Did Qing Emperors Speak Manchu or Chinese?

The Language of the Qing Court, Imperial Bilingualism, and the Manchu Education of the Emperors

By MING YE

If our image of the Qing court comes mainly from television dramas, it is easy to assume that Qing emperors spoke Chinese almost all the time.

On screen, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong usually discuss state affairs in Chinese, speak Chinese with members of the imperial family, and address officials, guards, and attendants in Chinese. Manchu appears only occasionally, often as a ceremonial phrase or as a decorative marker of Manchu identity.

The historical reality was very different.

If we ask the question in its simplest form—

Did Qing emperors normally speak Manchu or Chinese?

—the answer should begin with:

Manchu.

Especially during the early and middle Qing periods, Manchu was not merely a symbolic language used in rituals. It was an important language of the imperial household and one of the core languages of court political life.

At the same time, this does not mean that Qing emperors did not speak Chinese.

Quite the opposite.

After the conquest of China proper, Qing emperors placed increasing importance on Chinese education. Emperors such as Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong all possessed strong Chinese-language abilities, and Chinese became increasingly important in court life over time.

The real linguistic world of the Qing court, therefore, cannot be reduced to a simple choice between Manchu and Chinese.

It was better understood as a multilingual imperial environment rooted in Manchu court tradition, while making extensive use of Chinese according to audience, function, and political context.

Qing Emperors Were Educated Within a Manchu Imperial Tradition

To understand the issue, we first need to remember who the Qing emperors were.

The Qing was not a Chinese imperial house that later adopted Manchu. It was founded by a Manchu ruling elite that entered China proper and gradually built an empire across a vast and multilingual territory.

During the time of Nurhaci and Hong Taiji, Manchu was naturally one of the principal languages of the ruling group.

In 1599, Nurhaci ordered the adaptation of Mongolian letters for the writing of the language of his people. During the reign of Hong Taiji, the script was further reformed and developed into the writing system later known as Manchu.

This means that before the Qing entered Beijing, Manchu had already become a language of political, military, and administrative activity.

That linguistic system did not disappear after 1644.

On the contrary, it became increasingly institutionalized.

The Qing court referred to Manchu as the “national language” or “Qing language,” and the education of imperial princes included Manchu language and writing, alongside Mongolian, Chinese learning, and martial training such as riding and archery.

A Qing prince therefore did not suddenly begin learning Manchu only after becoming emperor.

Manchu was already part of imperial education.

The linguistic environment in which a Qing emperor grew up was fundamentally different from that of an ordinary Chinese scholar-official.

Manchu Had a Special Status When the Emperor Dealt With Manchu Officials

One of the most important facts about the Qing court is also one of the easiest to overlook today:

For Manchu officials, using Manchu before the emperor was not merely a matter of personal preference.

For a long period, it was connected to explicit institutional expectations.

Manchu and Mongol bannermen were expected to use Manchu in situations such as reporting to the emperor, offering formal greetings, expressing gratitude, or giving accounts of their official background.

If a Manchu official stood before the emperor and could not speak Manchu properly, this was not simply regarded as a failure of language study.

From the perspective of Qing rulers, it could also indicate that the official had neglected what they regarded as the fundamental traditions of the Manchus.

This attitude was particularly strong under the Qianlong Emperor.

Qianlong was deeply concerned with the standardization and preservation of Manchu and repeatedly criticized declining language ability among the Eight Banners.

Around the fortieth year of his reign, a Manchu bannerman from Mukden named Guoermin was considered for an appointment connected with the bithesi, officials responsible for translation and written administrative work.

Qianlong questioned him directly in Manchu.

The man could recite a prepared account of his background, but when the emperor continued asking questions, he was no longer able to respond properly in Manchu.

Qianlong was highly dissatisfied.

The most important point in this episode is not simply that one Manchu official had poor Manchu.

The more revealing question is:

Why did Qianlong question him in Manchu in the first place?

Because in that institutional context, a Manchu official—especially one connected with translation work—was expected to be able to use Manchu before the emperor.

The Language an Emperor Used Depended on Whom He Was Speaking To

This is why the question “Did Qing emperors speak Manchu or Chinese?” cannot be answered simply by looking at court audiences in a modern dramatization.

The emperor dealt with many different kinds of people.

When speaking with Manchu princes, guards, bannermen, and officials who knew Manchu, the language had a natural and important place.

When dealing with Chinese officials who did not know Manchu, Chinese could be used, or communication could take place through translation and the bilingual administrative system.

Qing emperors therefore developed a strong ability to switch languages according to context.

This is particularly clear in the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong.

Kangxi received systematic education in Chinese while Manchu remained important in imperial and banner political life.

Yongzheng handled government business in both Manchu and Chinese.

Qianlong's linguistic abilities were even broader.

In addition to Manchu and Chinese, he studied Mongolian and also learned Tibetan and languages associated with the empire's northwestern territories. The Qing Empire governed a multilingual political world, and Qianlong consciously treated knowledge of multiple languages as part of imperial rule.

There is therefore no reason to assume that he used the same language in every audience.

When receiving a Chinese scholar-official, a Mongol prince, and a Manchu guard, the emperor could use different languages or different systems of interpretation and translation.

That is much closer to the actual linguistic reality of the Qing court.

Manchu Was Embedded in the Entire Institutional Life of the Court

If we focus only on what language the emperor used in casual conversation, we actually underestimate the importance of Manchu.

Manchu was not simply a spoken language.

It was also a major language of state administration.

The Qing dynasty left behind an enormous body of Manchu-language archives.

Palace memorials, imperial edicts, military documents, Grand Council records, Eight Banner records, frontier materials, imperial annotations, and translated documents all survive in Manchu.

Many important political texts existed in both Manchu and Chinese versions.

In some historical cases, the Manchu-language records preserve details that are not fully reproduced in Chinese materials.

The Forbidden City itself was therefore part of a large bilingual political environment.

Manchu appeared on palace plaques.

It appeared in archives.

Officials used it when reporting to the emperor.

Imperial princes studied it.

It was used in certain rituals.

And part of the emperor's administrative work was conducted through Manchu.

To treat Manchu as a language that Qing emperors occasionally used merely to display ethnic identity would therefore greatly underestimate its actual historical role.

Why Did Qing Emperors Keep Ordering Bannermen to Speak Manchu?

At first glance, there seems to be a contradiction.

If Manchu was such an important imperial language, why did emperors from Kangxi and Yongzheng to Qianlong repeatedly order bannermen to study and speak it?

The answer is precisely that:

The emperor's own command of Manchu did not mean that all Manchus still spoke it well.

After the Qing conquest, large numbers of banner people moved into Beijing and garrison cities throughout the empire.

They lived for generations within overwhelmingly Chinese-speaking environments.

Over time, more and more bannermen began using Chinese in everyday life.

By the early eighteenth century, this language shift was already visible.

The Korean traveler Kim Chang-eop, who visited Beijing near the end of the Kangxi reign, observed that Manchus generally could speak Chinese while Chinese residents usually did not speak Manchu. In everyday communication in Beijing, Chinese was increasingly becoming the shared language, and the Manchu ability of younger bannermen was beginning to weaken.

This helps explain why Qing emperors repeatedly emphasized the traditional ideal of the “national language and mounted archery.”

From this perspective, repeated imperial demands that Manchus continue using their language are themselves evidence that its social use was beginning to contract.

But two separate questions must not be confused:

The decline of Manchu among ordinary bannermen does not mean that the emperor himself no longer knew Manchu.

Indeed, the fact that emperors personally tested officials' Manchu, corrected them, and reprimanded poor usage shows that the language continued to be actively used at the highest level of government.

Manchu Did Not Completely Disappear From the Emperor's World in the Late Qing

By the nineteenth century, Manchu had clearly declined as an everyday language in many Manchu communities.

Increasing numbers of bannermen used Chinese as their first language.

Chinese was also becoming more widespread within Beijing and the imperial court.

But this still does not justify the claim that:

“Late Qing emperors no longer knew Manchu.”

At the institutional level, Manchu retained a special position.

From the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns through the Xianfeng period and beyond, emperors continued to order bannermen to study the Qing language.

The expectation still existed during the Guangxu reign.

In 1894, Guangxu received a bannerman named Xingtai. The man's Manchu during the audience and his formal expressions of gratitude were extremely weak. After questioning him, the emperor discovered that he had not seriously studied the language and removed him from office, ordering him to return to his banner and continue his studies.

This occurred only a little more than a decade before the fall of the Qing dynasty.

It demonstrates that:

Even at the end of the nineteenth century, Manchu still had an actual institutional role in audiences before the emperor.

Some late Qing court recollections also describe Guangxu using short Manchu commands with guards.

The growing dominance of Chinese in late Qing Beijing therefore should not be confused with the total disappearance of Manchu from the palace.

Did Puyi Really Know Only One Manchu Word?

This brings us to one of the most influential claims about the subject.

In From Emperor to Citizen, Puyi recalled that Manchu was the subject in which he performed worst and that, after years of study, he seemed to remember only one expression used when responding to officials after they paid their respects:

ili — “rise.”

This passage has been quoted repeatedly.

Over time, it produced a very popular conclusion:

“Even the last emperor, Puyi, knew only one Manchu word, so Qing emperors had already stopped speaking Manchu.”

There are two problems with this argument.

First, even if Puyi's Manchu had truly been poor, the language ability of one last emperor in the early twentieth century cannot be used to reconstruct the linguistic situation of all Qing emperors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

More than three centuries separate Nurhaci and Puyi.

Their linguistic environments were entirely different.

More importantly, surviving evidence shows that the statement that Puyi “knew only one Manchu word” should not be read literally.

Puyi received Manchu instruction for many years.

His Manchu teacher, Ioi Cung, taught him both the language and the script.

Surviving educational materials connected with Puyi indicate that he was not unfamiliar with Manchu writing.

One particularly revealing example comes from his English studies.

Puyi used Manchu letters to annotate the pronunciation of English words.

This is a highly significant detail.

Someone who truly could not recognize Manchu letters and literally knew only one Manchu word would not be able to use the Manchu writing system as a phonetic tool for learning another language.

Research on Puyi's education has also examined his study records, Manchu lessons, and reading materials.

This does not prove that Puyi possessed the same level of Manchu as Kangxi or Qianlong.

He almost certainly did not.

His command of Manchu was probably much weaker than that of many earlier Qing emperors.

But “weak Manchu” and “completely unable to use Manchu except for one word” are not the same thing.

Why, Then, Did Puyi Later Say That He Could Hardly Speak Manchu?

This question has to be considered within the historical world in which Puyi lived.

Puyi was born in 1906.

The Qing dynasty fell in 1912, when he was only six years old.

In other words, he did not grow up within a normally functioning Qing imperial state.

He lived through the fall of the dynasty, the Republic of China, his years in Tianjin, Manchukuo, Japan's defeat, Soviet captivity, political reeducation in Fushun, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

For Kangxi or Qianlong, Manchu was the “national language” of the imperial house.

For Puyi in the mid-twentieth century, the identity of “former emperor of the Qing” had become politically and historically far more complicated.

For that reason, Puyi's retrospective description of his imperial childhood has to be read in the context in which it was written.

This does not mean that historians should simply accuse him of deliberately lying.

There is no need to make that kind of psychological claim.

A more responsible approach is:

Do not base the entire history of Qing imperial language use on one sentence in a late memoir. Instead, compare the memoir with Puyi's educational records, his Manchu training, and surviving material evidence.

That evidence presents a more complicated picture.

Puyi's Manchu was probably limited.

Chinese was clearly much more important in his daily life, and English later became another major part of his education.

But he was not entirely unfamiliar with Manchu language and writing.

So What Language Did Qing Emperors Normally Speak?

If we need the shortest possible answer, it is this:

The traditional language of the Qing imperial house was Manchu, while Qing emperors also made increasingly extensive use of Chinese.

During the early and middle Qing periods, Manchu remained especially important within the imperial family, among Manchu princes, in audiences with bannermen, within the guard system, in Eight Banner affairs, and in specific court rituals.

When dealing with Chinese officials and governing the enormous Chinese-speaking administrative and intellectual world, emperors used Chinese extensively.

They did not have to choose one language and abandon the other.

The major Qing emperors—especially Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong—were rulers of a multilingual empire.

They could change languages according to the person standing before them.

With Manchu subjects, they could speak Manchu.

With Chinese officials, they could speak Chinese.

With Mongol princes, they could use Mongolian or the appropriate translation system.

Qianlong expanded this multilingual practice even further by studying additional languages spoken within the empire.

If we could walk into the Forbidden City in the eighteenth century, the soundscape would therefore be very different from that of a modern television drama.

We would not hear only Chinese.

Manchu would be heard at palace gates, in offices where officials reported to the emperor, among guards, during audiences with Manchu officials, and in specific court ceremonies.

Elsewhere in the palace, the emperor might be discussing government or classical texts with Chinese officials in Chinese.

That is what makes the linguistic world of the Qing court so interesting.

It was neither a Chinese-only palace nor a Manchu court that rejected Chinese.

It inherited the language tradition of the Manchu imperial house while developing a highly sophisticated bilingual—and often multilingual—political culture for governing a vast empire.

And for a long period of Qing history, Manchu remained at the center of that courtly linguistic world.

— MING YE