THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
I.
The Written Language.
It is commonly asserted that there are two languages in China—the written and the spoken. This statement requires qualification, but it is sufficiently accurate to justify the treatment of the two branches as separate and distinct when attempting a popular exposition of the subject. Of the difficulty of both there can be no doubt, but as the written language presents more difficulties than the spoken, it will be convenient to reverse the usual order of things and to deal first with the former.
The genesis of the written language of China is largely a matter of conjecture, hut Chinese scholars from time immemorial have been almost unanimous in the opinion that it was pictorial in origin. The subject has been dealt with by numerous Chinese writers, and those who are interested in a more scientific treatment of the matter than the following chapter is intended to present are referred to an elaborate and learned article on the subject by the late Mr. T. Watters, a profound Chinese scholar, who, in his Essays on the Chinese Language, deals at length with this complicated question.[1] It will be sufficient for present purposes to refer to the most widely known of the Chinese authors, a scholar called Tai T'ung, who lived six hundred years ago, and wrote a treatise which is often cited as an authority in the great Lexicon of Kang Hsi, the standard dictionary of the Chinese; it is also quoted by most foreign authors of works on the Chinese language.[2]
- ↑ Essays on the Chinese Language, by T. Watters, Shanghai. Presbyterian Mission Press, 1889. See also an Article entitled Prehistoric China, by Dr. E Faber, published in Vol. xxiv. Part 2 of the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
- ↑ A translation of the work of this author, under the title of The Six Scripts, has been made by Mr. L. C. Hopkins, H.M.'s Consul-General at Tientsin.
