Special Chinese characters in Aoyi and Aomen Fanyu Zazi Quanben
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24145705 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yuxin Bian (0009-0004-8571-9547, University of Macau, corresponding author), Gabriel Antunes Araujo (0000-0001-7337-3391, University of Macau, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 162-178 |
| Publication date | 2026-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Chinese Writing Systems (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2513-8502 • E-ISSN: 2513-8510 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/25138502261479350 |
| OpenAlex | W7212368434 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
Aoyi 澳 譯 and Aomen Fanyu Zazi Quanben 澳 門 畨語雜字全本 are two texts from the 18th and 19th centuries that document the Macau Maquista Pidgin (MMP), a language that emerged in Macao. Chinese characters, as pronounced in Cantonese, were used as a syllabary to write the MMP. This study aims to examine the non-standard Chinese characters found in these two texts and investigate their typology. Here, we show that the emergence of these special characters was mainly influenced by three factors: the regional constraints of the Cantonese linguistic environment in which the compilers operated, efforts to transcribe spoken foreign languages into written form through phonetic representation, and errors during the woodblock printing process. Typologically, the special characters can be categorized into Cantonese dialectal characters, idiosyncratic characters with phonetic marks (including those that use the radical 口 to indicate orality or phonemic distinction), and folk characters. Moreover, this study discusses how special characters or hapax legomena pose problems for corpus building and automatic search. This study argues that these special characters reflect the compilers’ attempt to create a written form for a spoken-only language by fully leveraging their knowledge of writing and conventions in the absence of established written symbols. This process showcases the adaptability of Chinese characters in recording different languages and highlights the concrete manifestations of Sino-foreign language contact in the Macao region during that period, as well as certain writing practices.
Chinese characters · Chinese language · Orality · Pidgin · Spoken language · Writing system · Written language · Chinese history and philosophy · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Multilingual Education and Policy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |