Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Brushtalk" in English language version.
Lý Tối Quang - sứ giả Triều Tiên tại Trung Quốc đã quan sát về sứ đoàn Việt Nam lúc bấy giờ và chép rằng: "đoàn sứ thần Phùng Khắc Khoan có 23 người, đều búi tóc, trong đó chỉ có một người biết tiếng Hán để thông dịch, còn thì dùng chữ viết để cùng hiểu nhau".
Literary Sinitic (written Chinese, hereafter Sinitic) functioned as a 'scripta franca' in sinographic East Asia, which broadly comprises China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, and Vietnam today.
Based on selected documented examples of writing-mediated cross-border communication spanning over a thousand years from the Sui dynasty to the late Ming dynasty, this paper demonstrates that Hanzi 漢字, a morphographic, non-phonographic script, was commonly used by literati of classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic to engage in "silent conversation" as a substitute for speech.
The same is not true of premodern and early modern East Asia, however, where, for well over a thousand years from the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) until the 1900s, literati from today's China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam with no shared spoken language could mobilize their knowledge of classical Chinese (wenyan 文言) or Literary Sinitic (Hanwen 漢文, Jap: kanbun, Kor: hanmun 한문, Viet.: hán văn) to improvise and make meaning through writing, interactively and face-to-face.
Among the earliest writing-mediated "silent conversation" records involving Japanese visitors in China was an anecdote documented during the Sui dynasty. According to an account in Fusō ryakuki 扶桑略记 written in year 1094 CE, minister Ono no Imoko小野妹子 (ca. 565−625) was dispatched by the Japanese Prince Shōtoku 聖德太子 (572−621) as an envoy to Sui China. One of the purposes of his voyage across the East Sea was to collect Buddhist sutras.
In two monographs, Vietnamese Anticolonialism 1885–1925 (Marr 1971) and Colonialism and Language Policy in Viet Nam (DeFrancis 1977), the historical background of several brush conversations between a Vietnamese anticolonial leader Phan Bội Châu 潘佩珠 (1867−1940), his Chinese contacts – reformist Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1873−1929) and revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 (better known in Chinese as 孫中山, 1866−1925), and Japanese leaders in 1905–1906 is covered in considerable detail (see also Phan 1999a[n.d.]): Here [in Japan] Phan Boi Chau sought out Liang Qichao, a refugee from the wrath of the Emperor Dowager, and has several extended discussions with him. Their common language was Chinese, but in written form, for while Phan Boi Chau was able to read and write Chinese his Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation was unintelligible to his interlocutor. They sat together at a table and passed back and forth to each other sheets covered with Chinese characters written with a brush. (DeFrancis 1977: 161; cf. Phan 1999b[n.d.]: 255)
To illustrate the format and contents of a brushtalk, we will present a conversation at Count Okuma's home involving five interlocutors: Phan, Okuma, Inukai, Liang, and Kashiwabara. This brushtalk is quite long, and so only a part of this political conversation is excerpted for illustration (see Excerpt in Fig. 1).
The contents of the brushtalks of Phan and the Go East group with Japanese and Chinese leaders were noted in Phan's Sinitic autobiography, Chronicles of Phan Sào Nam (Phan Sào Nam niên biểu 潘巢南年表), recording his life from his birth in 1867 to the time he was arrested and escorted to Vietnam in 1925.
During his official visit to Beijing in 2019, Kōno Tarō 河野太郎, who does not speak Chinese, posted his daily schedule on Twitter using only Chinese characters (i.e., without using any input from the kana syllabaries). The aim of the gesture could be interpreted as the envoy's way of connecting with the Chinese followers, which in some respects harks back to the diplomatic brushtalk tradition of the past... Furthermore, the text is a good illustration of "fake Chinese" or "pseudo-Chinese" (偽中国語), a form of contemporary internet slang used mainly by Japanese social media users and occasionally adopted for playful Sino-Japanese written communication.
When Yi Su-gwang (李睟光, 1563−1628), the Korean envoy to Ming China (1368−1644), met Phùng Khắc Khoan (馮克寬, 1528−1613), his Vietnamese counterpart, in Beijing in 1597, the two men were able to overcome the spoken language barrier and discuss political and admin- istrative affairs using Sinitic brushtalk.
The following hepta-syllabic octave, entitled Đáp Triều Tiên quốc sứ Lý Tuý Quang 答朝鮮國使李晬光 ('Response to Chosŏn Ambassador Li Swu-Kwang'), was produced by a Vietnamese diplomat Phùng Khắc Khoan 馮克寬 (1528−1613) in response to two poems – also hepta-syllabic octaves – composed by Li as part of their semi-official, semi-social encounters during the late Ming dynasty in Peking.
交談結束後，李商鳳即前往安南使節館舍，將正使洪啟禧所託之別箑、雪花紙、大好紙及書信贈予安南使節，安南使節則以檳榔款待。李商鳳即以筆談展開對話:
Literary Sinitic (written Chinese, hereafter Sinitic) functioned as a 'scripta franca' in sinographic East Asia, which broadly comprises China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, and Vietnam today.
Based on selected documented examples of writing-mediated cross-border communication spanning over a thousand years from the Sui dynasty to the late Ming dynasty, this paper demonstrates that Hanzi 漢字, a morphographic, non-phonographic script, was commonly used by literati of classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic to engage in "silent conversation" as a substitute for speech.
The same is not true of premodern and early modern East Asia, however, where, for well over a thousand years from the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) until the 1900s, literati from today's China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam with no shared spoken language could mobilize their knowledge of classical Chinese (wenyan 文言) or Literary Sinitic (Hanwen 漢文, Jap: kanbun, Kor: hanmun 한문, Viet.: hán văn) to improvise and make meaning through writing, interactively and face-to-face.
Among the earliest writing-mediated "silent conversation" records involving Japanese visitors in China was an anecdote documented during the Sui dynasty. According to an account in Fusō ryakuki 扶桑略记 written in year 1094 CE, minister Ono no Imoko小野妹子 (ca. 565−625) was dispatched by the Japanese Prince Shōtoku 聖德太子 (572−621) as an envoy to Sui China. One of the purposes of his voyage across the East Sea was to collect Buddhist sutras.
In two monographs, Vietnamese Anticolonialism 1885–1925 (Marr 1971) and Colonialism and Language Policy in Viet Nam (DeFrancis 1977), the historical background of several brush conversations between a Vietnamese anticolonial leader Phan Bội Châu 潘佩珠 (1867−1940), his Chinese contacts – reformist Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1873−1929) and revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 (better known in Chinese as 孫中山, 1866−1925), and Japanese leaders in 1905–1906 is covered in considerable detail (see also Phan 1999a[n.d.]): Here [in Japan] Phan Boi Chau sought out Liang Qichao, a refugee from the wrath of the Emperor Dowager, and has several extended discussions with him. Their common language was Chinese, but in written form, for while Phan Boi Chau was able to read and write Chinese his Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation was unintelligible to his interlocutor. They sat together at a table and passed back and forth to each other sheets covered with Chinese characters written with a brush. (DeFrancis 1977: 161; cf. Phan 1999b[n.d.]: 255)
During his official visit to Beijing in 2019, Kōno Tarō 河野太郎, who does not speak Chinese, posted his daily schedule on Twitter using only Chinese characters (i.e., without using any input from the kana syllabaries). The aim of the gesture could be interpreted as the envoy's way of connecting with the Chinese followers, which in some respects harks back to the diplomatic brushtalk tradition of the past... Furthermore, the text is a good illustration of "fake Chinese" or "pseudo-Chinese" (偽中国語), a form of contemporary internet slang used mainly by Japanese social media users and occasionally adopted for playful Sino-Japanese written communication.
When Yi Su-gwang (李睟光, 1563−1628), the Korean envoy to Ming China (1368−1644), met Phùng Khắc Khoan (馮克寬, 1528−1613), his Vietnamese counterpart, in Beijing in 1597, the two men were able to overcome the spoken language barrier and discuss political and admin- istrative affairs using Sinitic brushtalk.
The following hepta-syllabic octave, entitled Đáp Triều Tiên quốc sứ Lý Tuý Quang 答朝鮮國使李晬光 ('Response to Chosŏn Ambassador Li Swu-Kwang'), was produced by a Vietnamese diplomat Phùng Khắc Khoan 馮克寬 (1528−1613) in response to two poems – also hepta-syllabic octaves – composed by Li as part of their semi-official, semi-social encounters during the late Ming dynasty in Peking.
조완벽은 안남에서 많은 사람들을 만나 필담으로 대화를 나누면서 한자문화권 내부의 동질감과 이질감을 느꼈던 것으로 보인다.
