Conceptions of the Chinese language held by early French sinologists

Abstract

France was among the earliest European countries to institutionalise the teaching and study of Chinese. From the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, scholars associated with French institutions — notably Étienne Fourmont, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, Stanislas Julien et Antoine Bazin — reworked missionary linguistic materials and Latin-based grammatical categories within new scholarly and pedagogical settings. This article traces three overlapping dimensions of their conceptions of Chinese: the analysis of writing and characters, the description of grammatical organisation, and the differentiation of written and spoken registers. It argues that these dimensions emerged through sustained interaction among textual study, translation, and teaching practice. By treating Chinese evidence as a test of inherited assumptions about grammar and linguistic structure, these scholars contributed to broader nineteenth-century debates on linguistic diversity while also reshaping the institutional and pedagogical priorities of Chinese teaching in France.