A Comparative Study Of Nanai/Hezhen Cognates In China And Russia

The problems of the Nanai language attracts not only linguists' attention, but also local officials who are connected with some practical activities such as creation of schools for Nanai children and classes in governmental schools for teaching in Nanai. There is enough general information in Russian and Chinese linguistics about culture, traditions, language and dialects of Nanai people. But we found out the absence of some special scientific researches in the field of comparing the language and culture of two dialects of the same tribe Nanai and Hezhen. This fact induced us to research the language of Hezhen, compare it with literary Nanai and find out the phonetic differences between them, state the changes that took place in the language vocabulary due to different territories, culture and the influence of national languages, Russian and Chinese in particular. In the work we took up the different layers of Nanai and Hezhen such as sounds, vocabulary and the borrowings that were made in different periods from Russian and Chinese.This work is based on the materials and knowledge that we got here in China. We consider our work to be more practical then theoretical (though the theory of the problem is given in this work both from the point of view of Russian and Chinese scholars) as the Nanai vocabulary has been studied thoroughly and all the examples are given in comparison in Nanai, Hezhen, English, Russian, and Chinese. While analyzing the words all the peculiarities of the word meanings were accounted. When we were in the process of writing this paper, we faced the problem of realities of the Nanai language, i.e. the words that describe the things existing only in Nanai culture, such as the words denoting articles of clothing, kitchen utensils or Nanai cuisine. We do not completely agree with the translations of those words given by Chinese scholars, so in our work we also tried to give full explanation of those realities. In our work, we try to attract people's attention to the problem of minorities not only in Russia but also in China. We would like to put our small contribution into the process of keeping and preserving Nanai culture. We think that this movement nowadays becomes more active then ever. Through this movement there appear more and more young people who would like to follow the examples of ancestors and keep teaching their children and grandchildren their native language and culture.