On the whole, it may be said that misconceptions in the colloquial are not altogether due to the fact that the Chinese language is poorly provided with sounds. Many persons, otherwise gifted, are quite unable to learn any foreign tongue.
Let us now turn to the machinery by means of which the Chinese arrest the winged words of speech, and give to mere thought and utterance a more concrete and a more lasting form.
The written language has one advantage over the colloquial: it is uniformly the same all over China; and the same doc.u.ment is equally intelligible to natives of Peking and Canton, just as the Arabic and Roman numerals are understood all over Europe, although p.r.o.nounced differently by various nations.
To this fact some have attributed the stability of the Chinese Empire and the permanence of her political and social inst.i.tutions.
If we take the written language of to-day, which is to all intents and purposes the written language of twenty-five hundred years ago, we gaze at first on what seems to be a confused ma.s.s of separate signs, each sign being apparently a fortuitous concourse of dots and dashes.
Gradually, however, the eye comes to perceive that every now and again there is to be found in one character a certain portion which has already been observed in another, and this may well have given rise to the idea that each character is built up of parts equivalent to our letters of the alphabet. These portions are of two kinds, and must be considered under two separate heads.
Under the first head come a variety of words, which also occur as substantive characters, such as dog, vegetation, tree, disease, metal, words, fish, bird, man, woman. These are found to indicate the direction in which the sense of the whole character is to be sought.
Thus, whenever ? "dog" occurs in a character, the reader may prepare for the name of some animal, as for instance ? _shih_ "lion," ? _mao_ "cat,"
? _lang_ "wolf", ? _ehu_ "pig."
Two of these are interesting words. (1) There are no lions in China; _shih_ is merely an imitation of the Persian word _shir_. (2) _Mao_, the term for a "cat," is obviously an example of onomatopoeia.
The character ? will also indicate in many cases such attributes as ? _hua_ "tricky," ? _hen_, "aggressive," ? _meng_ "fierce," and other characteristics of animals.
Similarly, ? _ts"ao_ "vegetation" will hint at some plant; _e.g._ ?
_ts"ao_ "gra.s.s," ? _ho_ "the lily," ? _chih_ "the plant of immortality."
? _mu_ "a tree" usually points toward some species of tree; _e.g._ ?
_sung_ "a fir tree," ? _sang_ "a mulberry tree"; and by extension it points toward anything of wood, as ? _pan_ "a board," ? _cho_ "a table,"
? _i_ "a chair," and so on.
So ? _yu_ "a fish" and ? _niao_ "a bird" are found in all characters of ichthyological or ornithological types, respectively.
? _jen_ "a man" is found in a large number of characters dealing with humanity under varied aspects; _e.g._ ? _ni_ "thou," ? _t"a_ "he," ?
_tso_ "to make," ? _chang_ "a weapon," ? _chieh_ "a hero," ? _ju_ "a scholar," "a Confucianist"; while it has been pointed out that such words as ? _chien_ "treacherous," ? _mei_ "to flatter," and ? _tu_ "jealousy," are all written with the indicator ? _nu_ "woman" at the side.
The question now arises how these significant parts got into their present position. Have they always been there, and was the script artificially constructed off-hand, as is the case with Mongolian and Manchu? The answer to this question can hardly be presented in a few words, but involves the following considerations.
It seems to be quite certain that in very early times, when the possibility and advantage of committing thought to writing first suggested themselves to the Chinese mind, rude pictures of _things_ formed the whole stock in trade. Such were
[Ill.u.s.tration: Sun, moon, mountains, hand, child, wood, bending official, mouth, ox, and claws.]
in many of which it is not difficult to trace the modern forms of to-day,
It may here be noted that there was a tendency to curves so long as the characters were scratched on bamboo tablets with a metal stylus. With the invention of paper in the first century A.D., and the subst.i.tution of a hair-pencil for the stylus, verticals and horizontals came more into vogue.
The second step was the combination of two pictures to make a third; for instance, a mouth with something coming out of it is "the tongue," ?; a mouth with something else coming out of it is "speech," "words," ?; two trees put side by side make the picture of a "forest," ?.
The next step was to produce pictures of ideas. For instance, there already existed in speech a word _ming_, meaning "bright." To express this, the Chinese placed in juxtaposition the two brightest things known to them. Thus ? the "sun" and ? the "moon" were combined to form ?
_ming_ "bright." There is as yet no suggestion of phonetic influence.
The combined character has a sound quite different from that of either of its component parts, which are _jih_ and _yueh_ respectively.
In like manner, ? "sun" and ? "tree," combined as ?, "the sun seen rising through trees," signified "the east"; ? "words" and ? "tongue" = ? "speech"; ? (old form [Ill.u.s.tration]) "two hands" = "friendship"; ?
"woman" and ? "child" = ? "good"; ? "woman" and ? "birth," "born of a woman" = ? "clan name," showing that the ancient Chinese traced through the mother and not through the father; ? streamers used in signalling a negative = "do not!"
From ? "two trees," the picture of a forest, we come to ? "three trees,"
suggesting the idea of density of growth and darkness; ? "a child at the feet of an old man" = "filial piety"; ? "a spear" and ? "to kill,"
suggesting the defensive att.i.tude of individuals in primeval times = ?
"I, me"; ? "I, my," and ? "sheep," suggesting the obligation to respect another man"s flocks = ? "duty toward one"s neighbour"; ? "large" and ?
"sheep" = ? "beautiful"; and ?, "virtuous," also has "sheep" as a component part,-why we do not very satisfactorily make out, except that of course the sheep would play an important role among early pastoral tribes. The idea conveyed by what we call the conjunction "and" is expressed in Chinese by an ideogram, viz. ?, which was originally the picture of a hand, seizing what might be the tail of the coat of a man preceding, _scilicet_ following.
The third and greatest step in the art of writing was reached when the Chinese, who had been trying to make one character do for several similar-sounding words of different meanings, suddenly bethought themselves of distinguishing these several similar-sounding words by adding to the original character employed some other character indicative of the special sense in which each was to be understood.
Thus, in speech the sound _ting_ meant "the sting of an insect," and was appropriately pictured by what is now written ?.
There were, however, other words also expressed by the sound _ting_, such as "a boil," "the top or tip," "to command," "a nail," "an ingot,"
and "to arrange." These would be distinguished in speech by the tones and suffixes, as already described; but in writing, if ? were used for all alike, confusion would of necessity arise. To remedy this, it occurred to some one in very early ages to make ?, and other similar pictures of things or ideas, serve as what we now call Phonetics, _i.e._ the part which suggests the sound of the character, and to add in each case an indicator of the special sense intended to be conveyed. Thus, taking ? as the phonetic base, in order to express _ting_, "a boil," the indicator for "disease," ?, was added, making ?; for _ting_, "the top,"
the indicator for "head," ?, was added, making ?; for "to command," the symbol for "mouth," ? was added, making ?; for "nail," and also for "ingot," the symbol for "metal," ?, was added, making ?; and for "to arrange," the symbol for "speech," ?, was added, making ?. We thus obtain five new words, which, so far as the written language is concerned, are easily distinguishable one from another, namely, _ting_ "a sting," disease-_ting_ = "a boil," head-_ting_ = "the top,"
mouth-_ting_ = "to command," metal-_ting_ = "a nail," speech-_ting_ = "to arrange." In like manner, the words for "mouth," "to rap," and "a b.u.t.ton," were all p.r.o.nounced _k"ou_. Having got ? _k"ou_ as the picture of a mouth, that was taken as the phonetic base, and to express "to rap," the symbol for "hand," ? or ?, was added, making ?; while to express "b.u.t.ton," the symbol for "metal," ? was added, making ?. So that we have _k"ou_ = "mouth," hand-_k"ou_ = "to rap," and metal-_k"ou_ = "b.u.t.ton."
Let us take a picture of an idea. We have ? _tung_ = the sun seen through the trees,-"the east." When the early Chinese wished to write down _tung_ "to freeze," they simply took the already existing ? as the phonetic base, and added to it "an icicle," ?, thus ?. And when they wanted to write down _tung_ "a beam," instead of "icicle," they put the obvious indicator ? "wood," thus ?.
We have now got the two portions into which the vast majority of Chinese characters can be easily resolved.
There is first the phonetic base, itself a character originally intended to represent some thing or idea, and then borrowed to represent other things and ideas similarly p.r.o.nounced; and secondly, the indicator, another character added to the phonetic base in order to distinguish between the various things and ideas for which the same phonetic base was used.
All characters, however, do not yield at once to the application of our rule. ? _yao_ "to will, to want," is composed of ? "west" and ? "woman."
What has western woman to do with the sign of the future? In the days before writing, the Chinese called the waist of the body _yao_. By and by they wrote ?, a rude picture of man with his arms akimbo and his legs crossed, thus accentuating the narrower portion, the waist. Then, when it was necessary to write down _yao_, "to will," they simply borrowed the already existing word for "waist." In later times, when writing became more exact, they took the indicator ? "flesh," and added it wherever the idea of waist had to be conveyed. And thus ? it is still written, while _yao_, "to will, to want," has usurped the character originally invented for "waist."
In some of their own identifications native Chinese scholars have often shown themselves hopelessly at sea. For instance, ? "the sky,"
figuratively G.o.d, was explained by the first Chinese lexicographer, whose work has come down to us from about one hundred years after the Christian era, as composed of ? "one" and ? "great," the "one great"
thing; whereas it was simply, under its oldest form, [Ill.u.s.tration], a rude anthropomorphic picture of the Deity.
Even the early Jesuit Fathers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to whom we owe so much for pioneer work in the domain of Sinology, were not without occasional lapses of the kind, due no doubt to a laudable if excessive zeal. Finding the character ?, which is the common word for "a ship," as indicated by ?, the earlier picture-character for "boat" seen on the left-hand side, one ingenious Father proceeded to a.n.a.lyse it as follows:-
? "ship," ? "eight," ? "mouth" = eight mouths on a ship-"the Ark."
But the right-hand portion is merely the phonetic of the character; it was originally ? "lead," which gave the sound required; then the indicator "boat" was subst.i.tuted for "metal."
So with the word ? "to prohibit." Because it could be a.n.a.lysed into two ?? "trees" and ? "a divine proclamation," an allusion was discovered therein to the two trees and the proclamation of the Garden of Eden; whereas again the proper a.n.a.lysis is into indicator and phonetic.
Nor is such misplaced ingenuity confined to the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1892 a Protestant missionary published and circulated broadcast what he said was "evidence in favour of the Gospels," being nothing less than a prophecy of Christ"s coming hidden in the Chinese character ? "to come." He pointed out that this was composed of [Ill.u.s.tration] "a cross," with two ?? "men," one on each side, and a "greater man" ? in the middle.
That a.n.a.lysis is all very well for the character as it stands now; but before the Christian era this same character was written [Ill.u.s.tration]
and was a picture, not of men and of a cross, but of a sheaf of corn. It came to mean "come," says the Chinese etymologist, "because corn _comes"
from heaven."
Such is the written language of China, and such indeed it was, already under the dominion of the phonetic system, by which endless new combinations may still be formed, at the very earliest point to which history, as distinguished from legend, will carry us,-some eight or nine centuries B.C. There are no genuine remains of pure picture-writing, to enable us to judge how far the Chinese had got before the phonetic system was invented, though many attempts have been made to palm off gross forgeries as such.
The great majority of characters, as I have said, are capable of being easily resolved into the two important parts which I have attempted to describe-the original phonetic portion, which guides toward p.r.o.nunciation, and the added indicator, which guides toward the sense.
Even the practical student, who desires to learn to read and write Chinese for purely business purposes, will find himself constrained to follow out this a.n.a.lysis, if he wishes to commit to memory a serviceable number of characters. With no other hold upon them beyond their mere outlines, he will find the characters so bewildering, so elusive, as to present almost insuperable difficulties.