Page:The Chinese language and how to learn it.djvu/39

THE CHINESE LANGUAGE 21 from the latter by the pre-position of what, for want of a better word, may be called a classifying article. The most common of these is Ko, best translated by the word "piece/' In writing, man (or men), is indicated by one character; in speaking, it is i ko jen, one "piece" man, or chi ko jen, some "piece" man. So again, ping, a soldier, also ice, but in speaking, i ho ping, one piece soldier, i k'uai ping, a bit of ice. There are several dozen of these classifiers, each of which takes a certain number of nouns under its protection. Again, in the written language the character yin 2 is silver; in speaking, we distinguish this yin from many other similar sounds, and indicate that it is a substantive, by calling it yintzu ; so also, in writing, inao, a hat, in speaking, maotzu. This rule holds good of a large number of nouns, but not of all, and there are other suffixes besides the one mentioned. As a further illustration of the syllabic nature of the spoken language a few more examples may be given. To be willing in written Chinese is yuan ; in colloquial it is yuam ' ; i, intention, colloquial, issu; li, a hedge, colloquial, lipa ; huan, to rejoice, colloquial, hsihuan. Other expressions in the spoken language are entirely different from those in writing, as jih, sun, colloquial, t'aiyang or jiht'ou, but it may be said generally that there is a close analogy between the two, the essential difference lying in the fact that whereas redundancy is necessary in speaking to ensure intelligibility, the written language aims at conciseness and the elimination of all superfluity of words. Pronunciation, apart from intonation, is a further serious impediment in the way of the speaker, such sounds as chih, jih, tzu, ssu, tz l u, ch'u, etc., which are incapable of exact reproduction by any recognized system of spelling, requiring months of practice before they can be uttered correctly. And, finally, it is necessary to forget one's own idiom when trying to talk Chinese, and to remember that what in the one language seems a complicated sentence can often be rendered with great simplicity in the other. The Chinese language abounds in proverbial and idiomatic expressions. It is in the discovery of these, and the right use of them, coupled with the appropriate gestures, mannerisms and intonations, that the secret of successful speaking lies. As a final demonstration of the distinction that is drawn between the written and the spoken languages, it may be stated that the