Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/641

Rh ALPHABET 603 standing $ but such combinations of purs hieroglyphics were rare, as they would have been liable to be confused with combinations of the same kind used in a different way, as will be seen immediately. There were also some hieroglyphs used symbolically; e.g., a hand to denote a workman, the two valves of a shell-fish to denote friends. These also are few in number, and not very ingenious. Last in this class come some symbols which are essentially pictorial, though they represent no visible object ; e.g., &quot; above &quot; was expressed by a dot above a horizontal line ; &quot; below,&quot; by a dot below it ; the numerals one, two, three, by so many horizontal lines ; &quot; right,&quot; by the symbol &quot; left,&quot; by, &c. So far, we have simple hieroglyphs, or ideograms (a more convenient term), pictorial repre sentations, expressing not merely visible objects, but also abstract ideas, and even actions ; but each of these could also have the phonetic value of the name of the object which it depicted. Distinct from these are the &quot; letters &quot; in use, though not in origin. These have two parts one, a symbol which was originally an ideogram, and which could still be used as such, but which in this particular combination lost its ideographic value, and retained only the phonetic value of the name of its object ; the other, an ideogram, which laid aside its phonetic value, and only restricted to a particular class the phonetic symbol which it accompanied. Thus, for example, the ideogram of a ship had also the phonetic value tcheu i.e., the name denoting ship in the spoken language ; the ideogram of fire had the phonetic value hvo: these two symbols combined were still pronounced tcheu, and meant the flickering of flame. The second symbol dropped its phonetic value altogether, but kept the generic idea of fire : the ship was lost, but the idea of undulating motion- modified that of fire, and the complex symbol com bined the two ideas, with the one sound tcheu. Similarly, the ideogram ship and speech combined expressed loquacity, and this in the spoken language was also tcheu, the phonetic value of the symbol for speech being dropped, just like that of the symbol fire above. In this way there are ten different ideas given by Endlicher (p. 10), all called in the spoken language tcheu, and all expressed to the eye by different complex symbols formed on this principle. These symbols, he reckons, form at least ffths of the written language. This is a very imperfect sketch of the Chinese system of writing, and into the history of the &quot; keys,&quot; which indeed belong rather to Chinese lexicography, we do not propose to enter. But it ,is enough to throw light on some questions connected with our subject. First of all, we see ideography and phonetism existing side by side ; and even the same symbol, having in most cases (not in all) either an ideographic or a phonetic value at will. Therefore, in this case the passage from the one system to the other may be considered as certain ; but how it was made there is not sufficient evidence to show. It must have been earlier than the combination of pure ideograms mentioned above. It was probably greatly facilitated by the Chinese being a monosyllabic language ; each syllable is a complete word in itself, expressing a complete notion : hence the idea of completeness and individuality would attach to such a combination of sound more easily than would be possible in polysyllabic language ; and it would seem more natural to give that sound a symbol for itself, quite apart from its Ideographic meaning. Further, as the whole number of single syllables of which the language consists is only 450, the effort of remembering the symbols could not be great, and the memory must have been already trained in that direction, because the symbols (even in then- ideographic acceptation) had lost their obviously pictorial character, and must have been kept by the memory, not recognised each time by the eye ; just as children, in learning to read, commonly remember short and familiar words as a whole, without analysing them into the component letters. The explanation of the cumbrous &quot; letters &quot; described above is simple ; and it will show us, secondly, how so ap parently monstrous a system of writing could be maintained, and has been in its essence maintained, down to the present day. With so few radical sounds in the language, it was inevitable that many different objects must have been expressed, as ideas grew and multiplied, by the same sound, as we saw above that there were eleven different ideas (including the ship itself) all called tcheu. These could be distinguished in the spoken language by tone or accent, and actually were so distinguished. But how were they to be distinguished in writing 1 Now, writing is but the visible exponent of language, and therefore is naturally formed under the same conditions those conditions which, because the effect is obvious while the reason is often difficult to detect, we vaguely call the genius of the language: and it must accommodate itself to the defects as well as the strength of the language. There is an inherent evil in Chinese speech inevitable in a mono syllabic language with a limited number of radicals that the same combination of sound should serve to express many different ideas. A combination, therefore, of symbols is absolutely necessary, which shall represent to the mind through the eye the fact that the sound which is heard has changed its meaning to meet that of another sound which is not heard that tcheu no longer means a ship, but means the flickering of flame, or something else quite different. It would have been easy enough to have had different symbols for the different meanings of tcheu; but it would not practically have been so convenient, because it would not have represented so well the facts of the language. If the Chinese had chosen in their speech to do universally what they did occasionally, to form com pounds like &quot; ear-dooring &quot; for &quot; hearing &quot; a thing, the native genius for pictorial representation would have pro duced a symbolism which might have supplied all its wants down to the present day. But that was not the bent of the language ; and the writing therefore remains to the present day a mixture of ideography and phonetism, and is perhaps better so. Still, a great deal of confusion is possible. In modern writing, according to Endlicher, each syllable has several symbols, partly because of the extra ordinary number of meanings belonging, as we have seen, to each combination of sound, partly from considerations of calligraphy, because it is not every symbol which will combine neatly with every other; and therefore for par ticular combinations a different symbol with the same phonetic value is required, so that the shapes of the mixed symbols increase in number. Also, the pictorial symbols being comparatively few, and many of theso being em ployed phonetically for the same syllable, it is obvious that, with the growth of ideas, many new symbols must have been required. To meet this want, the mixed symbols so often mentioned were employed purely phoneti cally, each in new combination on the old principle with an ideogram, whose meaning was disregarded. Generally these symbols kept their phonetic worth, but sometimes in combination with particular ideograms they change. Thus we see a double evil arise in the language. Not only have we several symbols for each combination of sound, but also the same symbol can under certain circumstances have different phonetic values. But the difficulties thus caused seem greater to a stranger than to a native ; and the Chinese have never been moved thereby to exchange their