The Chinese Language
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deal with Chinese officials have to be good guessers. Thus when an official
speaks of "yueh-dong" you must be able to guess at once that he ^is^ talking about "hsueh-t’ang", schools. The
ditinguished scholar and writer, the Viceroy ChangChih-tung, was one of the
very worst speakers among the officials of the Empire. I remember once
hearing him address a school. The students listened to him most
respectfully for a full hour, as was due to his rank and reputation. After
he had gone I collected a few of the more intelligent of the students and
asked them how much they had understood of what the Viceroy had been
saying. They replied without hesitation that they had not understood one
word. When Parliament formerly assembled at Peking, the members used to
have great difficulty in understanding the remarks of those from certain
provinces, although all were supposed to speak the same language. Still
more serious than the slovenliness of the Chinese scholar about his speech
is the fact that the literary forms upon which he has con centrated his attention have come to differ so widely from
the colloquial. The uneducated masses cannot of couse understand
it properly composed literature, and any writing in the
colloquial is as offensive to the Chinese scholar as English literature in
ungrammatical slang would be to any scholar of taste in America or England.
China is now trying the experiment of a democratic form of government and
her success must depend upon quickening the intelligence of the mass of the
people. It must be made possible to open their minds to the news of their
own country and of the outside world. In my judgment this will be
impossible unless certain radical changes are made in the Chinese language.
Chinese must be written phonetically, and a new literary style must be
developed based upon the colloquial. A certain amount of progress is being
made in both directions. The Ministry of Educa tion
has adopted a phonetic system of writing Chinese sounds which is quite
satisfactory and which is
gradually coming into use. So far the phonetic signs are used along with
the Chinese characters as in Japan. There is this difference however in
that the full sentence is given in the Chinese characters at the side of
which the phonetic symbols are placed. A distinct improvement also is to be
noticed in the matter of pride in speech on the part of educated men. Two
things are influencing the people in this matter. The establishment of
schools with the necessity of frequently addressing the students and the
organization of Parliament with its oral exercises both tend to make men
more careful about speech. The matter of replacing the old literature by a
new literature based upon the colloquial is more difficult than it may
seem^[inline].^Since the written Chinese appeals to the eye
rather than to the ear great condensation has become has become a mark of
literary excellence.
Written Chinese is monosyllabic, while the colloquial is dissylabic
or polysyllabic. Where one cha^ra^cter, if seen, is
sufficient to make the meaning clear, two words at least may be necessary
to convey the same meaning to the ear. So the diffuseness of the spoken
language has bcome anathema to all aspirants for an elegant literary style.
To overcome this prejudice ^[inline]will require^ much
time. In Europe long ago the same battle in another form was fought between
the scholars and the people. The language of the street replaced the
overinflected Latin of the scholars. So we may hope that common sense will
finally prevail in China. All of the many newspapers are now published in a
form somewhat simplified and some of them are even printed in the
colloquial. The province of Shansi is in advance of all the other provinces
owing to the fact that the people of that province have remained outside
the political disturbances that have distracted the other provinces during
the past few years. The province has had no change of governors since the
Revolution of 1911. The present Governor, Yen Hsi-shan, is a native of the
province and has worked earnestly for the welfare of his fellow
provincials.
He has now made the study of the phonetic method of rendering Chinese
compul sory in all the schools of the province. To
master the number of characters necessary for reading and to acquire the
literary style requires many years of hard work on the part of the student.
As long as the old system prevails the mass of the people must be condemned
to illiteracy, for the^[inline]y^have not time for the work
required. The phonetic system of writing can be learned in two or three
weeks and if then a literature is open to the minds of the people we may
hope to see the rapid spread of intelligence among Chinese Republicans and
the consequent success of their experiment in government by the people.
By Charles D. Tenney
For many years Chinese Secretary of the
American Legation at Peking.
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