The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-08-09
OLDEST ooF LIVING TONGUES.
Some Of the Difficulties Of Learn
ING Tn Sneak Good Chinese

ing to Speak Good Chinese
The oldest spoken tongue now exis-
tent upon the earth is the Chinese. 1t
has an enormous list of words-the es-
innate of the number of characters
ranges from $4,000 to 100000. The Ian
guage has no alphabet. Each charac-
ter represents a complete idea, and cor
responds, practically, to the English
word. 1t is written in columns from
top to bottom of the page and from
right to left Writing is done with a.
fine camels hair brush and India ink.
The lack of an alphabet and the num-
Der of characters make learning to read
Chinese 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 furnish no assistance
to learning the others, save as practice
| may have given him a certain quick
ness in perceiving the peculiar form
which distinguishes each character
from it's fellows.
The grammar of the language is so
simple as to be almost nonresident.
The same word serves indifferently as
noun, verb, adverb or adjective.
Moods, lenses persons, gender and
number are lacking; there are neither
conjunctions, nor declensions, nor aux
Hilary verbs. The few Chinese who
have attempted to master the English
tongue regard it's grammatical con-
struction as clumsy and full of pitfalls.
Che Chinese characters give no clue
to the pronunciation, and no amount
of book study will enable a foreigner
to speak the language. That ability
must be acquired by months of drill,
a quick ear and great f1exibility of the
vocal organs. Even the most faithful
effort fails to enable many foreigners
to speak Chinese correctly.
Chester Holcomb, for many years in
terpreter to the United States Legation
at Pekin, from whose interesting book,
''The Real Chinaman," we have copied,
relates several anecdotes illustrative of
foreigners almost inevitable blunders
| in speaking Chinese.
Mr.. HOlcOmb once heard a venerable
missionary address the Deity in prayer,
before a crowded Chinese audience, as
20 thou omnivorous God" He meant
to say "omniscient," but used an in
spirated instead of an unaspirated CHI.
Another missionary saw with astonish-
ment the audience hurriedly leave his
chapel, in response to what he thought
was an invitation from his lips to be
seated. An aspirated st" had turned
the supposed speech of welcome into
the information that they had made
mistake in entering the chapel.
In Chinese the tone IN which a word
re
much as the sound does. For instance:
In Chinese a man ceases to be a man
if you change the tone of the voice in
uttering the word, and may become a
disease, a nightingale, or carrot. One
tone, and one only, expresses man.
There are four of these tones in stand
ard or mandarin dialect-a high-curv-
ing infection and a falling infection.
The sound man." if uttered in the
first tone, means brazen-faced; in the
second, to hide; in the third, full, and
in the fourth, slow. These four tones
are the occasions of absurd blunders.
A missionary once informed his au,
dience that the Savior, when on earth,
went about eating cake He intended
to say, healing the sick" but an as
pirate wrongly placed changed the heal
ing into eating, While an error IN tone
made cake out of the sick.
On one occasion, when Mr.. Holcomb
was the host of a large dinner party,
he ordered his Chinese butler to supply
some small article that was not on the
table The man seemed puzzled, then
went out and returned with the kitchen
mop upon a tray. The host had placed
an aspirate where it did not belong.
At another time the cook was told
to buy a hundred ladies fingers for
an evening party. Two hours later he
entered the courtyard of the American |
Legation riding upon the shaft of a
Chinese cart, and reported that he had |
been able to buy in Pekin only sixteen |
ladies' fingers why did you hire /
cart?" he was asked. ITO bring them |
home-they weigh five or six pounds !
each"
Instead of tiny bits of sponge cake to |
be served with ice cream he had |
bought sixty-four fresh OK tongues. A |
wrong tone of his masters voice had |
done the misehief.-Youth's Companion.
P1h1ic Trihnfe