ラナルド・マクドナルドの「日英語彙集」

発音と表記の関係から方言語彙をさぐる

抄録

The Glossary of English and Japanese Words' written by Ranald MacDonald (1824 -1894) contains a few words peculiar to the dialects of Northeastern Japan and those of Kyushu. About the Kyushu dialect, there have been comments by numbers of scholars, however, about the Northeastern dialect, no one but Dr. Yoshio Yoshimachi, has ever suggested the existence of Northeastern dialect in the MacDonald's 'Glossary'.
This paper attempts to find out some phonological regularities in descriptions in the vocabulary of the 'Glossary' and determine the words in questions whether they are dialectal words or not, referring to the phonological characteristics observed in both dialects at present.
Regarding the fact that MacDonald had been captured in Ezo, the present Hokkaido, for almost 3 months before being sent to Nagasaki, he must have heard the Japanese language spoken in that area. His first Japanese informant, Tangaro, is likely to be a temporary employee of the guard house in Rishiri Island, then under the control of the Soya Headquaters of the Bakufu. The history of the Northern Japan tells that there were numbers of military people despatched from northern parts of Honshu to Ezo to defend the land and the people from the Russian intrusion; besides them, many fishermen and farmers also crossed the Tsugaru Straits seeking the temporary jobs. Tangaro must have been one of them.
This paper includes on the result of the interview check with the native speakers of the two representative cities, Aomori and Nagasaki, in order to check if the people there accept or approve of the words in questions in the MacDonld's 'Glossary' as their dialects. Also, other Word Lists written by foreign scholars such as Thumberg, Curtius, Sansom are refered to, to observe how they describe the Japanese dialectal words in their works.