The Savannah morning news., 1900-11-03
CHINN's CURIOUS hooks.
" ritten without An Alphabet and
Incapable Of Beinx Read Aloud.

From Tho London Express
language without an alphabet sounds
sufficiently curious. especially when IL Is
added that d is written language ana
the medium OF communication through
out that enormous cxpanse Of territory.
the Chinese Empire Not only has tho
Chinese larguaR" no alphabet. but % S.
actually true that in its purest form
though 10 could. literally speaking b. read
aloud. the sounds would have absolutely
no significance whatever 20 listener
To the reader. OF course. the written or
printed rage would convey an that the
author wished il TO But In order 10 con-
vey ITS meaning. say. 20 blind person
Tho reader would be- compelled 20 md his
own words. chosen from the spoken Chi
nese language And hts translation"
would Pee much more roundabout ana
lengthy than the written version
some idca ~ this singular fact may De-
gathered from the estimate that the fable
81 THE Fox and the Grapes. which can
Pee told in iao English words. could be mar
rated in oichty-dve Chinese written char
acters. To tell the story IN spoken Chi
uese would require iG3 words
Written Chinese is practically uniform
throughout the empire. ana has hardly oil
tered during the entire course Of Chinese
history. The spoken language. on tho
other hand is constantly changing. and
prevails iu several dialects some Of which
are quite unintelligible 10 Chinese from
the different provinces.
iut even the purest form OF spoken Chi
nese Is almost mprehcusihle 70 q for
eigner eNccp' by the most nrduols study.
and otter years % application the Euro
pean continues To make the most iudi-
crous hlUnder~ The reason for this Is that
the Chinese tongue has but ~ 20 loo elo-
mentary words. which form the base 81
thtir langungs--ns tine alphabet does Of
oHrs. IN order 10 spin thcse words out
10 their needs. they pronounce them iu
different tones" each tone" giving an
entirely altered meaning.
In s0mc parts of tho empire as many a.
eight tones" are go use. giving eight
-igni0cators TO words whose actual pno-
nunciation iS otherwise the same. No
wonder enc European ear iihes at tho task
the ninth meaning OF Greek particle
ls nothing to the eighth tone" OF a Chi
ntss noun
Chinese has 10 grammar as we know
grammar According e. les position in a
sentence word ls either a noun. adieet-
i've verb or advsrb-tho word itself re-
mains tho same. In this respect Chinese
Is q baby auoag language But like
30 many other things that the Celestial
ras invented and left as be- Invented. the
Chinese tongue has never grown up Ana
set with an its drawbacks. the literary
men 81 the FoRery Land have c0ntrivcd
90 make Il serve their purpose. But al
most AN tho classical. philosophical ana
historical works Of the Chinese are writ
ten Boo the queer characters that o.
mean something TO the eye AMI cannot
be made To mean ny'hing 20 the car
Where the Chinese language. written or
spoken came from nobody knows any
more than they know where the original
ChiDesc them selves came from But 30 ls
probable that che primary Chinese charac-
tiers existed 300 years ago pretty much a
they do to-day They are written 90 verii-
cal columns. which begin on tho rieh OF
the paper. The instrument f. a brush and
= thick solution OF India Ink Is the me-
dium-the paper the familiar fiim-y mate
rial made from rice straw
Oddly enough. though the Manchus-
who are the ruling RICE IN China-as well
as their Tartar relatives. the MouFols
speak a language related 60 the Chiutse.
they have proper alphabet derived 20.
directly from the West. II was borrowed
from the Syriac which was derived fr m
the Aramaic. which came from the
Phoeni-ian alpha BET. Ard the Romen let
ters OF to-day owe more tian a li,iie 20
the Phoenician. So the Tartar wiring Is.
81 one end OF a chain that stretches 70 our
own A G. The Tartars owe their AL
nhabet to the Christian missionaries
known as tho Mes torians. But that Il
another story.