The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-12-13

language in itself. It is addressed to the
eye only. and cannot be understood II
read aloud. This is why the Chinese never
read aloud. A person may be able 10
speak one or more dialects and still be
unable 10 read a single word or one
may be thoroughly eonversant with the
written characters and not be able TO
make a sentence understood.
The written language is supposed to
have been originally hieroglyphfc. that
IS, made up Of picture representations OF
objects. Ancient Egypt used a circle with
q dot in the center to represent the sun.
We use that now. The Chinese have modi-
fed the circle to a square. This is so with
other signs, which were probably cir
cular originally, because the Chinese use
brush Instead of a pen, and il is much
more difficult to make an accurate cir
Gle with a brush. Their ink. which we
commonly know as Indian ink. is COM
posed Of SCOT and glue. The Chinese Ian
guage has been spoken longer than any
other language eXtant 1t is 5000 years
old Before the Old Testament was writ
ten it was spoken. Considering all its
dialects together, 500, 000, 900 people speak
ii to-day. The written language Is the
same throughout the empire. With very
plight mddihqatlons it is the written
language of the Japanese, who adopted
1t in the eighth century. No Chinese can
understand the Japanese spoken Ian
guage, neither can japanese understand
the speech of the Chinese, but an educat-
ed Japanese can write a letter that Chi
nese can read and understand any letter
he may receive from him.
The Chinese admire their written Ian
guage very much. They think there is
nothing in art, literature, or science to
compare with it. So great is their rever-
ence that you will never see any paper
with Chinese characters on il flying about
fkafrs A
tervals are placed little boxes, with a pla-
card on them bearing the words 'Rever-
ence written characters All scraps Of
printed paper are put in these boxes, and
men connected with the temple gather
them, and they are burned before the
gods.
Foreigners can seldom do more than
learn one dialect, written or spoken, in
lifetime. To speak one dialect it is neces-
sary to know at least 5000 words. There
are no declensions of nouns and no contu-
cations of verbs. One well-known trans
latOr of Chinese classics could not speak
enough words to be understood by his Chi
nese servants. The greatest difficulty in
the spoken language lies not in the vocab-
ulary, but in the infections necessary to
be given. Thus the Chinese word see
has eight Meanings corpse. a spoon, to
die, to give, to flash to manifest, to lose,
or to exist, according to the infection Civ
en- by the voice. The Chinese are not gem
orally educated. About one man in every
hundred can read and write, and about one
out of a thousand women"
Miss Fielde, who speaks the Swallow da-
lect of China. said she had never found one
Chinaman in this country with whom she
could converse, all the Chinese coming
here being those who live in Canton and
its near neighborhood. The official dialect
of China is the Pekinese, and it is spoken
by 20OOOO,000 of the people. The court has
to have interpreters. Miss Fielde also
spoke Of the pigeon" English used as
medium of understanding between the En-
glish and Chinese. In this jargon the Chi
naman learns a few words. which he ap-
plies in an infinite number of ways.
Thus" said Miss Fielde, "if an English
woman were to tell her Chinese servant
Go top side catchee my piece smell water
she would get the perfume from upstairs
which she desired And if John said, My
go chin-chin joss she would understand
that he desired to 20 to Worship"