So I've been reading a lot about Manchurians and Mongolians lately. I really want to learn the Manchurian language. Or the Mongolian language. Mongolian would be easier--there are more references out there to listen to......but with only 70 native speakers of Manchurian left in the world, and several thousand who speak it at all, I am having a damn hard time finding any references to listen to at all.

For those who are curious, I'm not fully Chinese (Han Chinese, that is). I'm 25% Manchurian, the ethnic group from Siberia/Russia/northeast China that ruled China's last dynasty. We don't look much different than the Han, but everything else was *very* different......the Han were the ones who did the foot-binding and the "small feet are beautiful" thing back in old Chinese times. Manchurians did not bind their feet. Han Chinese practiced polygamy and most nobility had a First Wife and several mistresses....Manchus practiced monogamy. Manchu imperial style (the last Chinese dynasty) had men with the half-shaved head and the long pigtail, and the women with the ornate headpieces covered with giant flowers and dangling jewels:

Yup, this style that everyone believes is Chinese attire was actually brought into China by the Manchus.

Compare the above to the below, which is Han Chinese attire:

Pretty distinct--the Han men did not shave part of their hair and did not braid it. The women did not wear the enormous headpieces either. Also, the Manchus were the ones who adopted those enormous thick heeled sandals.
And the Manchurian language looks TOTALLY different from Chinese (Mandarin). It's actually very similar to Mongolian, being a language with similar origins:

Here, you can see that at the Forbidden City, all of the doorway signs are written in both Manchurian and Chinese (Mandarin):

My grandmother was 100% Manchurian and directly related to the imperial family of China's last emperor. (My great grand-aunt married into the royal family.) I never got to meet her, but I saw her photos--and we both have the same wavy, brownish hair (not typical of Chinese Han hair). Going through mother and grandmother, my last name would have been Aisin Gioro! (Another different.....Chinese Han last names are just 1 character, i.e. Chang, Jin, Lu, Lin, etc. But Manchurian last names have many characters....Aisin Gioro translates to 4 Chinese characters.)
But anyway.

I'm just rambling. I'm determined to figure out at least how to write some basic Manchurian, and maybe I'll just listen to Mongolians talk on YouTube or something.

I REALLY want to visit Mongolia. I feel more connected to Mongolia than I do to China, ethnically. Even though Manchus are a distinct ethnic group from Mongolians, they have similar genes being from the same part of the world. (I know this for a fact because I did a DNA genetic experiment in my college biology lab.....my genetic results came back with an 87% match for Mongolian genetics. W00t! Really interesting experiment--and apparently about 15% of my DNA matches Norwegians. Clearly some genes overlap here, otherwise it would add up to over 100%.

)
And now, I leave you with counting from 1 to 10 in Manchurian:
emu, zuwe, ilan, duin, sunza, ninggun, nadan, zakun, uyun, zuwan. Yay!