Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-08-05
OLDEST OF LIVING TONGUES.
Some of the Difficulties of Learning TO
speak Good Chinese.

From the Youths Companion
The oldest spoken language now existent
upon the earth is the Chinese. II has an
enormous list of words-the estimate Of the
number of characters ranges from -. 900 to
2'Beoo. The language has no alphabet.
Each character represents complete idea,
! and corresponds, practically, to the Eng
lish word. 1t is written in columns from
top to bottom of the page and from right
TO left A Chinese book ends where an
English book begins. Writing is done with
a fine camel's hair brush and India ink
The lack Of an alphabet and the number
of characters make learning to read Chi
nese burdensome. Each character must be
learned by itself. When the student has
mastered 5000 characters the succeeding
thousands must be learned in the same
way. Those which he has mastered fur
nish no assistance to learning the others,
save as practice may have given him a GER
tain qulckness in perceiving the peculiar
form which distinguishes each character
from it's fellows
The grammar of the language is so sim
pie as to be almost non-existent. The same
word serves indinerently as a noun, verb.
adVerb or adjective. Moods, lenses Ier-
sons, gender and number are lacking; there
are neither conjugations, nor declensions
nor auxiliary verbs. The few Chinese who
have attempted to master the English
tongue regard its grammatical construction
as clumsy and full OF pitfalls.
The Chinese characters give no clue TO
the pronunciation, and no amount OF book
study VIII enable foreigner to speak the
language. That ability must be acquired
by months of drill, a quick ear and great
f1eMbility of the vocal organs. Even the
most faithful effort fails to enable many
foreigners to speak Chinese correctly
Chester Holcomb for many years inter-
prefer to the United States legation at
Pekin, from whose interesting book THE
Real Chinaman, we have copied relates
several anecdotes illustrative of a foreign-
er almost Inevitable blunders in speaking
Chinese.
Mr.. Holcombe once heard a venerable
missionary address the deity in prayer, be-
Tore crowded Chinese audience, as 'Oh
Thou omniverous God" He meant to gay
omnlScient,' but used an aspirated instead
of an unaspirated CHI. Another missionary
saw with establishment the audience hur-
riedly leave his chapel. in response to what
he thought was an invitation from his Inns
10 De seated. An aspirated 49, had turned
the supposed speech Of welcome into tne in
formation that they had made a mistake in
entering the chapel.
In Chinese the tone in which n vvord q,
spoken determines its meaning as much as
the sound does. For instance: In Chinese
a man ceases to be man IL you change the
tone OF the voice in uttering the word and
may become a disease a nightinsaIe or n
carrot. One tone, and one only, expresses
man; There are four OF these tones in
standard or mandarin dIalect-a hiRh-clIrv-
ing infection and falling Infection
The sound man." If uttered in the first
tone. means brazen-faced; in the second 10
iiiNe' AZ Aile Iull, and in the fourth
SLOW These four tones are the occasions of
absurd blunders "a
A missionary once informed his audience
that the Savior, when on earth, went
about eating cake" He intended to saw
healing the sick" but an aspirate wrongly
placed changed the healing into eating,
while an error in tone made cake out of the
sick. VI S
On one occasion. when Mr. Holcombe was
the most OF large dinner party, ne ordered
ms Shlnese butler TO supply some small
artlcie that was not on the table The man
seemed puzzled, then went out and return
eu win the Kitchen upon tray. The host
had placed an aspirate where IL did not be-
long. nv '
Al another time the cook was told to buy
hundred ladies fingers" for an evening
party. Two hours later he entered the
courtyard of the American legation riding
upon the shaft OF Chinese cart and re-
ported that he had been able TO buy in
Pekln only sixteen ladies fingers" "Nhy
dld you hire a cart?' he was asked ..5ro
bring them home-they weigh hve or six
pounds each"
Instead OF Tiny strips of sponge cake to be
served with Ice cream he had bought sixty
-FOUR fresh OK tongues. A wrong tone of
ms masters voice had done the michief