Page:Chinese spoken language.djvu/16

10 Each of the syllables in the preceding tables is susceptible of seven variations of the tone in which it is enunciated. Some of the tones affect the orthography, while others do not. Under each word thus formed may be arranged several characters having independent significations; and thus it happens that a single word in the spoken language is made the symbol to express a number of ideas essentially different from each other.

Chinese Tones.
The greatest obstacle to the acquisition of the spoken dialects or languages of China, is peculiar application of the tones, which distinguish words having otherwise the same orthography. It is believed that the tones are not in themselves very difficult, but as they are absolutely essential to the spoken language, and require constant attention to nice distinctions, which are never noticed in other languages, they demand all the attention the student can bestow, to remember always the proper tone of each word, and to enunciate it correctly in speaking.

In English, various tones or inflections of the voice are used to give force and animation to language; but in Chinese, the tone is an essential part of the word in all circumstances; while rhetorical effect is given to discourse by accentuation, rapidity or slowness of utterance, and peculiarities of manner, as well as varieties of pitch of the voice, and gesticulation.

Much has been written in regard to the tones, and some discrepance will be found in the statements of different writers, caused, principally, by the differences in tones of the same name in the several dialects with which the different writers were acquainted.

It is generally believed that the system of tones was invented to compensate for the paucity of syllables, or single words, in the spoken languages, or dialects, of the numerous kingdoms of Eastern Asia, which have long since been consolidated into the one vast empire of China.

What was the condition of the spoken languages of China previous to the adoption of the present system of writing, we have no means of learning, except from the structure of their written language, and their ancient poetry.

The general rules of poetry, derived from the Confucian classics, have been fixed and unchanging for more than twenty centuries.

In poetical composition the words are arranged in reference to their tones, of which, for poetical purposes, there are reckoned but two classes or distinctions.

The poetical division of tones is into 平聲 ping5 siang, smooth