Page:The Chinese language and how to learn it.djvu/36

18 without acquiring, without effort, a sufficient stock of words to make his wants easily known, whereas in China the stranger would leave the country after several months' sojourn with no idea of the language whatever beyond a few abusive epithets which had fastened themselves on his memory from their constant reiteration in his hearing.

"Pidgin" English, as the barbarous English spoken by the Chinese coolie or servant in Hong Kong is called, is nothing more or less than a literal translation of Chinese into English. The Englishman will pick it up in a week, and yet, if he tries to turn "pidgin" English into Chinese, he will find that at the end of twelve months he has made lamentably little progress. It may safely be said that any young Englishman of average intelligence and education who lived in France or in Germany for two years and devoted the whole of his time to the study of either language, would become a fluent speaker and writer at the end of that period. The Chinese Consular Service of Great Britain is officered by men who pass a severe competitive examination before admission, and must consequently be above the average standard of education and ability. The first two years of their career are spent in Peking, where the whole of their time is devoted to the study of the language under experienced supervision, and yet, at the end of this two years' course, there is not one of them who could personally conduct a correspondence in Chinese, translate an official document without the aid of a dictionary, or speak with sufficient fluency to act as an interpreter where important negotiations were concerned. Before they can reach this standard of proficiency they have at least five or six years of work before them.

What is the reason? There is nothing specially complicated about the language. Far from this being the case, its construction is fairly simple, much more so than that of a scientific language, German for instance, and in the matter of the expression of simple wants there is nothing difficult whatever. Yet it is not too much to say that not ten per cent, of Europeans who have devoted several years to the study of the language speak really well; that it requires from five to ten years constant practice to speak fluently, and that there is probably hardly a living instance of a European speaking Chinese so well as to be undistinguishable from a native.