CHINESE LANGUAGE, WRITING, AND LITERATURE. The language of China is an cient and important because of the vast number of human beings speaking it : lint it ranks among the most rudimentary forms of speech that have maintained a long existence anywhere in the world. It has matter-elements and nothing else: besides this, it is monosyllabic, each word being uttered by a single movement of the organs of speech, and expressing a complete idea or thing. it is characterized by the unehangeability of the root. Hence it is without inflections or distinct part; of speech. The relation of a word i; recognized by its position in the sentence. The same word may serve as noun. adjective. verb, or adverb. Gender, number. person, and case are signified, not by the form of the word itself. but by related additional words. Position is everything in the construction of Chinese sentences. is one of the simplest lan guages in the world, and at the same time 11110 of the most diffieult: for while there is no gram mar except syntax, to be a scholar one must ]earn the book language in its two or three dif ferent forms, the colloquial or spoken languages in Various 111111 t I a, many, it may be, as seven to a single sound), which increase the number of simple words or roots from nearly 500 to 1200 or more. It is very difficult for a Western man to be a master of the Chinese tones. The variety of dialects and their difficulties are overcome by what is commonly called the 'mandarin' or Court dialect, the medium of official eommunieation, which, though phonetically the poorest of the dialects, has received considerable literary cultivation. There is a vast difference between the literary and colloquiAl idioms. Yet though poor in form —indeed, one of the poorest—the Chinese lan guage has been made, through ages of cultiva tion, and solely by the genius of those who use it, superior as an instrument of thought to many, perhaps to most. inflected languages.
contrast between the means and produe that in Chinese," says Steinthal; "is a perfectly unique phenomenon in language history." lf, as seems probable. this language came orig inally with the primitive elements of Aceadiau civilization from Western Asia, it is logical to connect its written character with the Aceadian or proto-cunciform ideographs of ancient Meso potamia. These symbols, at first few in number and derived from natural or artificial objects, became stereotyped by use and so modified by contractions as presently to lose all resemblance to the original hieroglyphs. Native philologists seem to recognize some such process as this in arranging their language in 'six writings' (Ink shit), COS imitative symbols, 107 signs of thought. 740 combined ideas (e.g. 'woman' and 'broom' denoting a wife), 372 inverted signifiea lions (the character for 'hand' turned one way meaning 'right.' the other left'), 21.510 phono grams—the bulk of the language—combining an imitative with a sound symbol, and 59H meta phonic symbols and combinations, for the most part accepted conventions diflienll to explain.
This constitutes a vocabulary of 24,235 separate words, which is approximately the total of words in good usage; though this is increased by obso lete and compound characters in Kang-hi's dic tionary to 44,449. Ilere, as elsewhere, however, the vocabulary of ordinary life is much more limited, not far exceeding 3000; that of the nine canonical books is only 4601. Doubtless the aspect of the written character underwent a change upon the invention of the hair pencil or brush, ascribed to a general in the Third Cen tury we., when the hard stylus ceased to be used: and other changes in the mechanics of writing must aceount for the obliteration of al most every semblance of its hieroglyphic origin in the modern script. Some examples of such modifientions from supposed original forms are given in the illustration. There being no alpha bet in Chinese, the difficulties in arranging this assemblage of arldtrary signs are very great. After various phonetic plans had been tried, the characters were classified in the Sixth Century by selecting the most significant part of each as its key or radieal, and by grouping together those in which the same (4(onent occurred. These groups were subsequently reduced from 542 to '214 in Iho cent h Century. the (diameters under the same radical being listed eonsecutively aceording to the number of strokes required to write the extra-radical portion. This latter part—usually called the primitive may lie written above, he low-, on either side. or inclosed within the radi cal; it is necessary, therefore, to become per fectly familiar with these 214 signs before the first step can be taken in acquiring a knowledge of the written language. The number of char acters listed under each of these in the dictionary varies from 5 to 1354. A remarkable limitation in Chinese is the paucity of its sounds, hardly more than 400 in all. The difficulty arising from this is relieved by the employment of tones, mentioned above. and by breathings or aspirates (e.g. rang and tang are two different words) ; but in spite of these the number of homophones is excessive and embarrassing, and the spoken tongue, with its varying dialectic pronunciations of the same written (diameter, may he considered the most difficult in the world for an alien to acquire. Great attention is paid to its callig raphy; no educated mall allows himself to write carelessly, and the appearance of a written or printed page of Chinese characters in vertical columns is more ornamental than that, of a page in any other language. Six different styles of script are recognized, of which only two—the 'pattern' and 'running' hands—are in common use. Finally, in addition to the difficulties al ryadN- enumerated, it may lie said that a lan guage which cannot express by single words such abstract ideas as space, relation, etc., must have severely restricted the intellectual development of the race compelled to employ it during forty centuries of comparatively high civilization.