Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/156

142 language," so the Chinese have "swallows' talk" (燕語) as a name for idle tittle-tattle. The chitter-chatter of noisy children is chih-cha, the noise of a flock of sparrows; and chio-ts‘ao (雀噪) is the "cheatering" of sparrows first, and afterwards of human babblers. One cannot imagine any ghostly adviser in China saying to a house of nuns, "Cheatereth ouwer beoden evere ase sparuwe deth thet is one"—chirp your prayers always, as does the sparrow that is alone. When is a sparrow alone? Then we have the word t‘i (啼), which perhaps was made to imitate the crying of a little baby. But it has come to have a very wide application, and it is now used of the calls of several birds very unlike in character, of the warbling voice of young maidens, and of the noise of weeping. The word hou (吼) denotes the roar of a lion, or the howl of any fierce wild beast. Thence it came to be applied to the roaring and bellowing of people in a passion.

The next group of imitative utterances to be considered is that which contains the expressions used to denote the cough, sneeze, laugh and other vocal noises made by man himself, and which are chiefly automatic and instinctive. Such expressions are perhaps in all languages purely imitative, at least in the beginning, but many lose the traces of their origin under the influences of time and place. The Chinese language is rich in these terms also, and as they show us something of the material of the language and of its origin and early growth, it may not be useless to notice a few of them. As the language preserves much of its primitive simplicity, most of these natural expressions in it have come down either in their original forms or with only slight alterations.

The term for to breathe aloud is hu-hi (呼吸), and this is expressly said to imitate the noise made. Of the two syllables which make this term, hu is said to denote the noise made by inhalingexhaling [sic] air; while hi is the sound made by exhalinginhaling [sic] it. Then hu-hi came to be used for the process of breathing generally, and hence the expression ssŭ-fang (四方)-hu-hi which means all that breathe, all living creatures. So also nature (Heaven and Earth) has a hu-hi, a respiration which sinks and rises in unison with man's acts and thoughts. The syllable hu we have already seen