ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This study examines Short Cut to Western Mandarin: First Hundred Steps (1910), a Chinese language textbook compiled by the Norwegian missionary Edvard Amundsen, with particular attention to its compilation background, textbook structure, content design, and romanization system. The book consists of a preface, notes on tones and errata, a comparison table with Wade’s system, an explanation of the romanized scheme, Lessons 1–91 containing basic conversational sentences, Lessons 92–100 organized around thematic vocabularies, and a list of 214 radicals. Its pedagogical organization centers on practical domains such as travel, food, housing, administration, and religious practice, reflecting the concrete communicative needs of missionaries and other foreigners in Southwestern China in the early twentieth century. Amundsen’s romanization system departs from the Beijing-based Wade–Giles system by restructuring the representation of initials, rimes, and tones on the basis of spoken Southwestern Mandarin. By minimizing technical symbols and theoretical terminology, the system was designed to enable beginners to acquire practical oral proficiency without formal instruction. This study argues that Short Cut to Western Mandarin should be re-evaluated not only as a practical missionary textbook, but also as an important documentary source for the phonological features of early twentieth-century Southwestern Mandarin and for the history of missionary Chinese language textbooks.

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