Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/527

Rh being unusually full of homonymous words, lends itself naturally to such a method. Names of plants are obtained by combinations of the character 艸 "herb," itself still to be recognised as a picture of herbs sprouting up from the soil. "The hand," 手 originally a rude picture of the outstretched fingers, helps to form hundreds of characters signifying actions. "The heart," 心 gives numerous abstract words denoting sentiments and passions. Similarly "the eye," "the mouth," "fire," "water," "silk," "rain," "metal," "fish," are parents of large families of characters. The study of this Chinese method of writing is most interesting,—so curious is the chapter of the human mind which it unrolls, so unexpected are the items of recondite history which it discloses. To give but one example, the character for "war," 軍 is formed partly from the character for "vehicle," 車 because the ancient Chinese, like the ancient Greeks, used to go forth to battle in chariots.

Unfortunately, the transfer of this system of ideographs from China to Japan was accompanied by inevitable complications. Even supposing Japanese organs to have been able (which they were not) to reproduce Chinese sounds exactly, all Chinese teachers of the language did not speak the same dialect. Hence the gradual establishment in Japan of two or three readings for each character,—one reading being preferred to another according to the context. Besides this, instead of always imitating the Chinese sound as far as possible, the Japanese also took, in many cases, to translating the meanings of the characters into their own language, thus adding yet another reading. For instance, the already-mentioned symbol 人 "man," has the two Chinese readings jin and nin, and the Japanese translation hito. But these cannot be used indiscriminately. We say -riki-sha, but -soku ("a coolie"), and when we mean simply a "person." In some cases there are Chinese readings only, and