Two Little English Books
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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.