PAPER AND PRINTING.In the days of Confucius, pieces of bamboo pared thin, palmleaves, and reeds, were all used for writing upon with a sharp stick or stile. About the third century before Christ, silk and cloth were employed, and hair pencils made for writing. Paper was invented about the first century, and cotton-paper may have been brought from India, where it was in use more than a hundred years before. India ink was manufactured by the seventh century; and the present mode of printing upon blocks was adopted from the discovery of Fungtau in the tenth century, of taking impressions from engraved stones. In the style of their notes and letters, the Chinese show both neatness and elegance; narrow slips of tinted paper are employed, on which various emblematic designs are stamped in water lines, and enclosed in fanciful envelopes. It is common to affix a cipher instead of the name, or to close with a periphrasis or sentence well understood by the parties, and thereby avoid any signature; this, which originated, no doubt, in a fear of interception and unpleasant consequences, has gradually become a common mode of subscribing friendly epistles.THE MANUFACTURE OF CHINESE BOOKS.The mode of printing is so well fitted for the language that few improvements have been made in its manipulations, while the cheapness of books brings them within reach of the poorest. Cutting the blocks, and writing the characters, form two distinct branches of the business; printing the sheets, binding the volumes, and publishing the books, also furnish employment to other craftsmen. The first step is to write the characters upon thin paper, properly ruled with lines, two pages being cut upon one block, and a heavy double line surrounding them. The title of the work, chapter, and paging are all cut in a central column, and when the leaf is printed it is folded through this column so as to bring the characters on the edge and partly on both pages. Marginal notes are placed on the top of the page; comments, when greatly extended, occupy the upper part, separated from the text by a heavy line, or when mere scholia, are interlined in the same column in characters of half the size. Sometimes two works are printed together, one running through the volume on the upper half of the leaves, and separated from that occupying the lower half by a heavy line. Illustrations usually occupy separate pages at the commencement of thebook, but there are a few works with woodcuts of a wretched description, inserted in the body of the page. In books printed by government, each page is sometimes surrounded with dragons, or the title page is adorned in red by this emblem of imperial authority.When the leaf has been written out as it is to be printed, it is turned over and pasted upon the block, face downward. The wood usually used by blockcutters is pear or plum; the boards are half or three-fourths of an inch thick, and planed for cutting on both sides. The paper, when dried upon the board, is carefully rubbed off with the wetted finger, leaving every character and stroke plainly delineated. The cutter then, with his chisels, cuts away all the blank spots in and around the characters, to the depth of a line or more, after which the block is ready for the printer, whose machinery is very simple. Seated before a bench, he lays the block on a bed of paper so that it will not move nor chafe. The pile of paper lies on one side, the pot of ink before him, and the pressing brush on the other. Taking the ink brush, he slightly rubs it across the block twice in such a way as to lay the ink equally over the surface; he then places a sheet of paper upon it, and over that another, which serves as a tympanum. The impression is taken with the fibrous bark of the gomuti palm; one or two sweeps across the block complete the impression, for only one side of the paper is printed. Another and cheaper method in common use for publishing slips of news, court circulars, etc., consists in cutting the characters in blocks of hard wax, from which as many as two hundred impressions can often be taken before they become entirely illegible. The ink is manufactured from lampblack mixed with vegetable oil; the printers grind it for themselves.The sheets are taken by the binder, who folds them through the middle by the line around the pages, so that the columns shall register with each other, he then collates them into volumes, placing the leaves evenly by their folded edge, when the whole are arranged, and the covers pasted on each side. Two pieces of paper stitch it through the back, the book is trimmed, and sent to the bookseller. If required, it is stitched firmly withthread, but this part, as well as writing the title on the bottom edges of the volume, and making the pasteboard wrapper, are usually deferred till the taste of a purchaser is ascertained. Books made of such materials are not as durable as European volumes, and those who can afford the expense frequently have valuable works inclosed in wooden boxes. They are printed of all sizes between smallsleeveeditions (as the Chinese call 24 and 32 mos) up to quartos, twelve or fourteen inches square, larger than which it is difficult to get blocks.The price varies from one cent—for a brochure of twenty-five or thirty pages—to a dollar and a half a volume. It is seldom higher save for illustrated works. A volume rarely contains more than a hundred leaves, and in fine books their thickness is increased by inserting an extra sheet inside of each leaf. At Canton or Fuhchau, theHistory of the Three States, bound in twenty-one volumes 12mo, printed on white paper, is usually sold for seventy-five cents or a dollar per set. Kanghí’s Dictionary, in twenty-one volumes 8vo, on yellow paper, sells for four dollars; and all the nine classics can be purchased for less than two. Books are hawked about the streets, circulating libraries are carried from house to house upon movable stands, and booksellers’ shops are frequent in large towns. No censorship, other than a prohibition to write about the present dynasty, is exercised upon the press; nor are authors protected by a copyright law. Men of wealth sometimes show their literary taste by defraying the expense of getting the blocks of extensive works cut, and publishing them. Pwan Sz’-ching, a wealthy merchant at Canton, published, in 1846, an edition of thePei Wăn Yun Fu, in one hundred and thirty thick octavo volumes, the blocks for which must have cost him more than ten thousand dollars. The number of good impressions which can be obtained from a set of blocks is about sixteen thousand, and by retouching the characters, ten thousand more can be struck off.The disadvantages of this mode of printing are that other languages cannot easily be introduced into the page with the Chinese characters; the blocks occupy much room, are easily spoiled or lost; and are incapable of correction without muchexpense. It possesses some compensatory advantages peculiar to the Chinese and its cognate languages, Manchu, Corean, Japanese, etc., all of which are written with a brush and have few or no circular strokes. Its convenience and cheapness, coupled with the low rate of wages, will no doubt make it the common mode of printing Chinese among the people for a long time.The honor of being the first inventor of movable types undoubtedly belongs to a Chinese blacksmith named Pí Shing, who lived aboutA.D.1000, and printed books with them nearly five hundred years before Gutenberg cut his matrices at Mainz. They were made of plastic clay, hardened by fire after the characters had been cut on the soft surface of a plate of clay in which they were moulded. The porcelain types were then set up in a frame of iron partitioned off by strips, and inserted in a cement of wax, resin, and lime to fasten them down. The printing was done by rubbing, and when completed the types were loosened by melting the cement, and made clean for another impression.This invention seems never to have been developed to any practical application in superseding block-printing. The Emperor Kanghí ordered about two hundred and fifty thousand copper types to be engraved for printing publications of the government, and these works are now highly prized for their beauty. The cupidity of his successors led to melting these types into cash, but his grandson Kienlung directed the casting of a large font of lead types for government use.MOVABLE CHINESE TYPES MADE BY FOREIGNERS.The attention of foreigners was early called to the preparation of Chinese movable types, especially for the rapid manufacture of religious books, in connection with missionary work. The first fonts were made by P. P. Thoms, for the E. I. Company’s office at Macao in 1815, for the purpose of printing Morrison’s Dictionary. The characters were cut with chisels on blocks of type metal or tin, and though it was slow work to cut a full font, they gradually grew in numbers and variety till they served to print over twenty dictionaries and other works, designed to aid in learning Chinese, before they were destroyed by fire in 1856. A small font had been cast at Serampore in 1815,and in 1838, the Royal Printing Office at Paris had obtained a set of blocks engraved in China, from which thick castings were made and the separate types obtained by sawing the plates. M. Le Grand, a type-founder in Paris, about the year 1836, prepared an extensive font of type with comparatively few matrices, by casting the radical and primitive on separate bodies; and the plan has been found, within certain limits, to save so much expense and room that it has been adopted in other fonts.These experiments in Europe showed the feasibility of making and using Chinese type to any extent, but their results as to elegance and accuracy of form were not satisfactory, and proved that native workmen alone could meet the native taste. Rev. Samuel Dyer of the London Mission at Singapore began in 1838, under serious disadvantages, for he was not a practical printer, to cut the matrices for two complete fonts. He continued at his self-appointed task until his death in 1844, having completed only one thousand eight hundred and forty-five punches. His work was continued by R. Cole, of the American Presbyterian Missions, a skilful mechanic in his line, and in 1851 he was able to furnish fonts of two sizes with four thousand seven hundred characters each. Their form and style met every requirement of the most fastidious taste, and they are now in constant use.While Mr. Dyer’s fonts were suspended by his death, an attempt was made by a benevolent printer, Herr Beyerhaus of Berlin, to make one of an intermediate size on the Le Grand principle of divisible types; his proposal was taken up by the Presbyterian Board of Missions in New York, and after many delays a beautiful font was completed and in use about 1859. At this time, Mr. W. Gamble of that Mission in Shanghai, carried out his plan of making matrices by the electrotype process, and completed a large font of small pica type in about as many months as Dyer and Beyerhaus had taken years. By means of these various fonts books are now printed in many parts of China, in almost any style, and type foundries cast in whatever quantities are needed. The government has opened an extensive printing office in Peking, and its example will encourage native booksellers to unite typography with xylographic printing. More than this as conducing to the diffusion of knowledge among the people is the stimulus these cheap fonts of type have given to the circulation of newspapers in all the ports; but for their convenient and economical use Chinese newspapers could not have been printed at all. It will be quite within the reach of native workmen, who are skilled in electrotyping, stereotyping, and casting type, to make types of all sizes and styles for their own books, as the growing intelligence of the people creates a demand for illustrated and scientific publications, as well as cheap ones.[298]PHONETIC CHARACTER OF THE LANGUAGE.Nothing has conduced more to a misapprehension of the nature of the Chinese language than the way in which its phonetic character has been spoken of by different authors. Some, describing the primitive symbols, and the modifications they have undergone, have conveyed the impression that the whole language consisted of hieroglyphic or ideographic signs, which depicted ideas, and conveyed their meaning entirely to the eye, irrespective of the sound. For instance, Rémusat says, “The character is not the delineation of the sound, nor the sound the expression of the character;” forgetting to ask himself how or when a character in any language ever delineated a sound. Yet every Chinese character is sounded as much as the words in alphabetic languages, and some have more than one to express their different meanings; so that, although the character could not delineate the sound of the thing it denoted, the sound is the expression of the character. Others, as Mr. Lay,[299]have dissected the characters, and endeavored to trace back some analogy in the meanings of all those in which the same primitive is found, and by a sort of analysis, to find out how much of the signification of the radical was infused into the primitive to form the present meaning. His plan, in general terms, is to take all the characters containing a certain primitive, and find out how much of the meaning of that primitive is contained in each one; then he reconstructs the series by defining the primitive, incidentally showing the intention of the framers of the characters in choosing that particular one, and apportioning so much of its aggregate meaning to each character as is needed, and adding the meaning of the radical to form its whole signification. If we understand his plan, he wishes to construct a formula for each group containing the same primitive, in which the signification of the primitive is a certain function in that of all the characters containing it; to add up the total of their meanings, and divide the amount among the characters, allotting a quotient to each one. Languages are not so formed, however, and the Chinese is no exception. Some of Mr. Lay’s statements are correct, but his theory is fanciful. It is impossible to decide what proportion was made by combining a radical and a primitive with any reference to their meanings, according to Mr. Lay’s theory, and how many of them were simply phonetic combinations; probably nine-tenths of the compound characters have been constructed on the latter principle.The fifth class of syllabic symbols were formed by combining the symbolic and syllabic systems, so as to represent sound chiefly, but bearing in the construction of each one some reference to its general signification. The original hieroglyphics contained no sound,i.e., were not formed of phonetic constituents; the object depicted had a name, but there was no clue to it. It was impossible to do both—depict the object, and give its name in the same character. At first, the number of people using these ideographic symbols being probably small, every one called them by the same name, as soon as he knew what they represented, and began to read them. But when the ideas attempted to be written far exceeded in number the symbols, or, what is more likely, the invention of the limners, recourse was had to the combination of the symbols already understood to express the new idea. This was done in several modes, as noticed above, but the syllabic system needs further explanation, from the extent to which it has been carried. The character 蝻nan, to denote the young of the locust, has been adduced. The same principle would be applied inreadingevery new character, of which the phonetic primitive merely was recognized, although its meaning might not be known. Probably all the characters in the fifth class were sounded in strict accordance with theirphonetic primitives when constructed, but usage has changed some of their sounds, and many characters belonging to other classes, apparently containing the same primitive, are sounded quite differently; this tends to mislead those who infer the sound from the primitive. This mode of constructing and naming the characters also explains the reason why there are so few sounds compared with the number of characters; the phonetic primitive perpetuated its name in all its progeny.MODES OF INCORPORATING NEW WORDS.More than seven-eighths of the characters have been formed from less than two thousand symbols, and it is difficult to imagine how it could have been used so long and widely without some such method to relieve the memory of the burden of retaining thousands of arbitrary marks. But, until the names and meanings of the original symbols are learned, neither the sound nor sense of the compound characters will be more apparent to a Chinese than they are to any one else; until those are known, their combinations cannot be understood, nor even then the meaning wholly deduced; each character must be learned by itself, just as words in other languages. The sounds given the original symbols doubtless began to vary early after coming into use. Intercommunication between different parts of the country was not so frequent as to prevent local dialects from arising; but however strong the tendency of the spoken monosyllables to coalesce into polysyllables, the intractable symbols kept them apart. It is surprising, too, what a tendency the mind has to trust to the eye rather than to the ear, in getting and retaining the sense of a book; it is shown in many ways, and arises from habit more than any real difficulty in catching the ideavivâ voce. If the characters could have coalesced, their names would soon have run together, and been modified as they are in other languages. The classics, dictionaries, and unlimited uses of a written language, maintained the same meaning; but as their sounds must be learned traditionally, endless variations and patois arose. Moreover, as new circumstances and increasing knowledge give rise to new words in all countries, so in China, new scenes and expressions arise requiring to be incorporated into the written language. Originally they were unwritten though well understood sounds; and when first written must be explained, as is the case with foreign words liketabu,ukase,vizier, etc.,ad infin., when introduced into English. Different writers might, however, employ different primitives to express the sound, not aware that it had already been written, and hence would arise synonyms; they might use dissimilar radicals, and this as well would increase the modes of writing the sound. But the inconvenience of thus multiplying characters would be soon perceived in the obscurity of the sentence, for if the new character was not in the dictionary, its sound and composition were not enough to explain the meaning. When the language had attained a certain copiousness, the mode of education and the style of literary works compelled scholars to employ such characters only as were sanctioned by good use, or else run the risk of not being understood.The unwritten sounds, however, could not wait for this slow mode of adoption, but the risk of being misunderstood by using characters phonetically led to descriptive terms, conveying the idea and not the sound. Where alphabetic languages adopt a technic for a new thing, the Chinese make a new phrase. This is illustrated by the termsHung-mao jin, or ‘Red Bristled men,’ for Englishmen;Hwa-kí, or ‘Flowery Flag,’ for Americans;Sí-yang, or ‘Western Ocean,’ for Portuguese, etc., used at Canton, instead of the proper names of those countries. Cause and effect act reciprocally upon each other in this instance; the effect of using unsanctioned characters to express unwritten sounds, is to render a composition obscure, while the restriction to a set of characters compels their meaning to be sufficiently comprehensive to include all occasions. Local, unwritten phrases, and unauthorized characters, are so common, however, owing to the partial communication between distant parts of so great a country and mass of people, that it is evident, if this bond of union were removed by the substitution of an alphabetical language, the Chinese would soon be split into many small nations. However desirable, therefore, might be the introduction of a written language less difficult of acquisition, and more flexible, there are some reasons for wishing it to be delayed until more intelligence is diffused and juster principles of government obtain. When the people themselves feel the need of it,they will contrive some better medium for the promotion of knowledge.“CLAM-SHELL WORDS” AND TONES.The monosyllabic sound of the primitive once imparted to the ideophonous compound, explains the existence of so many characters having the same sound. When these various characters were presented to the eye of the scholar, no trouble was felt in recognizing their sense and sound, but confusion was experienced in speaking. This has been obviated in two ways. One is by repeating a word, or joining two of similar meanings but of different sounds, to convey a single idea; or else by adding a classifying word to express its nature. Both these modes do in fact form a real dissyllable, and it would appear so in an alphabetical language. The first sort of thesehien-hioh sz’, or ‘clam-shell words,’ as they are called, are not unfrequent in books, far more common in conversation and render the spoken more diffuse than the written language—more so, perhaps, than is the case in other tongues. Similar combinations of three, four, and more characters occur, especially where a foreign article or term is translated, but the genius of the language is against the use of polysyllables. Such combinations in English ashousehold,house-warming,housewife,house-room,houseleeks,hot-house,wood-house,household-stuff, etc., illustrate these dissyllables in Chinese; but they are not so easily understood. Such terms asunderstand,courtship,withdraw,upright, etc., present better analogies to the Chinese compounds. In some the real meaning is totally unlike either of the terms, astungkia(lit. ‘east house’), for master;tungsí(lit. ‘east west’), for thing;kungchu(lit. ‘lord ruler’), for princess, etc. The classifiers partake of the nature of adjectives, and serve not only to sort different words, but the same word when used in different senses. They correspond to such words in English asherd,fleet,troop, etc. To say a fleet of cows, a troop of ships, or a herd of soldiers, would be ridiculous only in English, but a similar misapplication would confuse the sense in Chinese.The other way of avoiding the confusion of homophonous monosyllables, which, notwithstanding the “clam-shell words,” and the extensive use of classifiers, are still liable to misapprehension, is by accurately marking its rightshingor tone, but asnothing analogous to them is found in European languages, it is rather difficult to describe them. At Canton there are eight arranged in an upper and lower series of four each; at Peking there are only four, at Nanking five, and at Swatow seven. The Chinese printers sometimes mark theshingon certain ambiguous characters, by a semicircle put on one corner; but this is rarely done, as every one who can read is supposed to know how to speak, and consequently to be familiar with the right tone. These four tones are calledping,shang,kü, andjih, meaning, respectively, theeven,ascending,departing, andenteringtone. They are applied to every word, and have nothing to do either with accent or emphasis; in asking or answering, entreating or refusing, railing or flattering, soothing or recriminating, they remain ever the same. The unlettered natives, even children and females, who know almost nothing of the distinctions into four, five, seven, or eightshing, observe them closely in their speech, and detect a mispronunciation as soon as the learned man. A single illustration of them will suffice. Theeventone is the natural expression of the voice, and native writers consider it the most important. In the sentence,“When I asked him, ‘Will you let me see it?’ he said, ‘No, I’ll do no such thing,’”the different cadence of the question and reply illustrate the upper and lower even tone. Theascendingtone is heard in exclamatory words asah! indeed!It is a little like the crescendo in music, while thedepartingtone corresponds in the same degree to the diminuendo. The drawling tone of repressed discontent, grumbling and eking out a reply, is not unlike the departing tone. The entering tone is nearly eliminated in the northern provinces, but gives a marked feature to speech in the southern; it is an abrupt ending, in the same modulation that the even tone is, but as if broken off; a man about to saylock, and taken with a hiccup in the middle so that he leaves off the last two letters, or the final consonant, pronounces thejuh shing. A few characters have two tones, which give them different meanings; theping shingoften denotes the substantive, and thekü shing, the verb, but there is no regularity in this respect.The tones are observed by natives of all ranks, speaking all patois and dialects, and on all occasions. They present a serious difficulty to the adult foreigner of preaching or speaking acceptably to the natives, for although by a proper use of classifiers, observance of idioms, and multiplication of synonyms, he may be understood, his speech will be rude and his words distasteful, if he does not learn the tones accurately. In Amoy and Fuhchau, he will also run a risk of being misunderstood. If the reader, in perusing the following sentence, will accent the italicized syllables, he will have an imperfect illustration of the confusion a wrong intonation produces: “The presentof that objectoccasioned such a transportas toabstract my mind from all around.” In Chinese, however, it is notaccentupon one of two syllables which must be learned, but the integral tone of a single sound, as much as in the musical octave.It is unnecessary here to enter into any detailed description or enumeration of the words in the Chinese language. One remarkable feature is the frequency of the terminationngpreceded by all the vowels, which imparts a peculiar singing character to Chinese speech, asKwangtung,Yangtsz’ kiang, etc. In a list of sounds in the court dialect, about one-sixth of the syllables have this termination, but a larger proportion of characters are found under those syllables, than the mere list indicates. In Morrison’s Dictionary the number of separate words in the court dialect is 411, but if the aspirated syllables be distinguished, there are 533. In the author’sSyllabic Dictionarythe number is 532; Wade reduces the Peking dialect to 397 syllables in one list, and increases it to 420 in another. In the Cantonese there are 707; in the dialect of Swatow, 674; at Amoy, about 900; at Fuhchau, 928; and 660 at Shanghai. All these lists distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated words, astingandt’ing,paandp’a, which to an English ear are nearly identical. The largest part of the sounds are common to the dialects, but the distinctions are such as to render it easy to detect each when spoken; the court dialect is the most mellifluous of the whole and easiest to acquire. All the consonants in English are found in one or another of the dialects, besides many not occurring in that language, asbw,chw,gw,jw,lw,mw,nw, etc. There are also several imperfect vowel sounds not known in any European language, ashmor’m,hnor’n,ng(a high nasal sound),sz’,’rh,ch’, etc. The phrase’m ’ng tăkin the Canton dialect, meaningcannot be pushed, orchainnmainlang, ‘a blind man,’ in the Amoy, cannot be so accurately expressed by these or any other letters that one can learn the sound from them. If it is difficult for us to express their sounds by Roman letters, it is still stranger for the Chinese to write English words. For instance,baptizein the Canton dialect becomespa-pí-tai-sz’;flannelbecomesfat-lan-yin;stairsbecomessz’-ta-sz’;impregnablebecomesím-pí-luk-na-pu-lí; etc. Such words asWashington,midshipman,tongue, etc., can be written nearer their true sound, but the indivisible Chinese monosyllables offer a serious obstacle in the way of introducing foreign words and knowledge into the language.The preceding observations explain how the numerous local variations from the general language found in all parts of China have arisen. Difficult as the spoken language is for a foreigner to acquire, from the brevity of the words and nicety of their tones, the variety of the local pronunciations given to the same character adds not a little to the labor, especially if he be situated where he is likely to come in contact with persons from different places. Amid such a diversity of pronunciation, and where one sound is really as correct as another, it is not easy to define what should constitute a dialect, a patois, or a corruption. A dialect in other languages is usually described as a local variation in pronunciation, or the use of peculiar words and expressions, not affecting the idiom or grammar of the tongue; but in the Chinese, where the written character unites the mass of people in one language, a dialect has been usually regarded by those who have written on the subject, as extending to variations in the idiom, and not restricted to differences in pronunciation and local expressions. According to this definition, there are only four or five dialects (which would in fact be as many languages if they were not united by the written character), but an endless variety of patois or local pronunciations. The Chinese have published books to illustrate the court, Changchau or Amoy, the Canton and Fuhchau dialects. The differences in the idioms and pronunciation are such as to render persons speaking them mutually unintelligible, but do not affect the style of writing, whose idioms are founded upon the usage of the best writers, and remain unchanged.THE COURT, OR MANDARIN DIALECT.The court language, thekwan hwa, or mandarin dialect, is rather the proper language of the country—the Chinese language—than a dialect. It is studied and spoken by all educated men, and no one can make any pretence to learning or accomplishments who cannot converse in it in whatever part of the Empire he may be born. It is the common language throughout the northeastern provinces, especially Honan, Shantung, and Nganhwui, though presenting more or less variations even in them from the standard of the court and capital. This speech is characterized by its soft and mellifluous tones, the absence of all harsh, consonantal endings, and the prevalence of liquids and labials. In parts of the provinces where it is spoken, as the eastern portions of Chehkiang and Kiangsu, gutturals are common, and the initials softened or changed.This tongue is the most ancient speech now spoken, for stanzas of poetry written twenty-five centuries ago, in the times previous to Confucius, are now read with the same rhymes as when penned. The expressions of thekwan hwa, although resembling the written language more than the other dialects, are still unlike it, being more diffuse, and containing many synonyms and particles not required to make the sense clear when it is addressed to the eye. The difference is such in this respect that two well-educated Chinese speaking in the terse style of books would hardly understand each other, and be obliged to use more words to convey their meaning when speaking than they would consider elegant or necessary in an essay. This is, to be sure, more or less the case in all languages, but from the small variety of sounds and their monosyllabic brevity, it is unavoidable in Chinese, though it must not be inferred that the language cannot be written so as to be understood when read off; it can be written as diffusely as it is spoken, but such a style is not considered very elegant. There are books written in the colloquial, however, from which it is not difficult to learnthe style of conversation, and such books are among the best to put into the hands of a foreigner when beginning the study.DIALECTS OF CANTON AND AMOY.The local patois of a place is calledtu tan, orhiang tan,i.e., local or village brogue, and there is an interpreter of it attached to almost every officer’s court for the purpose of translating the peculiar phrases of witnesses and others brought before him. The termdialectcannot, strictly, in its previous definition, be applied to thetu tan, though it is usually so called; it is a patois or brogue. The Canton dialect is called by its citizenspak wa, ‘the plain speech,’ because it is more intelligible than the court dialect. It is comparatively easy of acquisition, and differs less from thekwan hwa, in its pronunciation and idioms, than that of Amoy and its vicinity; but the diversity is still enough to render it unintelligible to people from the north. A very few books have been written in it, but none which can afford assistance in learning it. A native scholar would consider his character for literary attainments almost degraded if he should write books in the provincial dialects, and forsake the style of the immortal classics. The principal feature in the pronunciation of the Canton dialect which distinguishes it from the general language, is the change of the abrupt vowel terminations, asloh,kiah,pih, into the well-defined consonantsk,p, andt, aslok,kap,pít, a change that considerably facilitates the discrimination of the syllables. The idioms of the two cannot well be illustrated without the help of the written character, but the differences between the sounds of two or three sentences may be exhibited: The phrase,I do not understand what he says, is in theCourt dialect:Wo min puh tung teh ta kiang shim mo.Canton dialect:Ngo ’m hiu kü kong măt yé.The rice contains sand in it.Court dialect:Na ko mí yu sha tsz’.Canton dialect:Ko tik mai yau sha tsoi noi.None of the provincial patois differ so much from thekwan hwa, and afford so many peculiarities, as those spoken in the province of Fuhkien and eastern portions of Kwangtung. All of them are nasal, and, compared with those spoken elsewhere, harsh and rough. They have a large number of unwrittensounds, and so supply the lack; the same character often has one sound when read and another when spoken; all of them are in common use. This curious feature obliges the foreigner to learn two parallel languages when studying this dialect, so intimate and yet so distinct are the two. The difference between them will be more apparent by quoting a sentence: “He first performed that which was difficult, and afterward imitated what was easier.” The corresponding words of the colloquial are placed underneath the reading sounds.Sienk’ísuchísélan,jíhok’íhauchísétek.Tai sengchó í ésuéséoh,jítui auk’wna í éhaugiem ésétit tióh.The changes from one into the other are exceedingly various both in sound and idiom. Thus,bien chien, ‘before one’s face,’ becomesbin chanwhen spoken; while in the phrasecheng jit, ‘a former day,’ the same wordchienbecomeschengand notchan;bòé chu, ‘pupil of the eye,’ becomesang a;sit hwan, ‘to eat rice,’ becomeschiah puin. Their dialect, not less than their trafficking spirit, point out the Amoy people wherever they are met, and as they are usually found along the whole coast and in the Archipelago, and are not understood except by their provincial compatriots, they everywhere clan together and form separate communities. Dr. Medhurst published a dictionary of the Changchau dialect, in which the sounds of the characters are given as they are read. Dr. C. Douglas has gathered a great vocabulary of words and phrases used in the Amoy colloquial, in which he has attempted to reduce everything to the Romanized system of writing, and omitted all the characters.The dialects of Fuhchau, Swatow, and Canton have been similarly investigated by Protestant missionaries. Messrs. Maclay and Baldwin have taken the former in hand, and their work leaves very little to be desired for the elucidation of that speech. Goddard’s vocabulary of the Swatow has no examples; and Williams’Tonic Dictionaryof the Canton dialect gave no characters with the examples. This deficiency was made up in Lobscheid’s rearrangement of it under the radicals.The extent to which the dialects are used has not been ascertained, nor the degree of modification each undergoes in thoseparts where it is spoken; for villagers within a few miles, although able to understand each other perfectly, still give different sounds to a few characters, and have a few local phrases, enough to distinguish their several inhabitants, while towns one or two hundred miles apart are still more unlike. For instance, the citizen of Canton always saysshuifor water, andtsz’for child, but the native of Macao sayssuiandchífor these two words; and if his life depended upon his uttering them as they are spoken in Canton, they would prove a shibboleth which he could not possibly enunciate. Strong peculiarities of speech also exist in the villages between Canton and Macao which are found in neither of those places. Yet whatever sound they give to a character it has the same tone, and a Chinese would be much less surprised to hear water called♯chwui, than he would to hear it called♭shuiin the lower even tone, instead of its proper ascending tone. The tones really approach vowels in their nature more than mere musical inflections; and it is by their nice discrimination, that the people are able to understand each other with less difficulty than we might suppose amidst such a jargon of vocables.PRONUNCIATION AND GRAMMAR.This accurate discrimination in the vowel sounds, and comparative indifference to consonants, which characterize the Chinese spoken languages, has arisen, no doubt, from the monosyllabic nature, and the constant though slight variations the names of characters undergo from the traditionary mode in which they must be learned. There being no integral sound in any character, each and all of them are, of course, equally correct,per se; but the various general and local dictionaries have each tended somewhat to fix the pronunciation, just as books and education have fixed the spelling of English words. Nor do the Chinese more than other people learn to pronounce their mother tongue from dictionaries, and the variations are consequently but partially restrained by them. It may truly be said, that no two Chinese speak all words alike, while yet, through means of the universally understood character, the greatest mass of human beings ever collected under one government are enabled to express themselves without difficulty, and carry on all the business and concerns of life.The grammar of the Chinese language is unique, but those writers who say it has no grammar at all must have overlooked the prime signification of the word. There are in all languages words which denote things, and others which signify qualities; words which express actions done by one or many, already done, doing or to be done; actions absolute, conditional, or ordered. The circumstances of the doer and the subject of the action, make prepositions necessary, as well as other connecting words. Thus the principles of grammar exist in all intelligible speech, though each may require different rules. These rules the Chinese language possesses, and their right application, the proper collocation of words, and use of particles, which supply the place of inflection, constitute a difficult part in its acquisition. It has no etymology, properly speaking, for neither the characters nor their names undergo any change; whether used as verbs or nouns, adjectives or particles, they remain the same. The same word may be a noun, a verb, an adverb, or any part of speech, nor can its character be certainly known till it is placed in a sentence, when its meaning becomes definite. Its grammar, therefore, is confined chiefly to its syntax and prosody. This feature of the Chinese language is paralleled in English by such words aslight, used as a noun, adjective, and verb;like, used as a verb, adjective, and adverb;sheepanddeer, used both in the singular and plural;read, used in the past, present, and future tenses; and in all cases without undergoing any change. But what is occasional and the exception in that tongue, becomes the rule in Chinese; nor is there any more confusion in the last than in the first.A good summary of the principles of Chinese grammar is given by Rémusat, who says that generally,“In every Chinese sentence, in which nothing is understood, the elements of which it is composed are arranged in the following order: the subject, the verb, the complement direct, and the complement indirect.“Modifying expressions precede those to which they belong: thus, the adjective is placed before the substantive, subject, or complement; the substantive governed before the verb that governs it; the adverb before the verb, the proposition incidental, circumstantial, or hypothetical, before the principal proposition, to which it attaches itself by a conjunction expressed or understood.“The relative position of words and phrases thus determined, supplies theplace often of every other mark intended to denote their mutual dependence, their character whether adjective or adverbial, positive, conditional, or circumstantial.“If the subject be understood, it is because it is a personal pronoun, or that it is expressed above, and that the same substantive that is omitted is found in the preceding sentence, and in the same quality of subject, and not in any other.“If the verb be wanting, it is because it is the substantive verb, or some other easily supplied, or one which has already found place in the preceding sentences, with a subject or complement not the same.“If several substantives follow each other, either they are in construction with each other, or they form an enumeration, or they are synonyms which explain and determine each other.“If several verbs succeed each other, which are not synonyms and are not employed as auxiliaries, the first ones should be taken as adverbs or verbal nouns, the subjects of those which follow; or these latter as verbal nouns, the complements of those which precede.”PARTS OF SPEECH.Chinese grammarians divide all words intoshih tsz’andhü tsz’,i.e., essential words and particles. The former are subdivided intosz’ tsz’andhwoh tsz’,i.e., nouns and verbs; the latter into initials or introductory words, conjunctions, exclamations, finals, transitive particles, etc. They furnish examples under each, and assist the student, with model books, in which the principles of the language and all rhetorical terms are explained. The number and variety of grammatical and philological works prove that they have not neglected the elucidation and arrangement of their mother tongue. The rules above cited are applicable to the written language, and these treatises refer entirely to that; the changes in the phraseology of the colloquial do not affect its grammar, however, which is formed upon the same rules.Although the characters are, when isolated, somewhat indefinite, there are many ways of limiting their meaning in sentences. Nouns are often made by suffixing formative particles, asnu kí, ‘angry spirit,’ merely meansanger;í kí, ‘righteous spirit,’ isrectitude;chin ’rh, ‘needle child,’ is a needle, etc.; the suffix, in these cases, simply materializing the word. Gender is formed by distinctive particles, prefixed or suffixed by appropriate words for each gender, or by denoting one gender always by a dissyllabic compound; asmale-being, for the masculine; horse-sire, or horse-mother, for stallion or dam;hero,heroine,emperor,empress, etc.; and lastly aswang-hau,i.e., king-queen, forqueen, whilewangalone meansking. Number is formed by prefixing a numeral, asYung,Tsin,twomen; by suffixing a formative,mun,tăng, and others, asjin-tăng, man-sort, or men;ta-mun, he-sor they; by repeating the word, asjin-jin, man-man ormen;chu-chu, place-place, or places,i.e., everywhere; and lastly, by the scope of the passage. The nominative, accusative, and vocative cases are commonly known by their position; the genitive, dative, and ablative are formed by appropriate prepositions, expressed or understood. The vocative is common in light reading and historical studies.Adjectives precede nouns, by which position they are usually determined. Comparisons are made in many ways.Hauisgood,kăng hauisbetter, andchí hauisbest;shih făn hau hauisvery good;hau hau tihispretty good, etc. The position of an adjective determines its comparison, aschang yih chihmeanslonger by one cubit;yih chih changis acubit long. The comparison of ideas is made by placing the two sentences parallel to each other; for instance, “Entering the hills and seizing a tiger is easy, opening the mouth and getting men to lean to is difficult,” is the way of expressing the comparison, “It is easier to seize a tiger in the hills, than to obtain the good offices of men.” The proper use of antithesis and parallelism is considered one of the highest attainments in composition. The numerals are thirteen in number, with the addition of the character 零lingto denote a cipher. All amounts are written just as they are to be read, asyih peh sz’ shih san, 一百四十三i.e., ‘one hundred four tens three.’ They are here introduced, with their pronunciation in three dialects.
PAPER AND PRINTING.
In the days of Confucius, pieces of bamboo pared thin, palmleaves, and reeds, were all used for writing upon with a sharp stick or stile. About the third century before Christ, silk and cloth were employed, and hair pencils made for writing. Paper was invented about the first century, and cotton-paper may have been brought from India, where it was in use more than a hundred years before. India ink was manufactured by the seventh century; and the present mode of printing upon blocks was adopted from the discovery of Fungtau in the tenth century, of taking impressions from engraved stones. In the style of their notes and letters, the Chinese show both neatness and elegance; narrow slips of tinted paper are employed, on which various emblematic designs are stamped in water lines, and enclosed in fanciful envelopes. It is common to affix a cipher instead of the name, or to close with a periphrasis or sentence well understood by the parties, and thereby avoid any signature; this, which originated, no doubt, in a fear of interception and unpleasant consequences, has gradually become a common mode of subscribing friendly epistles.
THE MANUFACTURE OF CHINESE BOOKS.
The mode of printing is so well fitted for the language that few improvements have been made in its manipulations, while the cheapness of books brings them within reach of the poorest. Cutting the blocks, and writing the characters, form two distinct branches of the business; printing the sheets, binding the volumes, and publishing the books, also furnish employment to other craftsmen. The first step is to write the characters upon thin paper, properly ruled with lines, two pages being cut upon one block, and a heavy double line surrounding them. The title of the work, chapter, and paging are all cut in a central column, and when the leaf is printed it is folded through this column so as to bring the characters on the edge and partly on both pages. Marginal notes are placed on the top of the page; comments, when greatly extended, occupy the upper part, separated from the text by a heavy line, or when mere scholia, are interlined in the same column in characters of half the size. Sometimes two works are printed together, one running through the volume on the upper half of the leaves, and separated from that occupying the lower half by a heavy line. Illustrations usually occupy separate pages at the commencement of thebook, but there are a few works with woodcuts of a wretched description, inserted in the body of the page. In books printed by government, each page is sometimes surrounded with dragons, or the title page is adorned in red by this emblem of imperial authority.
When the leaf has been written out as it is to be printed, it is turned over and pasted upon the block, face downward. The wood usually used by blockcutters is pear or plum; the boards are half or three-fourths of an inch thick, and planed for cutting on both sides. The paper, when dried upon the board, is carefully rubbed off with the wetted finger, leaving every character and stroke plainly delineated. The cutter then, with his chisels, cuts away all the blank spots in and around the characters, to the depth of a line or more, after which the block is ready for the printer, whose machinery is very simple. Seated before a bench, he lays the block on a bed of paper so that it will not move nor chafe. The pile of paper lies on one side, the pot of ink before him, and the pressing brush on the other. Taking the ink brush, he slightly rubs it across the block twice in such a way as to lay the ink equally over the surface; he then places a sheet of paper upon it, and over that another, which serves as a tympanum. The impression is taken with the fibrous bark of the gomuti palm; one or two sweeps across the block complete the impression, for only one side of the paper is printed. Another and cheaper method in common use for publishing slips of news, court circulars, etc., consists in cutting the characters in blocks of hard wax, from which as many as two hundred impressions can often be taken before they become entirely illegible. The ink is manufactured from lampblack mixed with vegetable oil; the printers grind it for themselves.
The sheets are taken by the binder, who folds them through the middle by the line around the pages, so that the columns shall register with each other, he then collates them into volumes, placing the leaves evenly by their folded edge, when the whole are arranged, and the covers pasted on each side. Two pieces of paper stitch it through the back, the book is trimmed, and sent to the bookseller. If required, it is stitched firmly withthread, but this part, as well as writing the title on the bottom edges of the volume, and making the pasteboard wrapper, are usually deferred till the taste of a purchaser is ascertained. Books made of such materials are not as durable as European volumes, and those who can afford the expense frequently have valuable works inclosed in wooden boxes. They are printed of all sizes between smallsleeveeditions (as the Chinese call 24 and 32 mos) up to quartos, twelve or fourteen inches square, larger than which it is difficult to get blocks.
The price varies from one cent—for a brochure of twenty-five or thirty pages—to a dollar and a half a volume. It is seldom higher save for illustrated works. A volume rarely contains more than a hundred leaves, and in fine books their thickness is increased by inserting an extra sheet inside of each leaf. At Canton or Fuhchau, theHistory of the Three States, bound in twenty-one volumes 12mo, printed on white paper, is usually sold for seventy-five cents or a dollar per set. Kanghí’s Dictionary, in twenty-one volumes 8vo, on yellow paper, sells for four dollars; and all the nine classics can be purchased for less than two. Books are hawked about the streets, circulating libraries are carried from house to house upon movable stands, and booksellers’ shops are frequent in large towns. No censorship, other than a prohibition to write about the present dynasty, is exercised upon the press; nor are authors protected by a copyright law. Men of wealth sometimes show their literary taste by defraying the expense of getting the blocks of extensive works cut, and publishing them. Pwan Sz’-ching, a wealthy merchant at Canton, published, in 1846, an edition of thePei Wăn Yun Fu, in one hundred and thirty thick octavo volumes, the blocks for which must have cost him more than ten thousand dollars. The number of good impressions which can be obtained from a set of blocks is about sixteen thousand, and by retouching the characters, ten thousand more can be struck off.
The disadvantages of this mode of printing are that other languages cannot easily be introduced into the page with the Chinese characters; the blocks occupy much room, are easily spoiled or lost; and are incapable of correction without muchexpense. It possesses some compensatory advantages peculiar to the Chinese and its cognate languages, Manchu, Corean, Japanese, etc., all of which are written with a brush and have few or no circular strokes. Its convenience and cheapness, coupled with the low rate of wages, will no doubt make it the common mode of printing Chinese among the people for a long time.
The honor of being the first inventor of movable types undoubtedly belongs to a Chinese blacksmith named Pí Shing, who lived aboutA.D.1000, and printed books with them nearly five hundred years before Gutenberg cut his matrices at Mainz. They were made of plastic clay, hardened by fire after the characters had been cut on the soft surface of a plate of clay in which they were moulded. The porcelain types were then set up in a frame of iron partitioned off by strips, and inserted in a cement of wax, resin, and lime to fasten them down. The printing was done by rubbing, and when completed the types were loosened by melting the cement, and made clean for another impression.
This invention seems never to have been developed to any practical application in superseding block-printing. The Emperor Kanghí ordered about two hundred and fifty thousand copper types to be engraved for printing publications of the government, and these works are now highly prized for their beauty. The cupidity of his successors led to melting these types into cash, but his grandson Kienlung directed the casting of a large font of lead types for government use.
MOVABLE CHINESE TYPES MADE BY FOREIGNERS.
The attention of foreigners was early called to the preparation of Chinese movable types, especially for the rapid manufacture of religious books, in connection with missionary work. The first fonts were made by P. P. Thoms, for the E. I. Company’s office at Macao in 1815, for the purpose of printing Morrison’s Dictionary. The characters were cut with chisels on blocks of type metal or tin, and though it was slow work to cut a full font, they gradually grew in numbers and variety till they served to print over twenty dictionaries and other works, designed to aid in learning Chinese, before they were destroyed by fire in 1856. A small font had been cast at Serampore in 1815,and in 1838, the Royal Printing Office at Paris had obtained a set of blocks engraved in China, from which thick castings were made and the separate types obtained by sawing the plates. M. Le Grand, a type-founder in Paris, about the year 1836, prepared an extensive font of type with comparatively few matrices, by casting the radical and primitive on separate bodies; and the plan has been found, within certain limits, to save so much expense and room that it has been adopted in other fonts.
These experiments in Europe showed the feasibility of making and using Chinese type to any extent, but their results as to elegance and accuracy of form were not satisfactory, and proved that native workmen alone could meet the native taste. Rev. Samuel Dyer of the London Mission at Singapore began in 1838, under serious disadvantages, for he was not a practical printer, to cut the matrices for two complete fonts. He continued at his self-appointed task until his death in 1844, having completed only one thousand eight hundred and forty-five punches. His work was continued by R. Cole, of the American Presbyterian Missions, a skilful mechanic in his line, and in 1851 he was able to furnish fonts of two sizes with four thousand seven hundred characters each. Their form and style met every requirement of the most fastidious taste, and they are now in constant use.
While Mr. Dyer’s fonts were suspended by his death, an attempt was made by a benevolent printer, Herr Beyerhaus of Berlin, to make one of an intermediate size on the Le Grand principle of divisible types; his proposal was taken up by the Presbyterian Board of Missions in New York, and after many delays a beautiful font was completed and in use about 1859. At this time, Mr. W. Gamble of that Mission in Shanghai, carried out his plan of making matrices by the electrotype process, and completed a large font of small pica type in about as many months as Dyer and Beyerhaus had taken years. By means of these various fonts books are now printed in many parts of China, in almost any style, and type foundries cast in whatever quantities are needed. The government has opened an extensive printing office in Peking, and its example will encourage native booksellers to unite typography with xylographic printing. More than this as conducing to the diffusion of knowledge among the people is the stimulus these cheap fonts of type have given to the circulation of newspapers in all the ports; but for their convenient and economical use Chinese newspapers could not have been printed at all. It will be quite within the reach of native workmen, who are skilled in electrotyping, stereotyping, and casting type, to make types of all sizes and styles for their own books, as the growing intelligence of the people creates a demand for illustrated and scientific publications, as well as cheap ones.[298]
PHONETIC CHARACTER OF THE LANGUAGE.
Nothing has conduced more to a misapprehension of the nature of the Chinese language than the way in which its phonetic character has been spoken of by different authors. Some, describing the primitive symbols, and the modifications they have undergone, have conveyed the impression that the whole language consisted of hieroglyphic or ideographic signs, which depicted ideas, and conveyed their meaning entirely to the eye, irrespective of the sound. For instance, Rémusat says, “The character is not the delineation of the sound, nor the sound the expression of the character;” forgetting to ask himself how or when a character in any language ever delineated a sound. Yet every Chinese character is sounded as much as the words in alphabetic languages, and some have more than one to express their different meanings; so that, although the character could not delineate the sound of the thing it denoted, the sound is the expression of the character. Others, as Mr. Lay,[299]have dissected the characters, and endeavored to trace back some analogy in the meanings of all those in which the same primitive is found, and by a sort of analysis, to find out how much of the signification of the radical was infused into the primitive to form the present meaning. His plan, in general terms, is to take all the characters containing a certain primitive, and find out how much of the meaning of that primitive is contained in each one; then he reconstructs the series by defining the primitive, incidentally showing the intention of the framers of the characters in choosing that particular one, and apportioning so much of its aggregate meaning to each character as is needed, and adding the meaning of the radical to form its whole signification. If we understand his plan, he wishes to construct a formula for each group containing the same primitive, in which the signification of the primitive is a certain function in that of all the characters containing it; to add up the total of their meanings, and divide the amount among the characters, allotting a quotient to each one. Languages are not so formed, however, and the Chinese is no exception. Some of Mr. Lay’s statements are correct, but his theory is fanciful. It is impossible to decide what proportion was made by combining a radical and a primitive with any reference to their meanings, according to Mr. Lay’s theory, and how many of them were simply phonetic combinations; probably nine-tenths of the compound characters have been constructed on the latter principle.
The fifth class of syllabic symbols were formed by combining the symbolic and syllabic systems, so as to represent sound chiefly, but bearing in the construction of each one some reference to its general signification. The original hieroglyphics contained no sound,i.e., were not formed of phonetic constituents; the object depicted had a name, but there was no clue to it. It was impossible to do both—depict the object, and give its name in the same character. At first, the number of people using these ideographic symbols being probably small, every one called them by the same name, as soon as he knew what they represented, and began to read them. But when the ideas attempted to be written far exceeded in number the symbols, or, what is more likely, the invention of the limners, recourse was had to the combination of the symbols already understood to express the new idea. This was done in several modes, as noticed above, but the syllabic system needs further explanation, from the extent to which it has been carried. The character 蝻nan, to denote the young of the locust, has been adduced. The same principle would be applied inreadingevery new character, of which the phonetic primitive merely was recognized, although its meaning might not be known. Probably all the characters in the fifth class were sounded in strict accordance with theirphonetic primitives when constructed, but usage has changed some of their sounds, and many characters belonging to other classes, apparently containing the same primitive, are sounded quite differently; this tends to mislead those who infer the sound from the primitive. This mode of constructing and naming the characters also explains the reason why there are so few sounds compared with the number of characters; the phonetic primitive perpetuated its name in all its progeny.
MODES OF INCORPORATING NEW WORDS.
More than seven-eighths of the characters have been formed from less than two thousand symbols, and it is difficult to imagine how it could have been used so long and widely without some such method to relieve the memory of the burden of retaining thousands of arbitrary marks. But, until the names and meanings of the original symbols are learned, neither the sound nor sense of the compound characters will be more apparent to a Chinese than they are to any one else; until those are known, their combinations cannot be understood, nor even then the meaning wholly deduced; each character must be learned by itself, just as words in other languages. The sounds given the original symbols doubtless began to vary early after coming into use. Intercommunication between different parts of the country was not so frequent as to prevent local dialects from arising; but however strong the tendency of the spoken monosyllables to coalesce into polysyllables, the intractable symbols kept them apart. It is surprising, too, what a tendency the mind has to trust to the eye rather than to the ear, in getting and retaining the sense of a book; it is shown in many ways, and arises from habit more than any real difficulty in catching the ideavivâ voce. If the characters could have coalesced, their names would soon have run together, and been modified as they are in other languages. The classics, dictionaries, and unlimited uses of a written language, maintained the same meaning; but as their sounds must be learned traditionally, endless variations and patois arose. Moreover, as new circumstances and increasing knowledge give rise to new words in all countries, so in China, new scenes and expressions arise requiring to be incorporated into the written language. Originally they were unwritten though well understood sounds; and when first written must be explained, as is the case with foreign words liketabu,ukase,vizier, etc.,ad infin., when introduced into English. Different writers might, however, employ different primitives to express the sound, not aware that it had already been written, and hence would arise synonyms; they might use dissimilar radicals, and this as well would increase the modes of writing the sound. But the inconvenience of thus multiplying characters would be soon perceived in the obscurity of the sentence, for if the new character was not in the dictionary, its sound and composition were not enough to explain the meaning. When the language had attained a certain copiousness, the mode of education and the style of literary works compelled scholars to employ such characters only as were sanctioned by good use, or else run the risk of not being understood.
The unwritten sounds, however, could not wait for this slow mode of adoption, but the risk of being misunderstood by using characters phonetically led to descriptive terms, conveying the idea and not the sound. Where alphabetic languages adopt a technic for a new thing, the Chinese make a new phrase. This is illustrated by the termsHung-mao jin, or ‘Red Bristled men,’ for Englishmen;Hwa-kí, or ‘Flowery Flag,’ for Americans;Sí-yang, or ‘Western Ocean,’ for Portuguese, etc., used at Canton, instead of the proper names of those countries. Cause and effect act reciprocally upon each other in this instance; the effect of using unsanctioned characters to express unwritten sounds, is to render a composition obscure, while the restriction to a set of characters compels their meaning to be sufficiently comprehensive to include all occasions. Local, unwritten phrases, and unauthorized characters, are so common, however, owing to the partial communication between distant parts of so great a country and mass of people, that it is evident, if this bond of union were removed by the substitution of an alphabetical language, the Chinese would soon be split into many small nations. However desirable, therefore, might be the introduction of a written language less difficult of acquisition, and more flexible, there are some reasons for wishing it to be delayed until more intelligence is diffused and juster principles of government obtain. When the people themselves feel the need of it,they will contrive some better medium for the promotion of knowledge.
“CLAM-SHELL WORDS” AND TONES.
The monosyllabic sound of the primitive once imparted to the ideophonous compound, explains the existence of so many characters having the same sound. When these various characters were presented to the eye of the scholar, no trouble was felt in recognizing their sense and sound, but confusion was experienced in speaking. This has been obviated in two ways. One is by repeating a word, or joining two of similar meanings but of different sounds, to convey a single idea; or else by adding a classifying word to express its nature. Both these modes do in fact form a real dissyllable, and it would appear so in an alphabetical language. The first sort of thesehien-hioh sz’, or ‘clam-shell words,’ as they are called, are not unfrequent in books, far more common in conversation and render the spoken more diffuse than the written language—more so, perhaps, than is the case in other tongues. Similar combinations of three, four, and more characters occur, especially where a foreign article or term is translated, but the genius of the language is against the use of polysyllables. Such combinations in English ashousehold,house-warming,housewife,house-room,houseleeks,hot-house,wood-house,household-stuff, etc., illustrate these dissyllables in Chinese; but they are not so easily understood. Such terms asunderstand,courtship,withdraw,upright, etc., present better analogies to the Chinese compounds. In some the real meaning is totally unlike either of the terms, astungkia(lit. ‘east house’), for master;tungsí(lit. ‘east west’), for thing;kungchu(lit. ‘lord ruler’), for princess, etc. The classifiers partake of the nature of adjectives, and serve not only to sort different words, but the same word when used in different senses. They correspond to such words in English asherd,fleet,troop, etc. To say a fleet of cows, a troop of ships, or a herd of soldiers, would be ridiculous only in English, but a similar misapplication would confuse the sense in Chinese.
The other way of avoiding the confusion of homophonous monosyllables, which, notwithstanding the “clam-shell words,” and the extensive use of classifiers, are still liable to misapprehension, is by accurately marking its rightshingor tone, but asnothing analogous to them is found in European languages, it is rather difficult to describe them. At Canton there are eight arranged in an upper and lower series of four each; at Peking there are only four, at Nanking five, and at Swatow seven. The Chinese printers sometimes mark theshingon certain ambiguous characters, by a semicircle put on one corner; but this is rarely done, as every one who can read is supposed to know how to speak, and consequently to be familiar with the right tone. These four tones are calledping,shang,kü, andjih, meaning, respectively, theeven,ascending,departing, andenteringtone. They are applied to every word, and have nothing to do either with accent or emphasis; in asking or answering, entreating or refusing, railing or flattering, soothing or recriminating, they remain ever the same. The unlettered natives, even children and females, who know almost nothing of the distinctions into four, five, seven, or eightshing, observe them closely in their speech, and detect a mispronunciation as soon as the learned man. A single illustration of them will suffice. Theeventone is the natural expression of the voice, and native writers consider it the most important. In the sentence,
“When I asked him, ‘Will you let me see it?’ he said, ‘No, I’ll do no such thing,’”
“When I asked him, ‘Will you let me see it?’ he said, ‘No, I’ll do no such thing,’”
the different cadence of the question and reply illustrate the upper and lower even tone. Theascendingtone is heard in exclamatory words asah! indeed!It is a little like the crescendo in music, while thedepartingtone corresponds in the same degree to the diminuendo. The drawling tone of repressed discontent, grumbling and eking out a reply, is not unlike the departing tone. The entering tone is nearly eliminated in the northern provinces, but gives a marked feature to speech in the southern; it is an abrupt ending, in the same modulation that the even tone is, but as if broken off; a man about to saylock, and taken with a hiccup in the middle so that he leaves off the last two letters, or the final consonant, pronounces thejuh shing. A few characters have two tones, which give them different meanings; theping shingoften denotes the substantive, and thekü shing, the verb, but there is no regularity in this respect.
The tones are observed by natives of all ranks, speaking all patois and dialects, and on all occasions. They present a serious difficulty to the adult foreigner of preaching or speaking acceptably to the natives, for although by a proper use of classifiers, observance of idioms, and multiplication of synonyms, he may be understood, his speech will be rude and his words distasteful, if he does not learn the tones accurately. In Amoy and Fuhchau, he will also run a risk of being misunderstood. If the reader, in perusing the following sentence, will accent the italicized syllables, he will have an imperfect illustration of the confusion a wrong intonation produces: “The presentof that objectoccasioned such a transportas toabstract my mind from all around.” In Chinese, however, it is notaccentupon one of two syllables which must be learned, but the integral tone of a single sound, as much as in the musical octave.
It is unnecessary here to enter into any detailed description or enumeration of the words in the Chinese language. One remarkable feature is the frequency of the terminationngpreceded by all the vowels, which imparts a peculiar singing character to Chinese speech, asKwangtung,Yangtsz’ kiang, etc. In a list of sounds in the court dialect, about one-sixth of the syllables have this termination, but a larger proportion of characters are found under those syllables, than the mere list indicates. In Morrison’s Dictionary the number of separate words in the court dialect is 411, but if the aspirated syllables be distinguished, there are 533. In the author’sSyllabic Dictionarythe number is 532; Wade reduces the Peking dialect to 397 syllables in one list, and increases it to 420 in another. In the Cantonese there are 707; in the dialect of Swatow, 674; at Amoy, about 900; at Fuhchau, 928; and 660 at Shanghai. All these lists distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated words, astingandt’ing,paandp’a, which to an English ear are nearly identical. The largest part of the sounds are common to the dialects, but the distinctions are such as to render it easy to detect each when spoken; the court dialect is the most mellifluous of the whole and easiest to acquire. All the consonants in English are found in one or another of the dialects, besides many not occurring in that language, asbw,chw,gw,jw,lw,mw,nw, etc. There are also several imperfect vowel sounds not known in any European language, ashmor’m,hnor’n,ng(a high nasal sound),sz’,’rh,ch’, etc. The phrase’m ’ng tăkin the Canton dialect, meaningcannot be pushed, orchainnmainlang, ‘a blind man,’ in the Amoy, cannot be so accurately expressed by these or any other letters that one can learn the sound from them. If it is difficult for us to express their sounds by Roman letters, it is still stranger for the Chinese to write English words. For instance,baptizein the Canton dialect becomespa-pí-tai-sz’;flannelbecomesfat-lan-yin;stairsbecomessz’-ta-sz’;impregnablebecomesím-pí-luk-na-pu-lí; etc. Such words asWashington,midshipman,tongue, etc., can be written nearer their true sound, but the indivisible Chinese monosyllables offer a serious obstacle in the way of introducing foreign words and knowledge into the language.
The preceding observations explain how the numerous local variations from the general language found in all parts of China have arisen. Difficult as the spoken language is for a foreigner to acquire, from the brevity of the words and nicety of their tones, the variety of the local pronunciations given to the same character adds not a little to the labor, especially if he be situated where he is likely to come in contact with persons from different places. Amid such a diversity of pronunciation, and where one sound is really as correct as another, it is not easy to define what should constitute a dialect, a patois, or a corruption. A dialect in other languages is usually described as a local variation in pronunciation, or the use of peculiar words and expressions, not affecting the idiom or grammar of the tongue; but in the Chinese, where the written character unites the mass of people in one language, a dialect has been usually regarded by those who have written on the subject, as extending to variations in the idiom, and not restricted to differences in pronunciation and local expressions. According to this definition, there are only four or five dialects (which would in fact be as many languages if they were not united by the written character), but an endless variety of patois or local pronunciations. The Chinese have published books to illustrate the court, Changchau or Amoy, the Canton and Fuhchau dialects. The differences in the idioms and pronunciation are such as to render persons speaking them mutually unintelligible, but do not affect the style of writing, whose idioms are founded upon the usage of the best writers, and remain unchanged.
THE COURT, OR MANDARIN DIALECT.
The court language, thekwan hwa, or mandarin dialect, is rather the proper language of the country—the Chinese language—than a dialect. It is studied and spoken by all educated men, and no one can make any pretence to learning or accomplishments who cannot converse in it in whatever part of the Empire he may be born. It is the common language throughout the northeastern provinces, especially Honan, Shantung, and Nganhwui, though presenting more or less variations even in them from the standard of the court and capital. This speech is characterized by its soft and mellifluous tones, the absence of all harsh, consonantal endings, and the prevalence of liquids and labials. In parts of the provinces where it is spoken, as the eastern portions of Chehkiang and Kiangsu, gutturals are common, and the initials softened or changed.
This tongue is the most ancient speech now spoken, for stanzas of poetry written twenty-five centuries ago, in the times previous to Confucius, are now read with the same rhymes as when penned. The expressions of thekwan hwa, although resembling the written language more than the other dialects, are still unlike it, being more diffuse, and containing many synonyms and particles not required to make the sense clear when it is addressed to the eye. The difference is such in this respect that two well-educated Chinese speaking in the terse style of books would hardly understand each other, and be obliged to use more words to convey their meaning when speaking than they would consider elegant or necessary in an essay. This is, to be sure, more or less the case in all languages, but from the small variety of sounds and their monosyllabic brevity, it is unavoidable in Chinese, though it must not be inferred that the language cannot be written so as to be understood when read off; it can be written as diffusely as it is spoken, but such a style is not considered very elegant. There are books written in the colloquial, however, from which it is not difficult to learnthe style of conversation, and such books are among the best to put into the hands of a foreigner when beginning the study.
DIALECTS OF CANTON AND AMOY.
The local patois of a place is calledtu tan, orhiang tan,i.e., local or village brogue, and there is an interpreter of it attached to almost every officer’s court for the purpose of translating the peculiar phrases of witnesses and others brought before him. The termdialectcannot, strictly, in its previous definition, be applied to thetu tan, though it is usually so called; it is a patois or brogue. The Canton dialect is called by its citizenspak wa, ‘the plain speech,’ because it is more intelligible than the court dialect. It is comparatively easy of acquisition, and differs less from thekwan hwa, in its pronunciation and idioms, than that of Amoy and its vicinity; but the diversity is still enough to render it unintelligible to people from the north. A very few books have been written in it, but none which can afford assistance in learning it. A native scholar would consider his character for literary attainments almost degraded if he should write books in the provincial dialects, and forsake the style of the immortal classics. The principal feature in the pronunciation of the Canton dialect which distinguishes it from the general language, is the change of the abrupt vowel terminations, asloh,kiah,pih, into the well-defined consonantsk,p, andt, aslok,kap,pít, a change that considerably facilitates the discrimination of the syllables. The idioms of the two cannot well be illustrated without the help of the written character, but the differences between the sounds of two or three sentences may be exhibited: The phrase,I do not understand what he says, is in the
Court dialect:Wo min puh tung teh ta kiang shim mo.
Canton dialect:Ngo ’m hiu kü kong măt yé.
The rice contains sand in it.
Court dialect:Na ko mí yu sha tsz’.
Canton dialect:Ko tik mai yau sha tsoi noi.
None of the provincial patois differ so much from thekwan hwa, and afford so many peculiarities, as those spoken in the province of Fuhkien and eastern portions of Kwangtung. All of them are nasal, and, compared with those spoken elsewhere, harsh and rough. They have a large number of unwrittensounds, and so supply the lack; the same character often has one sound when read and another when spoken; all of them are in common use. This curious feature obliges the foreigner to learn two parallel languages when studying this dialect, so intimate and yet so distinct are the two. The difference between them will be more apparent by quoting a sentence: “He first performed that which was difficult, and afterward imitated what was easier.” The corresponding words of the colloquial are placed underneath the reading sounds.
Sienk’ísuchísélan,jíhok’íhauchísétek.Tai sengchó í ésuéséoh,jítui auk’wna í éhaugiem ésétit tióh.
The changes from one into the other are exceedingly various both in sound and idiom. Thus,bien chien, ‘before one’s face,’ becomesbin chanwhen spoken; while in the phrasecheng jit, ‘a former day,’ the same wordchienbecomeschengand notchan;bòé chu, ‘pupil of the eye,’ becomesang a;sit hwan, ‘to eat rice,’ becomeschiah puin. Their dialect, not less than their trafficking spirit, point out the Amoy people wherever they are met, and as they are usually found along the whole coast and in the Archipelago, and are not understood except by their provincial compatriots, they everywhere clan together and form separate communities. Dr. Medhurst published a dictionary of the Changchau dialect, in which the sounds of the characters are given as they are read. Dr. C. Douglas has gathered a great vocabulary of words and phrases used in the Amoy colloquial, in which he has attempted to reduce everything to the Romanized system of writing, and omitted all the characters.
The dialects of Fuhchau, Swatow, and Canton have been similarly investigated by Protestant missionaries. Messrs. Maclay and Baldwin have taken the former in hand, and their work leaves very little to be desired for the elucidation of that speech. Goddard’s vocabulary of the Swatow has no examples; and Williams’Tonic Dictionaryof the Canton dialect gave no characters with the examples. This deficiency was made up in Lobscheid’s rearrangement of it under the radicals.
The extent to which the dialects are used has not been ascertained, nor the degree of modification each undergoes in thoseparts where it is spoken; for villagers within a few miles, although able to understand each other perfectly, still give different sounds to a few characters, and have a few local phrases, enough to distinguish their several inhabitants, while towns one or two hundred miles apart are still more unlike. For instance, the citizen of Canton always saysshuifor water, andtsz’for child, but the native of Macao sayssuiandchífor these two words; and if his life depended upon his uttering them as they are spoken in Canton, they would prove a shibboleth which he could not possibly enunciate. Strong peculiarities of speech also exist in the villages between Canton and Macao which are found in neither of those places. Yet whatever sound they give to a character it has the same tone, and a Chinese would be much less surprised to hear water called♯chwui, than he would to hear it called♭shuiin the lower even tone, instead of its proper ascending tone. The tones really approach vowels in their nature more than mere musical inflections; and it is by their nice discrimination, that the people are able to understand each other with less difficulty than we might suppose amidst such a jargon of vocables.
PRONUNCIATION AND GRAMMAR.
This accurate discrimination in the vowel sounds, and comparative indifference to consonants, which characterize the Chinese spoken languages, has arisen, no doubt, from the monosyllabic nature, and the constant though slight variations the names of characters undergo from the traditionary mode in which they must be learned. There being no integral sound in any character, each and all of them are, of course, equally correct,per se; but the various general and local dictionaries have each tended somewhat to fix the pronunciation, just as books and education have fixed the spelling of English words. Nor do the Chinese more than other people learn to pronounce their mother tongue from dictionaries, and the variations are consequently but partially restrained by them. It may truly be said, that no two Chinese speak all words alike, while yet, through means of the universally understood character, the greatest mass of human beings ever collected under one government are enabled to express themselves without difficulty, and carry on all the business and concerns of life.
The grammar of the Chinese language is unique, but those writers who say it has no grammar at all must have overlooked the prime signification of the word. There are in all languages words which denote things, and others which signify qualities; words which express actions done by one or many, already done, doing or to be done; actions absolute, conditional, or ordered. The circumstances of the doer and the subject of the action, make prepositions necessary, as well as other connecting words. Thus the principles of grammar exist in all intelligible speech, though each may require different rules. These rules the Chinese language possesses, and their right application, the proper collocation of words, and use of particles, which supply the place of inflection, constitute a difficult part in its acquisition. It has no etymology, properly speaking, for neither the characters nor their names undergo any change; whether used as verbs or nouns, adjectives or particles, they remain the same. The same word may be a noun, a verb, an adverb, or any part of speech, nor can its character be certainly known till it is placed in a sentence, when its meaning becomes definite. Its grammar, therefore, is confined chiefly to its syntax and prosody. This feature of the Chinese language is paralleled in English by such words aslight, used as a noun, adjective, and verb;like, used as a verb, adjective, and adverb;sheepanddeer, used both in the singular and plural;read, used in the past, present, and future tenses; and in all cases without undergoing any change. But what is occasional and the exception in that tongue, becomes the rule in Chinese; nor is there any more confusion in the last than in the first.
A good summary of the principles of Chinese grammar is given by Rémusat, who says that generally,
“In every Chinese sentence, in which nothing is understood, the elements of which it is composed are arranged in the following order: the subject, the verb, the complement direct, and the complement indirect.“Modifying expressions precede those to which they belong: thus, the adjective is placed before the substantive, subject, or complement; the substantive governed before the verb that governs it; the adverb before the verb, the proposition incidental, circumstantial, or hypothetical, before the principal proposition, to which it attaches itself by a conjunction expressed or understood.“The relative position of words and phrases thus determined, supplies theplace often of every other mark intended to denote their mutual dependence, their character whether adjective or adverbial, positive, conditional, or circumstantial.“If the subject be understood, it is because it is a personal pronoun, or that it is expressed above, and that the same substantive that is omitted is found in the preceding sentence, and in the same quality of subject, and not in any other.“If the verb be wanting, it is because it is the substantive verb, or some other easily supplied, or one which has already found place in the preceding sentences, with a subject or complement not the same.“If several substantives follow each other, either they are in construction with each other, or they form an enumeration, or they are synonyms which explain and determine each other.“If several verbs succeed each other, which are not synonyms and are not employed as auxiliaries, the first ones should be taken as adverbs or verbal nouns, the subjects of those which follow; or these latter as verbal nouns, the complements of those which precede.”
“In every Chinese sentence, in which nothing is understood, the elements of which it is composed are arranged in the following order: the subject, the verb, the complement direct, and the complement indirect.
“Modifying expressions precede those to which they belong: thus, the adjective is placed before the substantive, subject, or complement; the substantive governed before the verb that governs it; the adverb before the verb, the proposition incidental, circumstantial, or hypothetical, before the principal proposition, to which it attaches itself by a conjunction expressed or understood.
“The relative position of words and phrases thus determined, supplies theplace often of every other mark intended to denote their mutual dependence, their character whether adjective or adverbial, positive, conditional, or circumstantial.
“If the subject be understood, it is because it is a personal pronoun, or that it is expressed above, and that the same substantive that is omitted is found in the preceding sentence, and in the same quality of subject, and not in any other.
“If the verb be wanting, it is because it is the substantive verb, or some other easily supplied, or one which has already found place in the preceding sentences, with a subject or complement not the same.
“If several substantives follow each other, either they are in construction with each other, or they form an enumeration, or they are synonyms which explain and determine each other.
“If several verbs succeed each other, which are not synonyms and are not employed as auxiliaries, the first ones should be taken as adverbs or verbal nouns, the subjects of those which follow; or these latter as verbal nouns, the complements of those which precede.”
PARTS OF SPEECH.
Chinese grammarians divide all words intoshih tsz’andhü tsz’,i.e., essential words and particles. The former are subdivided intosz’ tsz’andhwoh tsz’,i.e., nouns and verbs; the latter into initials or introductory words, conjunctions, exclamations, finals, transitive particles, etc. They furnish examples under each, and assist the student, with model books, in which the principles of the language and all rhetorical terms are explained. The number and variety of grammatical and philological works prove that they have not neglected the elucidation and arrangement of their mother tongue. The rules above cited are applicable to the written language, and these treatises refer entirely to that; the changes in the phraseology of the colloquial do not affect its grammar, however, which is formed upon the same rules.
Although the characters are, when isolated, somewhat indefinite, there are many ways of limiting their meaning in sentences. Nouns are often made by suffixing formative particles, asnu kí, ‘angry spirit,’ merely meansanger;í kí, ‘righteous spirit,’ isrectitude;chin ’rh, ‘needle child,’ is a needle, etc.; the suffix, in these cases, simply materializing the word. Gender is formed by distinctive particles, prefixed or suffixed by appropriate words for each gender, or by denoting one gender always by a dissyllabic compound; asmale-being, for the masculine; horse-sire, or horse-mother, for stallion or dam;hero,heroine,emperor,empress, etc.; and lastly aswang-hau,i.e., king-queen, forqueen, whilewangalone meansking. Number is formed by prefixing a numeral, asYung,Tsin,twomen; by suffixing a formative,mun,tăng, and others, asjin-tăng, man-sort, or men;ta-mun, he-sor they; by repeating the word, asjin-jin, man-man ormen;chu-chu, place-place, or places,i.e., everywhere; and lastly, by the scope of the passage. The nominative, accusative, and vocative cases are commonly known by their position; the genitive, dative, and ablative are formed by appropriate prepositions, expressed or understood. The vocative is common in light reading and historical studies.
Adjectives precede nouns, by which position they are usually determined. Comparisons are made in many ways.Hauisgood,kăng hauisbetter, andchí hauisbest;shih făn hau hauisvery good;hau hau tihispretty good, etc. The position of an adjective determines its comparison, aschang yih chihmeanslonger by one cubit;yih chih changis acubit long. The comparison of ideas is made by placing the two sentences parallel to each other; for instance, “Entering the hills and seizing a tiger is easy, opening the mouth and getting men to lean to is difficult,” is the way of expressing the comparison, “It is easier to seize a tiger in the hills, than to obtain the good offices of men.” The proper use of antithesis and parallelism is considered one of the highest attainments in composition. The numerals are thirteen in number, with the addition of the character 零lingto denote a cipher. All amounts are written just as they are to be read, asyih peh sz’ shih san, 一百四十三i.e., ‘one hundred four tens three.’ They are here introduced, with their pronunciation in three dialects.