GnuDoyng

Now I am more convinced than ever that the Foochow Bible was originally translated from English.

When I was writing the entry “Ten Commandments” (Sĕk Gái) in Min Dong Wikipedia this morning, I made reference to the Deuteronomy 5 of the Foochow Bible, a passage of which reads (bold by me):

5:14 Dâ̤ chék nĭk sê nṳ̄ Siông-dá̤ Ià-huò-huà gì ăng-sék-nĭk, cī siŏh nĭk, nṳ̄ gâe̤ng nṳ̄ nàng-nṳ̄-giāng, nù-chài, ă-tàu, ngù, lè̤, gáuk tàu-săng, lièng hiók nṳ̄ chió diē gì nè̤ng-hák, dŭ ng-tĕ̤ng có̤ dâi, ī-dé nṳ̄ gì nù-chài ă-tàu â̤ hiōng ăng-sék, gâe̤ng nṳ̄ cê-gă siŏh-iông.

The phrase “ī-dé” (以致) sounds very unnatural to me, and my intuition made me think that it, in all probability, came from an unskilled translating hand. So I opened up the English Bible (New Revised Standard Version) to refer to the corresponding texts, in which I found the phrase “so that”, just as I had expected.

5:14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work - you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.

Another obvious point is the excessive “sê” (是) in the Foochow Bible. The Foochow word “sê” can sometimes be considered as a counterpart of the English phrase “to be”, but the latter, however, plays a much more important grammatical role as a copula that can never be omitted in a subject-predicative sentence structure. Here, let me show you two sentences:

English: You are very tall.
Foochow: Nṳ̄ iā gèng. (汝野懸.)

English: I am twenty-four years old.
Foochow: Nguāi niék-sé huói go̤ lāu. (我廿四歲去了.)

In both examples above, we see no “sê” in the standard Foochow sentence. Actually, never will a Foochow speaker say “Nṳ̄ sê iā gèng” or “Nguāi sê niék-sé huói“, unless he intends to specifically emphasize something.

But in the Foochow Bible, the “sê” is everywhere. Most of them sound quite awkward to a native ear, e.g.:

Genesis 1:10

Ciā dă tù Siông-dá̤ giéu lō̤ Dê, cê̤ṳ siŏh-dŏi gì cūi giéu lō̤ Hāi. Siông-dá̤ káng ciŏng-uâng sê hō̤.

God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

All these tiny pieces of evidence in the Bible, along with the innumerable Foochow vulgar words and expressions, construct a whole view of an English-influenced Foochow literature. Just as Martin Luther’s Bible for the standard German today, this Foochow Bible could as well have served to further the evolvement of the Foochow language. Had it not been oppressed by the Mandarin Movement, Foochow language would have developed in a very distinct way, and reached the consummation of all the traditional and modern cultures it carries.