Missionaries and written Chaoshanese

From the 1870s into the 1920s, Baptist and Presbyterian missionaries in the Chaoshan region devoted a substantial amount of time and effort to creating a body of Christian texts in written forms of Chaoshanese, and also educating Chinese Christians in this written language. However, the strategies used by these two Protestant groups differed sharply, with the Baptists taking a culturally conservative approach and the Presbyterians adopting a much more radical one. This paper reconstructs the story of written Chaoshanese as used by Protestant missionaries, examining what these "written Chaoshanese"varieties consisted of, and the degree to which they differed from other written forms of Chinese. It also considers what insights this case study may contribute to our understanding of the factors that drive or retard the growth of written vernaculars.

Duke Scholars

Author Donald Snow DKU Faculty