Page:Chinese spoken language.djvu/9

Rh dialect of Fuh Chau has become, to a great extent, a language of polysyllables.

The statement sometimes put forth, that there are hundreds of characters expressing different ideas, which are all pronounced exactly alike, refers only to the written language as read; and even in the language as read the number of set phrases and the peculiar collocation of words give a good degree of definiteness to the language. There is but little more difficulty in understanding the idea intended, than we experience when we hear an English book read, in which occur such words as right, rite, write, and wright, or cleave, to split, and cleave, to adhere. It is true, however, that such equivocal words are more numerous in Chinese than in English.

In the different provinces, and in different districts of the same province, the reading sounds of the characters differ in the same manner as the Arabic figures are differently pronounced by the various nations of Europe. The spoken dialects also differ widely from the reading dialects of the same localities.

In general, the spoken dialects are more diffuse than the written language, which is common to all parts of the empire. This results, in the main, from the frequent necessity of using two words of similar meaning, or, more properly, a dissyllable, to express an idea definitely, when a single written character or word is all that is required.

The spoken languages being more diffuse, and differing in style from the written language, they have adopted, in several dialects, a system of writing the spoken dialects, by borrowing from the general written language a few common characters, which they use chiefly as phonetics, to represent the sounds of the spoken language. These characters are thus used without reference to their signification in the classical writings which have been handed down from the remote ages of antiquity.

This is the common system of mercantile and epistolary writing adopted by persons of limited education, and can only be understood by persons speaking the same dialect, while the style of writing in use among professed literary men, is understood alike by the literati of all parts of the empire.

The system of initials and finals used in the “Book of Eight Tones,” referred to above, would, if used for that purpose, form (in connection with the tonal marks) a complete alphabet for the Fuh Chau dialect. They have been so used by missionaries for writing colloquial phrases, in their private study of the language. Three of the gospels have been written out in this manner by Chinese teachers in the employment of missionaries.