JAPAN
their ears. Therefore by degrees sense took precedence of sound, and Japanese words were transcribed by means of ideographs which corresponded with their meaning, but were pronounced in a new manner, divested of all the harshness and confusing tones of the Chinese tongue. This is a wearisome subject, but some knowledge of it is essential to any one desirous of understanding the genius of the Japanese language and appreciating its unique excellence as a vehicle for translating new ideas. Suppose that a Japanese wants to write the compound word "Western-jewel." In his own original language the sounds would be nishi-no-tama. But he takes two ideographs which in China are pronounced see-yuh, and having written them down in their proper sense, he reads them either sai-gyoku or nishi-no-tama, calling the former the on, or Chinese pronunciation—though it is really a Japanese modification of the Chinese sounds—and the latter the kun, or pure Japanese sound. Hence one of the results of using the ideographs was that the Japanese language acquired an alternative pronunciation: it became a dual language as to sound without changing its construction. It acquired also an extraordinary capacity of expansion, becoming the most flexible vehicle for translating ideas that the world has ever possessed. For the Chinese language, which was thus grafted on the Japanese, is not so much a collection of words as a vast thesaurus of materials
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