Huayi yiyu


The Huáyí yìyǔ refers to a series of vocabularies produced by Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese administration for the study of foreign languages. They are a precious source of phonological information, both for the study of Chinese pronunciation and for the study of the languages in question.

Categorization

The relevant works of the huáyí yìyǔ fall into four categories:
  1. A Sino-Mongolian vocabulary compiled by Huo Yuanjie.
  2. Vocabularies that were compiled and re-edited in the Siyiguan.
  3. Vocabularies prepared by the Huitongguan.
  4. Qing dynasty vocabularies.

Languages covered in the Siyiguan

The languages covered by works in the second class include:
Tatsuo Nishida published a book studying each, the Tibetan, Burmese, Tosu and Lolo languages as recorded in the Hua-yi yiu.

Languages covered in the Huitongguan

The languages covered by works in the third class covered: