The Press., 1894-07-19
CHINESE LANGUAGE.
SOME OF THE CURlosiTlEs OF THE
 LEAR SPLITTING JARGON."

Musicians Say 1t Has Affinity With tine
 Notes of Birds-No Alphabet and No
 Parts of Speech--Some Amusing Exam
 pies of Chinese Talk.
 The superficial observer often refers to the Chinese spoken speech as an lear splitting jargon" and to the written speech as ''hieroglyphics." Frequent wis itors to any "Chinese quarter" notably D large Chinatown" like that of Los Angeles, will soon become so familiar with this so called jargon as to note that it is far more musical than the English speech. Musicians are authority for the statement that the Chinese language has more affinity (when spoken) with the notes of birds than with the tones of any other language. This is perhaps because the Chinese, having. no alphabet, must have many tone combinations to give the various expressions and meanings to the thousands of characters.
 Having no alphabet, the Chinese lan- guage has more symbols than all Of the alphabets ill the universe combined, and there are more tone combinations for the expression of those symbols than ln all other tongues. Each tone is attached to character, and one character is made to mean several different things, accord ing to the tone used. In Chinese the tone gives the meaning. Aword spoken with falling infection means one thing, and quite another when spoken with rising infection. We often hear a Chinaman. as he walks along the street talking with his companion, utter word in falling infection which sounds like n-go. This means H." He is talking of himself-perhaps saying how great he thinks himself to be. But if he drawls out the sound long and even he is call ing some hoodlum goose" He gives the falling infection to the first syllable, and the rising infection to the last, and in rather musical voice. This would be difficult feat for an American.
 No matter in what mood he may be, he may not and perhaps cannot change the accent. The voice may be louder or in minor key, but the tones are as lnt1exl- ble as written words and must be so used, or the exact meaning is lost. All the expressions of human passions-laugh- ter or sorrow-must be expressed by the same infexible words and precise ac- cents. There are only five tones in the Chinese voice, but as every word has all of it's syllables accented there are 20 per mutations, and these are almost always in constant use, even in ordinary conver- sation. A question may be asked with or without q rising infection, according to the word used.
 Chinese adjectives are nouns. For ''many thanks it is ''thank thank" A | "great man. is greatness man." Some times a noun is formed of a noun and a verb, as ''baroer," whom they call shave l head teacher" The verbs have neither moods nor tenses, and when your laun- dryf1lan wishes to tell you that 'I have washed" he says, ''I pass over wash. " | Their adverbs are mostly formed by join ing together nouns and verbs, as finish day" for yesterday" To cook is to ''eat rice." Every noun is plural and includes all there is of that article, unless it is limited by the expression ''one piece" as ''one piece house." Instead of wife and children" they express family and wife. :" | The word woman means father man. y If repeated, it signifies 'scolding." The noun always remains i'll the same shape, and the verb has but one form instead of the many known to the English lan- guage. The Chinese language has no de- clensions, subjugations, moods, lenses, propositions, conjunctions, adverbs, first, second and third persons, no singular and plural, and no gender except by the addition of few participles in rare in- stances. It is evidently simple and easy to learn, one of the simplest and most curious things about it being, as above stated, that every noun, unless qualified otherwise, is plural.
 There are about 60, 900 characters used in the Chinese language proper, but the average Chinaman no more learns all of those characters than the everyday American learns the 100000 words in the English language. The Chinaman, how ever, learns on the average more than does an American in similar position in life. A Chinaman who can neither read nor write is rarity. Chinese is not monosyllabic language, as many suppose, and it is impossible to utter in Chinese any but the shortest sentences in monosyllables.
 In writing the Chinaman makes one complicated but integral character for each word, but that word may be prop erly spoken in two, three or four sylla- bles. His syllables are divided by no longer intervals than are his words, and that is what makes his language sound to foreigner like a singsong jargon. We do not know whether he is telling d story or attempting song. The Chinese perhaps think the same thing of an Amer ican, who bites off his words and swal- lows them or telescopes one into another.
 Business men in this city thrown in contact with Chinese merchants who speak pure Chinese say that it is not diff cult to learn. Instead of 2G letters, not including the useless 6, the Chinese have 800 or 600 syllables, and these are combined into various forms to make the 60, 900 words in their dictionary" These syllables vary ill meaning according to the tone in which they are spoken or the strokes used in writing them-Los An