass by Rotterdam. yes, sir. Where did you land? i landed at the brill Where did you lodge? at the sign of the admiral tromp. are you of amsterdam. no sir, i am of the hague. do the states general keep always Court at the hague? — 82 — Two Little English Books

yes, sir. (Quoted in Katsumata 1936)

A third very early work was NEm:ovis + J yakuji hitsuyo Angeriago shusei (Interpreter's essential English selection), produced in 1822 at the hands of Baba Sajuro, a young Nagasaki interpreter dispatched to Edo to handle incidents in which foreign vessels attempted to land near the capital. Again, Baba's previous experience with Dutch reveals itself. Orthographically, and phonetically, this is seen in examples such as "laate" for "late" and "wrieten" for "written" . (Sugimoto 1985A) Indeed, "wrieten" also appears for "write" , which suggests some grammatical confusion: Dutch, like German, uses the "-en" ending for the infinitives of its verbs. The notorious Japanese confusion of "1" and "r" makes a very early appearance in "presentrij" for "presently" , which presents just one instance of the consistent use of Dutch- style "ij" for "y". The couplet "dat is de groote verbod in Japan/it is a great prohibition of our countrij" contains it again, and further goes to show that the purpose of Baba's work was far from the modern function of phrasebooks that purport to facilitate international friendships. Baba's book appeared just in time, for in that year he died at the early age of 36, but not before confronting the crew of the British whaler Saracen. This transcription of what he told the British mariners requires no further comment on its linguistic or political content:

you have our explained, that you have been long at Sea and you was in want of water, fuel and refresment, and you have any sick on board, there fore stepped you necessarij on core of our Countery, to obtain the offiser said thing, there fore give we you the thing after your asking, there fore you must depart as Speedily as you can, and you must come no more bij Japan; chieflij bij this place;

you must warn to all and other pepoles, they must not come to —83— B*XMAW5e,Tafri,M13-11 Japan. (Sugimoto 1985B) The year 1822 also saw the publication in Edo of the Bastaard-Woordenboek, a dictionary of foreign loan-words, mostly of Dutch origin. It was a proof of the ascendancy of Dutch, and of the extent to which vocabulary for science and commerce in particular had already been borrowed. Moreover, it was the first of a genre, the loan-word dictionary, that has become far more profuse in Japan than in any other country. Dutch maintained its ascendancy into the years just preceding the upheavals of 1853-1868. When Commander Biddle attempted to open up relations, he negotiated in Dutch; when the Nagasaki interpreters, after a gap of four decades, began work on z- 51, tl.f, fp Egeresugo jisho wage (English language dictionary interpretation) in 1850-51, unfortunately only getting as far as the letter B, to judge from the mention of E]V 7 (Horutoroppu) in the foreword, the dictionary seems most likely to have been a translation of Holtrop's English and Dutch Dictionary, revised, enlarged, and corrected by A. Stevenson, Dordrecht, 1823. (Toyoda 1939) Incidentally, still now there is some confusion among students of English in Japan when they are momentarily confused by the clash between authentic English vocabulary and loanwords in Japanese that they mistakenly believe to be of English origin rather than Dutch. One is actually the name of the British unit of currency, in English called the "pound", but in 'Dutch pond, which provided the Japanese :/ l pondo, by which many Japanese people to this day are deceived into believing that the English word is also "pond". A further example might be the cognate doublet of English "cook" and Dutch kok, the latter of which provided the Japanese word and thereby can lead to embarrassing misunderstandings in English. (Arakawa 1977, Snowden 1994) Dutch influence remains, no matter how unconsciously; the changeover is still not complete. — 84 — Two Little English Books In any case, we can see that the wholesale changeover to English did not take place until after the mid-century, although certain works and events can be seen as its forerunners. One of those events, of course, was the first opportunity for some of the Nagasaki interpreters to come into direct contact with a native speaker of English. This was in 1848, when the unfortunate Ranald MacDonald (Shigehisa 1941); was incarcerated at Nagasaki prior to deportation. His "students" were 14 of the Nagasaki Dutch interpreters, and included Moriyama Takichiro (then still called Einosuke, whom MacDonald described as a good student and who later became a leading official English interpreter and translator on official missions), Hori Tatsunosuke (later a lexicographer who Anglicised his given name to "Tatsnoskay" — an impossible spelling by the conventions of Dutch orthography) and Mitsukuri Rinsho (who later Anglicised his family name to "Mitskoori" — similarly unacceptable by the standards of Dutch orthography). Suggestions that Fukuzawa Yukichi was also among the group of 14 cannot be supported, but it is certain that he was one of the first to take up the study of English when it was finally introduced as a taught subject at the academies of the shogunate and the feudal clans. Already in 1854, three separate feudal fiefs established their own institutes for Western learning . These were the 4-±Mkg Soshikan set up by the Kaga clan, the *mg Jishukan set up by the Taiseiji clan, and the .4.-•Ztg Seishikan set up by the Fukuyama clan. All immediately included the English language in their curricula , and thus were actually in advance of the Edo shogunate's *Wg&liW Bansho Shirabesho, where English joined Dutch officially as a taught subject only in

1857,and where Fukuzawa Yukichi was briefly registered as a student in 1859. (Fukuzawa 1899) There (founded as theYogakusho in 1855; renamed NSW* Bansho Shirabesho in 1856; further renamed Yoshoshirabesho in 1862; renamed yet again maph Kaiseisho in 1863, ultimately subsumed as —85— 82IKXMII*5t part of the Imperial University), English had previously only been a subject for research and lexicography, one major project being the famous *fliWO[li f..;44 Eiwa taiyaku shuchin jisho (A Pocket Dictionary of the English and Japanese Language). This was in fact for the most part a translation of A New Pocket Dictionary of the English and Dutch Languages, remodelled and corrected from the best authorities, by H. Picard, further confirming the central position held by Dutch at that time. Even its Preface, by Hori Tatsnoskay, while apparently indicating increasing popularity for the study of English, actually bears a striking resemblance to the original Dutch preface (which itself recalls Simeon Potter's statement quoted at the head of this article): As the study of the English language is now rapidly becoming general in our country we have had for some time the desire to publish a "Pocket Dictionary of the English and Japanese languages" as an assistance to our scholars. Sedert de Engelsche taal meer algemeen in ons land beoefend wordt, is men bedacht geweest, om in de behoefte aan goede woordenboeken te vorzien.

Nevertheless, no matter whether his Preface was a mere translation, it was a fact that there was considerable public enthusiasm for learning English. A revision of the Pocket Dictionary soon became necessary, and one by Horikosi Kamenoskay (note the Anglicisation of the more conventional "Kamenosuke") appeared in 1866. From 1869, the political upheavals of the Restoration forced the production of further revisions into private hands as the well-known "Satsuma dictionary" . Even from the 1850s, there were unofficial, commercially-produced books or booklets, a few of which showed quite advanced or adventurous attitudes to — 86 — Two Little English Books the annotation of pronunciation. An early one was fa9ZRW,A4ilt% Waeishobai- taiwashu (Collection of Japanese-English Commercial Dialogues), which appeared, printed in woodblock, in Nagasaki in 1859. To judge from the katakana transliterations which appear under the sample English sentences, there is an apparent mixture of influences. For example, in the question "Can I see your goods?" there is evidence of an attempt to reconcile aural perception with the limitations of available katakana characters in 17.:/ ken for "Can"; as in modern transliterations, "I" is represented as 7 4 ai, with no attempt at liaison with the final sound of the previous word; the perennial problem of the English [s] sound followed by the front vowel [ii is unresolved, so that then as now "see" is transliterated as :./ — shi-; "your" appears as .n-— )l' yu-ru, possibly influenced by Dutch, which also seems to have influenced the transliteration of "goods" as — 'Y gu-tsu. The answer to this question, "Certainly ," seems to have been transliterated by someone exposed to New York speech, for it is given as v 4 :/ 9 soitenri! One interesting feature of this work is the addition of marks indicating stress, or the lack of it: proof that the little symbols that often appear in modern school textbooks have a very early precedent. In the sample sentence just given, a solid black triangle marks each syllable that should be particularly stressed (the 17 he of "can" and the s:/ shi of "see"), while a solid black circle marks ,unstressed syllables (the 4 i of "I", the )1/ ru of "your" and the 7 tsu of "goods"), which to this day have no successful solution in katakana transliteration. John Manjiro, with his years of actual aural contact with the English of American sailors, was responsible for another pronunciation-based book in 1859: **3111-int g Eibeitaiwashokei (Short Cut to English and American Dialogues). Like the previous work a woodblock printing, but with the

English sample sentences in cursive script rather than block letters , it, too, gives katakana approximations of English pronunciation along with a partly — 87 — 8*XilfliM5-t M13-g- literal, partly colloquial Japanese translation. Manjiro's transliteration turns out to be very different from modern _conventions, indicating his reliance on his own ears rather than any preconceived system of rendering the English language in a syllabary that is, it must be admitted, most unsuited to the purpose. Thus, Manjiro's version of "You may say what you please. I told him he was mistaken" runs: ...n-— -7 4 -t 4 7 7 "I- -n-- 7° I) — :7 . 7 4 11 1- r, 9 — ))4X--i-4- :/ yu- mai sei futchi yu- puri-ji. ai to-ruda himu hi- uwa-ji mesutekin. The transliterations for "may", "what", "please" , "told", "was" and "mistaken" all differ considerably from readings that later became the convention. This is not to say that he was "wrong", or in any way more or less "wrong" than the modern convention: the addition of a final a-sound to "told", enforced by the nature of the katakana syllabary, for instance, is surely neither more nor less different from actual English pronunciation than the normal modern addition of an o-sound; nor is his solution for "what", at first sight perhaps rather surprising or even incomprehensible, necessarily any more or less corrupt than the normal modern * 9 7 h howatto. The third work that must be mentioned here appeared in 1860. It was produced by Fukuzawa Yukichi, who earlier in the year, together with John Manjiro, had acted as one of the interpreters accompanying the first ever official mission to the USA. Returning four months later, Fukuzawa and Manjiro each brought back a copy of Webster's Dictionary, the first in Japan. Thereupon Fukuzawa published his own dictionary, entitled it iff *Ad.:7g Zouteikaeitsugo (Expanded Chinese-English Interpretation). The title shows almost too obviously that it was for the most part a translation of a Chinese dictionary/phrasebook of the same title, published in 1855, which Fukuzawa had also brought back with him from San Francisco. Fukuzawa's edition contained about 2,200 words and 500 phrases and short sentences, with hints — 88— Two Little English Books for pronunciation. These hints include careful instructions on the English [v] sound and Fukuzawa's proposal for using the katakana u plus the two diacritical marks that indicate voicing, to represent this sound that does not exist in Japanese. A further hint is on the difference between Japanese syllabic :/ (nowadays normally transliterated n, but actually more similar in pronunciation to the medial or final English velar nasal ng sound as in, for example, "singing"): Fukuzawa takes care to avoid using this character when transliterating words such as "wind" or "find". A further inspired feature is that he writes his transliteration of final consonants in smaller size, as a hint that the vowel that is included in the katakana syllable is not to be pronounced. Thus, "wind" and "find" are given not as the modern conventional :/ l and 7 7 4 , but phonetically more accurately, if less attractively, as ,Y 4 and 7 7 4 i respectively. There are of course mistakes and confusions in places, but it is obvious that Fukuzawa applied much thought to the great problem of indicating pronunciation as close as possible to correct English within the confines of the katakana syllabary. It is against this background that we can consider the two little books with which this article is especially concerned. tIV-M Yokomoji Hayarnanabi (Speedy Learning of Sideways Writing), is not a guide to the vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation of English or Dutch or any other language, in that it does not contain any words or phrases apart from numerals. As can be deduced from its title, which uses the apparently quaint (but still in use in the closing years of the twentieth century) expression yokomoji for "sideways writing" it is simply an introdudion to the Roman alphabet. In 34 pages, it was printed in woodblock and published in Yokohama in 1866 by the publishing house a , which transliterates its name on the inside back cover as Kingkowdow.. Nowadays, the g would be omitted (although its presence might actually be seen as — 89— 8*NAIAR.563T3 M13-'4 phonetically helpful), and the w would not be used to indicate vowel lengthening, so that the more conventional modern version would be Kinkodo,

perhaps with length marks over the two o's. What is significant in this book for historical studies of the development of English in Japan is that the names of the letters and numerals are given in English, with occasional evidence of the interference of what was at that time the better-known language, Dutch. The book begins, as schoolchildren's handwriting practice used to begin until quite recently, with pen practice of fishhooks and other strokes essential for copperplate cursive writing. There is a brief admonition in Japanese that such

practice is necessary for writing correctly. Then follows a two-page spread in which the alphabet is presented. Each letter appears in the appropriate position in a grid of seven by four rectangles, the last two being blank. The capital letter takes up most of the space, and below it comes the small letter, with to the left of that a katakana version of the English, not Dutch name of the letter. Most of the letters have the katakana names that they still bear, but C is given as .z 4 sui rather than the current, and slightly less correct, shi-; R is rhoticized as 7 - )I, a-ru; Z is already given its American name, X4 zui. For V, which represents a sound that does not exist in Japanese,

17.4, the digraph proposed in 1860 by Fukuzawa Yukichi, is used. One must only wonder whether the general Japanese public could understand that this new digraph was to be pronounced [v] rather than any other sound, and, indeed, whether they found it as difficult to do so as modern Japanese speakers do. Length marks are added to the names of letters that otherwise would have only one katakana character; those that already have two, or a digraph with 4, have no length mark, with the exception of J. Only five letters have more than two katakana characters to transliterate their names: H, J, R, W and X. The Japanese text to the left of the page explains briefly but clearly that the 26 letters of the ABC have a similar function to Japanese — 90— Two Little English Books iroha, that no other characters apart from numerals are required for writing, and that reading is done from left to right, beginning on the next line down when the end of one line is reached. Next comes one page in which block letters, both upper and lower case, are presented in five lines of five each, with Z alone on the bottom line, apart from a superfluous lower-case y. The next eight pages demonstrate the alphabet in the order of the Japanese iroha. In a grid of only six squares per page, they appear quite large. Each square contains: in the top left corner, the Japanese character, in katakana; in the centre, the corresponding syllable in the alphabet, in lower case cursive letters about half an inch high, or one inch for letters with "tails" such as b and g. In the bottom right of each square comes the same syllable in block capitals, with the name of each component letter given above it in katakana. Most of the iroha characters are transliterated as in the current Hepburn system, with these exceptions: 1- chi, is given as "tchi"; those characters that would nowadays be transcribed as consonant+ u, appear as consonant+ ou, e.g. ), "rou," perhaps by analogy with "you" or even with French spelling conventions; and the independent syllable =/ appears as "ng" instead of the modern , and somewhat misleading, 'n"; , however, is given as shi, just as in the Hepburn system and unlike the phonologically more defensible "sr preferred by the Meiji government and its successors. The iroha syllabary is followed by four pages of numbers: 1-10 written large in both cursive and block versions of the numerals, with a katakana version of the pronunciation of each in English. 11-25 (but no 14), 30, 31, 40, 41, 50, 51, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 1000 (sic) and 1866 follow in half the size of the lower numbers. A note in the final rectangle reminds readers that all remaining numbers can be constructed in the same way. This, it will be seen, is a reasonably conventional arrangement for texts that teach numbers in a foreign language, There are some discrepancies, so that 1 is variously indicated as — 91 — 8 S-CPAIRseRFR: T97 >' uon, ,7 uwan; and T, 7 uan; there is still some evidence of Dutch influence, as in 3 'Y tsure-; 6 -t 4 sekisu; 100 /N :/ handoru; 1000 37 .) tausen. Nevertheless, 100, 1000 and 1866 are all begun with the word 7 uan, which, as the word in that language for "one" is een, cannot be Dutch. The final page of numbers is devoted to the Roman numerals, I-XI, XX, XL, L, LX, XC, C and M, each with the equivalent Japanese numeral above, but no pronunciation guide. A note at the side points out that such numerals (which are not actually called "Roman") are used for numbering various things and on such things as imported clocks. The next eight pages are taken up with a list of the kana syllables, this time in regular 7 4 TJ t aiueo order, transliterated into yokomoji. Thus, on the first page of this section, come a, i, ou, e, o vertically down the page. Above this column of five comes a space that for future columns will contain the single initial letter of the syllables it introduces, but in this first case the space is used to indicate that vowels (-12/1-47boji) are to appear below, while consonants (.T- shift) are to appear to the left. Each page has two columns of syllables headed by their consonants. Thus, the first page has: (space) a, ou, e, o on the right, and k, ha, hi, hou, ke, ko on the left, while the following page has s, sa, si, sou, se, so on the right and t, ta, ti, tou, te, to on the left, and so on. The single consonants at the head of each column are given not their English name but a katakana approximation of their normal pronunciation: k is indicated as ku, s as A su, for example. t and h are given respectively as 7 tsu and 7 fu, but each with a superscript triangle — another case of an original and reasonably sophisticated attempt to point out that there is a subtle difference between the Japanese and English pronunciations. Other unusual superscripts are a circle with t ha etc, for ng, nga, ngi, ngou, ngo, which are included in the list of voiced counterparts that follows the unvoiced consonants. There are separate colums for dz, z and j. — 92 — Two Little English Books The pronunciation of y is given as It- i. This is a thorough treatment, and even extends to four and a half pages of syllables, in the same aiueo order, made up with those consonants or common combinations in the alphabet that were not then normally used in transliterations of katakana: c, f, 1, qu, v, ch, sh and ph. The extra half page illustrates double-letter digraphs: ff, gg, 11, rr, and ss, the last of which is written in two ways: with and without the already obsolescent long s as the first component. Finally comes one page of alternative readings for the letter u, alone and preceded by eleven different consonants. It is pointed out that in such cases the u can be read either as [u] or as -2 [ju] The overall result is a compact, thorough introduction to the Roman alphabet, approached from various Japanese orthographical points of view. It is certainly significant that, although the English language is nowhere specifically mentioned, all names of letters and numerical expressions, and the rules of orthography and pronunciation that are introduced, are clearly based on English, not on the Dutch language that had until only recently been the only foreign language to which Japanese people had had even the slightest exposure. PAER Nanatsu Iroha (Seven Iroha Syllabaries) is organised similarly, in 34 pages. It contains little English language, apart from the numerals, where it exhibits certain Dutch interference, but is obviously a representative of rising public demand for knowledge based on the English language. Unlike Yokomoji Hayamanabi, it opens in the Western manner, to the left, rather than to the right — surely a pioneer. First comes a single-page table of the alphabet in upper-case characters, each with its name given in katakana. These names are in general similar to those in Yokomoji Hayamanabi, but there are some differences. For example, the reluctance to add a length mark to names that already have two characters is absent here, so that C, D, H, T, — 93 — *CMM.13T3t M13-g- V, W, X and Z all have three or more characters. Nevertheless, there is slightly less interest in accurate depiction of non-Japanese sounds: J is reduced to -e‘4 zei (cf Yokomoji Hayamanabi jie-), while Fukuawa Yukichi's digraph for [v] is abandoned. A page of the alphabet in lower case follows, with each letter consistently given the same katakana name as on the previous

page. Roman and Arabic numerals are in this booklet confined to one page, instead of a total of three in Yokomoji Hayamanabi. The page is entitled, in cursive lower case, of numbers, which would appear to be an expression from another source, slightly inappropriately used here. The numerals 1 to 10 are presented, each with its Roman counterpart, followed by 100, 1000 and 0. No hints are given on making up any of the numbers 11-99. Each is given its name in English, with a katakana transliteration of that name. Here, the common Japanese solution for the English "th" sounds appears: "three" is transliterated as A sun- (more Anglicised than Yokomoji Hayamanabi); "six" as 1/ shikkusu. But it may be Dutch influence that gives "five" as 7 7 7 faifu, and "seven" as' -t 7 sefun. The single mispelling of "hunderd" and its transliteration as 4: :/ 5' A honderudo provide much clearer evidence of an earlier knowledge of Dutch. "thousand", however, reverts to English style, if somewhat inaccurately, as sousendo. 0 is called "nought", transliterated as I F nouto. Most of this slim volume is taken up with the traditional iroha syllabary

presented in seven versions: at the top of the page, in capital Roman letters; immediately beneath that in lower case block letters; then in lower case cursive letters, followed respectively by katakana, hiragana and the two kanji characters that were the origins of the katakana and hiragana. For those iroha characters that also possess voiced and other variants, those variants also receive the same treatment, so that for example after I, RO and HA and — 94 —

A Two Little English Books before NI, which would be expected, BA and PA are also inserted. In this and other respects, this little book also makes an excellent manual for students of Japanese. (It will be remembered that in Yokomoji Hayamanabi the voiced counterparts appeared separately afterwards.) The use of "ou" in Yokomoji Hayamanabi for what is nowadays conventionally written as "u" is not followed here. Thus, for example, , A, are given as the modern "nu, ru", rather than the outdated "nou, rou" of Yokomoji Hayamanabi. but i, u alone is given as "oo"! The voiced counterpart of -I- chi is given as the rather unusual "dsi"; "dsu" appears for ty" zu. Then follow the vowels and consonants of the alphabet separately on one page, the vowels at the top of the page being given as "a e i o u and sometimes w and y". The words "vowels" and "consonants" are given rather careless transliterations in superscript katakana. The translation below 'sometimes': 1-4 - -= s7 -i- 1‘ tokinishitewa is written horizontally , from left to right. The book concludes with five pages of Roman transcriptions of katakana tables in aiueo order, with voiced counterparts at the end. The column for the consonant "d" appears as "da, dsi, dsu, de, do", which is consistent with an earlier section of the book. In conclusion, what these two small, unscholarly books show is a determined effort to master the alphabet for English and through English. The influence of Dutch is still perceptible, but equally so is the effort, through various techniques, to come as close as possible to the pronunciation of the new language for foreign intercourse, English. Some of those techniques may now appear archaic, or even downright inaccurate, but they represent an important and enlightened step along the road of English education in Japan.

— 95 — 日本英 語教育史研究 第13号

References

あ らか わ そお べ え Arakawa Sobe 1977 外来語辞典 角川書店 荒木俘兵衛 Araki Ihei 1931 日本英語学書誌 創元社 Fukuzawa Yukichi 1899 (Trans. Kiyooka E 1960) The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa Columbia University Press 井田好治 Ida Yoshiharu 1982 長崎原本 「諸厄利亜興学小笠」r諸厄利亜語林大成」研究 と解説 大修館 勝俣栓吉郎 Katsumata Senkichiro 1936 日本英学小史 研究社 Melville Herman 1851 Moby Dick (Wordsworth Editions 1992) Orwell G 1941 The Lion and the Unicorn Secker and Warburg Potter S 1976 Our Language Penguin 重久篤太郎 Shigehisa Tokutaro 1941 日本近世英学史 教育図書 Snowden P 1994 "The First Studies of English in Japan" 教 養 諸学 研 究96号 、 早 稲 田 大学政治経済学部

Snowden P 1996 "Mid-Nineteenth Century Studies of English in Japan" 教養諸学研 究100号 早稲田大学政治経済学部 杉 本 っ とむ Sugimoto Tsutomu 1985B 日本英語文化史の研究 八坂書房

杉 本 っ とむ Sugimoto Tsutomu 1985A 日本英語文化史資料 八坂書房 豊田 實 Toyoda Minoru 1939 日本英学史の研究 岩波書店

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