The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-07-23
CHINESE WRITING SYSTEM INVENTED
 CENTURIES AGO
Footprints of Sea Gulls On Sands Responsible for
 Discovery

or the western era Wnlch the Chinese called the remote perioP'-it was recorded that their ancestors were registering daily events by tying knots in straw ropes.
 Under the reign of Huang ri (2637 B. CD came the dawn of civilization and the great age of invention. It was said that Huang ri (yellow em- peror) was sent by heaven with a divine mind to discover the neces- sary things for human existence.
 He regulated the calendar, weights, measures and the territory of the country. Armors, spears, wheel carts and boats also were invented either by the emperor himself or his subjects. His wife. Yan Fei (the first empress) is known in history as the discoverer of the silk worms and fibers and thus garments of hides and feathers were changed into those of cloth.
 And Chinese writing was originat- ed by one of his subjects, Tong-git. A tradition tells us that Tong-git was ordered by Huang ri to obtain bamboo from the Quon-lun noun tains for the making of a flute. On his way. as he travelled along the ! shore of the Yellow river he saw on the sand innumerable footprints of | the seagulls. They presented to < Ahis mind the pictures of many Things.
 Some resembled the shape of ] mountain peaks, some were similar to the construction of tree, some looked like a full-faced sun and | some like a crescent moon. He made the original crude pictures from which the written Chinese ;, language sprang.
 !, And from generation to generation they were gradually developed into the modern forms of today. The changes of style were largely due to the changing of the writing instru- ments. The primitive characters were drawn upon the sand by fingers, then next were scratched on bamboo tablets with metal stylus. In the first century A. D. paper was invented and the modern ami E mal hairbrush was substituted for the stylus. so that angular strokes gave place to curves, and circles to squares.
 The Chinese standard dictionary of | today contains more than 10000 words. However, perhaps only one tenth of that number are in common !, use. The growth in development and the increase in numbers involve four elements. The first is the picture i, characters of which I have already given examples. The other three are pictures or 1ueaS, lnu1catorS, ana 1, phonetics.
 Pictures of ideas combine two pie lures Ito make a third; for instance, i, take a picture character for door and by adding a line inside across the center it would mean to "close" | or "to lock-; two areas standing side by side make the pictura of a "for- est"
 The word for poetry is com N L ,fr Speech" and temple" and as we Chinese always regard poetry as the ', first wisdom of men and the language of the gods, therefore, Speech of the temple" makes poetry" Then there is the word ming" which means bright In order to express the idea, we put the pictures of two of the brightest things side by side. Thus symbols for the "sun" and the "moon" make bright"
 The third element Is the indicators ] which guide toward the sense. They
 more or less resemble the idea of the
 English alphabet, although the Chi | nese has been known as an unalpha- bette language.
 Originally these were the impor- ,s tant ones: Symbols for metal or gold, tree or wood, water, fire, earth, beast. vegetation, fowl, fish, sickness \, woman. man and so forth. These are used to indicate the direction in
 which the sense of the whole char acter is to be sought.
 Use of Phonctcs
 The fourth element is the phone tics, the broadest and the most i'm portant of all. There are nearly 1O,-
 900 words in a Cantonese dictionary and only thirty-six classifcations oi sounds, with an average of almost 3
 hundred words to each sound. The
 way to distinguish them in the con.
 fusion of speech is by the modula- tions of the voice, known as "tones,' such as short and long, low an6
 high.
 But in writing, confusion is pre- vented by the indicators, which give h each character a special face to eX press the sense. For example. taking , the word I which means 'mile," a: the phonetic base, by adding the in N dicator 'tish" as "fsh-i," then i would change the sense from mile to "a carp; and again by adding the Indicator king" as "kingll," then i
 would make a character to signif! ,e "justice" or reason for in the an cient time the symbol and duty of z
 king was to reason out the people: " trouble and give them justice.
 The Chinese use of this phonetic v system is similar to the Englisl
 method of changing words by adding " the prefix, as pro" anti" ''re," ant
 the suffix, as ing ''tion," able \, etc. And by this system there will b'
 always new combinations formed il ,i the future, such as in this countr! during the war, taking the name O . the food administrator, Hoover, " and by adding the suHiX 'ize' t'
 make "Hooverize" for an expression | denoting economy.
 Although there are at least thre ,5 or more styles in the modern Chimes ~ writing, there is only one that is con
 sidered the correct form and that i D. the printed form or what we call tn
 "official writing" This is employe, ,s for the of all official reports am business agreements. The other tw
 are the flowing hand' and the fire h hand" commonly used for core