Chinese Local Dialects Reduced to Writing
Chinese local dialects reduced to writing.
The Chinese written language has long been considered, by western scholars, as the most difficult language in the world. Taking its origin from hieroglyphics, in the remote ages of antiquity, it has been variously modified, until, in its present form, it may for most purposes be considered simply as an ideographic language.
From five to ten thousand characters, many of them of complicated structure, having various significations, and a variety of pronunciations in different connections, must all be familiar to the student, before he can use it with facility as a medium of communicating thought, or acquiring knowledge. Ten years or more are needed for Chinese youths to acquire this amount of knowledge.
The Chinese are called a literary people. The children of the poor often rise to eminence as scholars and statesmen; but it is well known to every one who has spent many years in China, that multitudes can read books with considerable fluency who have little knowledge of the signification of what they read. The idiom of the written language is considerably different from the spoken, and a degree of brevity is allowed which in the spoken language would render it to a great degree unintelligible. The pronunciation of the characters in many dialects is remarkably different from the spoken language used to express the same ideas.
The honor that is always attached to a knowledge of letters, leads multitudes of parents to send their children to school while they are too young to labor, but the pressure of poverty and the cares of an increasing family require that they should be put to some remunerative employment by the time they arrive at ten or twelve years of age. At this age they have learned to pronounce, it may be, three or four thousand characters, but have learned the meaning of only a few hundreds. The difficulty of the task, and the pressure of poverty, with the hurry of business, prevent multitudes from ever acquiring much additional knowledge of the written language. Hence we find thousands of the poorer classes, who, as has been mentioned, while they can read with considerable fluency, know little or nothing of the meaning of what they read.
Missionaries have often and anxiously inquired by what means the Scriptures could be prepared in a form calculated to benefit this class of the people. It has been suggested that the spoken dialects might be reduced to writing by means of the Roman alphabet, in the same manner as in other countries where no written language is found. This plan has been partially adopted for some of the dialects. At Ningpo, primary books for schools have been prepared with the English alphabet, and some of the Gospels are already in progress, or probably even now completed. Some are very sanguine in this undertaking, and even hope that this alphabetic system may be made so attractive and easy, explained in the ordinary classical character, that, with such explanations in the form of a preface attached to the Gospels, many will, without any other guide, learn the system and read the books with profit. At Amoy, also, successful efforts have been made to romanize the colloquial dialect. The Gospel of John has already been published, and primary books have been prepared for schools in that city. It is believed that six months, or a year, will be sufficient for intelligent youths to learn to read in the Roman character any books that may be prepared for them. They may thus be taught to read and write their own colloquial, and by means of suitable books acquire a much greater amount of knowledge, in a given time, than they could acquire from books written in the ideographic language of the Chinese.
It is feared, however, by some, that the great prejudice which the Chinese entertain against anything of foreign origin, will prevent this system from being adopted by any not instructed in Mission schools.
Another method has been suggested for reducing the spoken dialects to writing, which, though intrinsically of equal difficulty, would probably meet with less prejudice on the part of the people, as it would exhibit less appearance of foreign origin.
For several of the local dialects there are native tonic dictionaries, in which a system of initials and finals, with the addition of marks to distinguish the tones, answers the purpose of a complete alphabetic system for writing the pronunciation of characters, or even words in the spoken language for which there are no corresponding characters. In the tonic dictionaries referred to, the alphabetic system is only used to exhibit the pronunciation of words or characters; but at Fuhchau teachers have been found, who, with a few suggestions, have readily written out whole books with the initials and finals as a perfect alphabetic system for the local dialect. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John have in this way been prepared in manuscript, and phrasebooks have been written in the same style. A little study enables a person to read these books with the same readiness as any alphabetic language. In the system found at Fuhchau there are the following fifteen initials:
- L
柳 - P
邊 - K
求 - K'
氣 - T
低 - P'
波 - T'
他 - Ch
曾 - N
日 - S
時 - '
鶯 - M
蒙 - Ng
語 - Ch'
出 - H
非
and thirty-three finals:
- ung
春 - ua
花 - iong
香 - iu
秋 - ang
山 - ai
開 - a
嘉 - ing
賓 - uang
歡 - ò
歌 - ü
須 - ue
杯 - u
孤 - eng
燈 - uong
光 - ui
輝 - ieu
燒 - üng
銀 - ong
釭 - i
之 - ëng
東 - au
郊 - uò
過 - è
西 - üò
橋 - ie
雞 - iang
聲 - oi
催 - ë
初 - ieng
天 - ia
奇 - uai
歪 - eu
溝
The pronunciation above the characters is designed to indicate their power as alphabetic signs; while the pronunciation below gives the names or the pronunciation of the characters when standing alone. These, with well known marks for the eight tones, suffice for writing accurately any expressions in the spoken dialect of Fuhchau. This alphabetic system is better adapted to the Fuhchau dialect than the English alphabet would be. It wears no foreign garb. It is already considerably used for other purposes. It exactly represents the sounds, which the English alphabet cannot do. Many of the characters of this alphabet are used in the same manner for other dialects; and at short distances from Fuhchau the pronunciation of these characters varies but slightly, much as the spoken language itself varies. Some of these alphabetic characters are used for similar purposes in the Nanking or court dialect, in which some advance towards an alphabetic system has been made since the time of Kanghi, when the most learned men of the empire compiled the Imperial Dictionary, and the still more voluminous Thesaurus or Pei Wan Yun Fu.
If the alphabetic system now being gradually introduced for the pronunciation of characters in the court dialect, should be adopted for writing books on science, history and general literature, and also for translations of the Scriptures, children might be taught in Mission schools to read and speak that dialect. Great benefits might be expected to result. They could read and write with greater facility, and some progress would be made towards introducing a simple and uniform language for China. I know this would be attended with difficulties, but when we consider the course and progress of alphabetic writing in Corea and Japan, we are led to look forward to some such system as this, as the hope of China.
There is another mode of writing the colloquial language, used for some of the local dialects, as at Canton, Shanghai and Fuhchau, which, as it affords greater immediate facilities for circulating the Scriptures among the mass of the people, deserves our careful consideration. It is a combination of the logographic and phonetic, but for the sake of brevity I shall call it simply the phonetic system.
It is the style of epistolary writing in use among the common people, and adopted by merchants in keeping their accounts. Great quantities of books prepared in this style are sold in the streets of Fuhchau, and are extensively read by the laboring classes, who, as has been previously remarked, know little of the meaning of the written character.
This phonetic system imitates the style of the spoken language, and employs well known characters simply as phonetics, when the characters having the proper signification are pronounced with sounds different from the words conveying the same ideas in the spoken language. On this system, characters are selected which have the proper signification, as well as the sounds used for the same ideas in the spoken language, when such characters are simple and well known. Well known characters in common use are, also, sometimes introduced when they do not have the sounds of the spoken words, if only complicated or rare characters can be found having the proper pronunciation. There are also some words in the spoken language for which there is no character of the same sound in the written language. This class of words is numerous at Amoy, while at Fuhchau the whole number of such words does not probably exceed thirty or forty.
This species of phonetic writing is very little used at Amoy, while it is very common at Shanghai, Fuhchau and Canton. Of course, as the dialects spoken in these several cities are different, the phonetic books in use at one place would be scarcely intelligible in another locality.
At Shanghai, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the Book of Common Prayer have been prepared in this style, and extensively circulated with the happiest effects. How many other books have been prepared in the same style for use at Shanghai, I have not been informed.
The first effort of this kind among Protestant missionaries at Fuhchau, to produce books in the native style of writing for the colloquial, resulted in the publication of a Phonetic Colloquial Version of the Gospel of Matthew, in July, 1851. Since that time, a revision of this first colloquial version of Matthew has been undertaken, and several large editions of the Sermon on the Mount have been published and circulated. The Gospel of Mark has also been published in the colloquial, and other portions of Scripture are about to be issued.
Wherever these books are offered to the people, together with editions of the same books in the ordinary classical style, a considerable majority reject the classical version, as hard to be understood, and desire the books in the colloquial, because, they say, they can more readily read and understand them.
This style is more difficult than an alphabetic system, as there are more characters to be learned, and yet not so much more difficult as would ordinarily be supposed; especially when we consider that the various combinations of the initials and finals, varied by the tones, amount to nearly four thousand. This system has also the advantage of being already understood; and the amount of knowledge already existing among the laboring classes, enables thousands to read books prepared in this style, who would never learn to read any other.
This phonetico-logographic system must evidently be the great medium of reaching the laboring classes of China for many years to come.