, 1900-12-27
CHINA'S QUEER BOOKS
LANGUAGE WITHOUT ALPHA
BET IS CURIOUS.
The Written Language Cannot BE Read
Aloud So That q Listener May Com
prehsnd It-L.xhth Tone" Of . Chinese
Noun. a

A language without an alphabet
sounds sufficiently curious. especially
when it is added that it is a written
language and the medium of communi-
cation throughout that enormous ex-
panse of territory, the Chinese En-
pire. Not only has the Chinese Ian
guage no alphabet, but it is actually
true that in its purest form, though
it could, literally speaking, be read
aloud, the sounds would have abso-
lutely no Significance whatever to a
listener. To the reader, Of course, the
written or printed page would con-
vey all that the author wished 1t to.
But In order to convey its meaning.
say, to a blind person, the reader
would be compelled to find his own
words. chosen from the spoken Chi
nese language. And his Translation
would be much more roundabout than
the written version. Some idea of
this singular fact may be gathered
from the estimate that the fable of
THE Fox and the Grapes which
can be told in 100 English words. could
be narrated in eighty-fve Chinese
written characters. To tell the story
in spoken Chinese would require 163
words. Written Chinese is practically
uniform throughout the Empire. and
has hardly altered during the entire
course of Chinese history. The spok-
en- language, on the other hand, is
constantly changing, and prevails in
several dialects. some of which are
quite unintelligible to Chinese from
the different provinces. But even the
purest form OF spoken Chinese Is al
most incomprehensible to a foreigner,
except by the most arduous study, and
after years Of application the Euro
pean continues to make the most lud-
ferrous plumbers. The reason for this
is that the Chinese tongue has but 500
to 1000 elementary words. which form
the base Of their language-as the al
phaaet does Of ours. In order to spin
these out to their needs they pro-
nounce them in different tones" each
tone" giving an entirely altered mean
ing. In some parts OF the Empire rs
many as eight tones" are in use, Civ
ing eight Specifications to words
whose actual pronunciation is other
wise the same. No wonder the Euro
pean a jibs at the task!-the
ninth meaning Of a Greek particle is
nothing to the eighth tone" Of a Chi
nese nou Chinese has no grammar,
as we know grammar. According to
its position in a sentence a word is
either a noun, adjective, verb, or ad-
verb-the word itself remains the
same. In this respect Chinese is q
baby" among languages. But. like
SO many other things that the Celes.
tial has invented and left as he m
vented. the Chinese tongue has eve
grown up. And yet, with all its draw
backs, the literary men Of the Flow
cry Land have contrived to make II
serve their purpose. But almost all
the classical philosophical. and histori-
cal works of the Chinese are written
In the queer characters that only mean
something to the eye, and cannot be
made to mean anything to the ear.
Where the Chinese language-written
or spoken-came from melody knows,
any more than they know where the
original Chinese themselves came
from. But 1t is probable that the
primary Chinese characters existed s.
900 years ago pretty much as. they dc
today. They are written in vertical
columns. which begin on the right Of
the paper. The instrument is a brush
and a thick solution Of Indian ink Is
the medium-the paper the familiar
fimsy material made from rice straw.
Oddly enough, though the Manchus-
who are the ruling race In China-aA
well as their Tartar relatives. the
Mongols, speak a language related 70
the Chinese, they have a proper al
phabet, derived indirectly from the
West. 1t has borrowed from the Sy-
riac, which came from the Phoenician
alphabet. And the Roman letters of
today owe more han a little to the
%|Phoenician. So the Tartar writing
lis at one end of the chain that which
was derived from the Aramaic,
stretches to our own A B c. The Tar
|tars owe their alphabet to the Chris
tian missionaries known as the Mes
torians. But that is another story
London Express.