The Missionary’s Chinese Vocabulary Creation In Late Ming And Early Qing Dynasty

The western missionaries of Society of Jesus came to China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasty to preach their religions, and this article uses it as a breakthrough point, sorting out their Chinese learning situation and Chinese writings, researching and analyzing the borrowed words created by the missionaries with Michele Ruggleri and Matteo Ricci’s works-- "Veritable Records of Catholic Saints" and " Euclid’s Elements" as an example, making a detailed contrastive analysis of the missionaries’ creation of Chinese words during this period, focusing on the analysis of “borrowed words” and “translation”, elaborating the causes and the fusion and constraints of Chinese traditional culture during their preaching and spreading.The main intention of the missionaries is to preach. They observed Chinese situation in the process of preaching, and they changed their ways of preaching in order to go deep into Chinese society which was called “cultural mission”. The implementation of “cultural mission” not only brought lots of rough learning tasks to the missionaries, but also accelerated the innovation of Chinese words. Michele Ruggleri and Matteo Ricci were pioneers of the missionaries who came to China to learn Chinese. Their works, "Veritable Records of Catholic Saints" and " Euclid’s Elements" not only were representative works in early stage, but also made a great influence on the innovation of Chinese religions and scientific vocabulary.This article investigates the new vocabularies about religion and science brought by the missionaries with the example of "Veritable Records of Catholic Saints" and " Euclid’s Elements", and utilizes the theory of “vocabulary input” to analyze the causes, and the advantages and disadvantages of traditional Chinese society, and analyzes the specific performance of the missionaries’ creation on the Chinese vocabularies.This article makes a research about the missionaries’ influence on Chinese vocabularies in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty, which can be a beneficial reference for foreign Chinese teaching and Sino-foreign cultural exchange on the present day of cross-cultural communication and the increasingly frequent exchanges between China and the western countries.This article is divided into five parts.The first part is introduction, mainly introducing the significance, methods and innovative points of this article. And the situation of missionaries’ journey to China and Chinese learning, the overseas and domestic research status involved in this article.The second part will sort out the situation of missionaries’ journey to China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty, analyzing the similarities and differences between Chinese and western culture and the relevant adjustment policy made by the missionaries.And lists the missionaries’ situation of Chinese learning and their representative works.The third part focuses on two major parts. The first part mainly introduces the missionaries’ representative Chinese works. The second part will analyze the new Chinese words about religion and science created by the missionaries with the example of "Veritable Records of Catholic Saints" and " Euclid’s Elements", and make a cultural level analysis of these words’ causes.The forth part uses foregoing language materials and linguistic theory as an example to explore the appearance of new words and their advantages and disadvantages.The fifth part is conclusion. This part will evaluate the influence of Chinese vocabularies brought by the missionaries by making a conclusion on the above parts and elaborate the reflection and enlightenment on the foreign Chinese teaching and Sino-foreign cultural exchanges.