The Chinese Language

[Page 1 of this document is missing.]

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.

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.