The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-08-26

cufe or conve any want ne
wished to make known. So it was all the
time with him, once away from his own
locality. he was wholly at sea as regard
ing a comprehension OF Chinese las she
Is spoken in china as a whole.
NOT DIALECTS.
- OF what may be said 10 be languages
proper. in that are not mere c~olloquial dia-
lects or patois. but spoken by those In the
highest ranks just as by the common
people. there are no less than eight, not
counting Monaghan OF Manchurian- There
are Mandarin. Ning-Po. Shanghai, Hal
Nanese. Swallow. Annoy, Hak-Ka and
Cantonese The eight. to a large extent.
constitute the bases upon which the $50
or more other modes of speech are builded-
Dialects. as has been previously remarked.
do not convey exactly the adequate con-
ception of the latter In composition or con-
struction. They are by no means merely
dialectic varieties of some other language,
but in effect are themselves distinct lam
guages, each one of many and widely diff
eTing languages which to wipe out would
be 10 re-enaet Babelistic conditions. As
Carstair Douglas. than whom there was no
higher authority, put It: THEY are cog
nate languages. bearing to each other a
relative similarity TO that which subsists
between tire Arabic. the Syriac. the
Ethopic n other members of the Semitic
family. or. again. between English. Ger
man, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, etc.
Not one of the inhabitants from Picking,
Canton, Shanghai, Foo-Chow or Annoy
could understand those from the others any
more than a Londoner could a Berliner, or
a Partisan a Dutchman, or a Spaniard an
italian. They may be, and are, all Chinese
I'm the sections OF the empire named, but
in every instance the language is a radi-
cally different Chinese. Some thirty mill
lions speak Cantonese. about as many
Hak-Ka, half the number Annoy, a third
Foo-Chow, and so on through the almost
Interminable list. Manchurian is the new
est, or youngest. of the lot and is the court,
or official language of the empire. In parts,
connected or disjointed as the case may
be. it is in one way or another spoken in
fifteen Of the eighteen provinces. TIC the
average man there is no recognition of it's
being the same speech in any two of them.
Bel, who devoted upwards of a quarter of
a century to the attempt to bring some of
the main languages into a single system
Tor the purpose of comparison and analysis,
enabled something of an idea of the COM
plexion of the situation, by showing the
plumber of arbitrary syllables there are in
about a dozen of them. Cantonese, for in
stane, has $50, Hak-Ka 200, Pekingese 40,
Foo-Chow 7S6. Han-Kow 316, Yang-Chow
as Wen-Chow 452. Annoy SAG, Swatow, GA,
Ning-Po Al and Shanghai $50. over six
.fhnucQnd Wh0llv arbifrarr SryIIoAloc -
these alone, TO commit to memory, and this
tremendous mental feat accomplished. the
pathological scholar is only about a thir-
tieth Of the way through his task of mas
tering the speech of the empire in entirety.
A KEY" NOT GRAMMAR.
In Chinese nouns are un~declinable, free
from gender and case; adjectives have no
degrees OF comparisons; verbs no voice,
mood, tense. number or person. There is
no recognizable distinction between nouns.
adjectives and verbs. In his dictionaries
the ChInaman uses no alphabet, but, re-
coarsing to two hundred and odd key
words, ne arrange them by the termina-
ton of their sounds: per example, wing,
ting. sing. ETC.. all coming under one head.
While "Pidgin," which means business,
AcASA . NAC QAcpdL VI pnllOlOHlSlS, IL is
a veritable godsend to everybody else who
has occasion to "open his head"-as the
saying goes-in China And to none is it SO
more than TO the Chinese themselves. II
is the general belief that 'Pidgin' is the
mainstay of foreigners in the Celestial en-
pire; that without 1t the great majority
Of them would be wholly debarred from
personal relations with the natives. In this
the popular impression Is a correct one.
but when associated with it is the assump-
ton that "Pidgin' is used only for the
lnter-community OF foreigners and natives,
then there is the biggest kline of a mis-
take made. AS a matter of fact the Chi
nese resort to 1t in equal avidity with the
foreigners, and being so many more of them
their use of the nondescript tongue is
inestimably wider extended. Without II
they would frequently be deprived of COM
m~unication with their fellows. Indeed a
great many Cinnamon, originally strangers
20 the treaty or other ports where they
have located in business or are in serv-
ice. never use their native language al
all, but depend entirely upon 'Pidgin'
English. Children in the same way grow
up TO employ nothing else. There are mil
lions of Chinese who at the best can only
talk broken Chinese.
"Pidgin" is remarkable for its simplicity.
yet at the same time most peculiar in the
pdd words which have crept into it, some
Of the Portuguese mixing with the con-
Soluted and indescribably contorted En-
glish, often in the most unique manner
Imaginable. Nevertheless it is very rarely
In the framing of a sentence that some
word does not operate as a key to disclose
the meaning sought TO be conveyed. A lit
tie practice at catching the infection or
DETECTION, the in~terrogatory or the defni-
tive soon enables comprehension.
SPECIMEN OF 'PIDGIN."
The old story OF the call of a couple of
gentlemen upon a prince sojourning at a
Shanghai hostelry serves better than al
most any told since to illustrate the i'm
portance OF the tone of voice in grasping
"Pidgin." Upon making known their wish
TO see the prince mine host responded that
he would ascertain IL he were in. Stepping
10 the foot Of the stairway he called out:
boy? One piece prince top-side hab
got?'
Back came the quick reply in acknowl-
edgment of having heard the inquiry:
sSavyi Savyr'
EoIYou-ad In an oo,,ro -