Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/149

Rh learn colloquial or spoken Chinese, while learned philogues and sinologues insist in saying that Chinese is so difficult. Chinese, colloquial Chinese, I say again is the language of a child. My first advice therefore to my foreign friends who want to learn Chinese is "Be ye like little children, you will then not only enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but you will also be able to learn Chinese."

We now come to the written or book language, written Chinese. But here before I go further, let me say there are also different kinds of written Chinese. The Missionaries class these under two categories and call them easy wen li and difficult wen li. But that, in my opinion, is not a satisfactory classification. The proper classification, I think, should be, plain dress written Chinese; official uniform Chinese; and full court dress Chinese. If you like to use Latin, call them: litera communis or litera officinalis (common or business Chinese); litera classica minor (lesser classical Chinese); and litera classica major (higher classical Chinese.)

Now many foreigners have called themeselvesthemselves [sic] or have been called Chinese scholars. Writing an article on Chinese scholarship, some thirty years ago for the N. C. Daily News,—ah me! those old Shanghai days, Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,—I then said: "Among Europeans in China, the publication of a few dialogues in some provincial patois or the collection of a hundred Chinese proverbs at once entitles a man to call himself a Chinese scholar."