The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-12-07
Process Is Not Altogether Painless, Says Dr. Gnu,
 Teaches New York Uni
 versity Class for an Hour
 and a Half Each MOndav-

New York, Dec. No need to pug gle longer over the meaning of those adorning your laundry ticket; you can learn Chinese at a glance.
 As a starter: Three little written nipples mean water; the ideograph alongside, signifies "thumanity''i DOT tray the sun and moon separately and then join them to make Upright" It's simple as hash.
 There are only 50, 900 of these, ideo- graphs in the language of Confucius, and after you have learned to write them you begin all over again and learn how to pronounce them. The strange to you as would a glass of real pre-Volstead frewater, but you would soon lose this fatalistic opin- ion if you could hear the exotic sounds floating over Trinity Church yard from the class in Chinese at New York University. which has the largest ward quit teaching Chinese forty years ago, but has just announced that a new term will begin again this Winter. There is also a small Chi nese language class at Columbia Uni But let Dr. Jennings P. Gnu, the teacher, tell US bout it:
 Not Easy to Study.
 "Of course they can learn it. But the process is not altogether painless. My students pursue the wisdom of the Orient for an hour and half on Monday evenings. I will tell you just years work: They can carry on simple, ordinary conversation, write from 250 to 300 words and read a lit tle- Quite a number of these stu dents also take the second year course. The New York University School of Cammerce has been teaching Chi nese for several years. The students enjoy studying our language. You Sh 11 Ioo 1ln -oJ1 n n guish between accommodations of "chih' and "chIh." But the student must have an ear and tongue as well as a taste for Chinese, for the in flection is very important.
 Some knowledge of the language is Indispensable for anyone who pro- poses to have business dealings in China.
 .I Yam afraid we can't hope for some delightfully."- simple remodeling of our ancient tongue, so that it can be picked up like many others. You see, you have not yet accepted Els peranto. The new methods of writ ing Chinese are just as unwelcome in my country. For a fair-sized vocab- ulary you can worry along with about 4.O00 characters. although there are more than 50,000 in our language. There are PA radicals.
 Not All Picture Words
 Many people have the mistaken idea. that almost all of the Chinese characters WheTedS only ten per cent. are pictorial, although the ideographs are often introduced as compounds with other characters. You see,- there are many worTls of which you could hardly draw 9 pie ture-such as eleemosynary, self-de- termination, etc. Some Chinese char acters are neither phonetic nor picto rial. They are beyond description.
 'tAs regards the new phonetic sys- tenn for China, this may be used gen era1ly enough to make is serviceable in time. but now. certainly, its practi- cal scope is small.
 ''To be successful commercially or socially In China you must still know tuTed character gives the reader no clue to it's pronunciation When you see @ word in your language you have some idea, how to pronounce it. Not so with us. In the new phonetic system there are 39 letters. These are placed beside the written character and in dicate the pronunciation, and in pro cess of time they may become the word itself with the meaning and pronunciation apparent at the same instant. But it will require an un- letters to become an1algamated with 50,OO0 characters"
 As we intimated in the beginning. why allow your 1aundrymen to put something over on you when you can take your Chinese as you take your daily castor oil?
 Don't you ever get dizzy?" we asked a. very young and very Occi- dental student in Dr. Chus class.
 "Wo pu shih,'' he replied. If you