The Chinese Language

By V. G. NAIR
(Asst. Secretary, Sino-Indian Cultural Society)

The Chinese language is different from Indian or European languages in that it has no alphabet. It has as many characters as there are words. These characters originated from pictographs. The total number of characters today is about fifty thousand. Dr. Lin Yu-tang has stated that there are only about seven scholars in modern China who could read all these characters. In the ancient classics there are about five thousand different characters, mostly pictorial. About eight to nine thousand characters are used today by the Chinese public. In printing houses about six thousand is all that is found necessary for newspapers and books of general interest. A knowledge of four thousand characters would be sufficient for reading Chinese newspapers. All these characters are monosyllabic. The spoken language differs greatly from the written. Of the spoken language, the Mandarin or Kuan-Hua was first spoken by the officials at Peking. The standardised form of the Peking dialect is called Kuo-Yu or the National language, now understood and spoken by almost all the educated people of modern China.

China may be divided into six linguistic areas in which about seventy dialects are said to be spoken. The Mandarin area was estimated to have covered three-fourths of China and her population. Peking and Nanking dialects, formerly the two divisions of the Northern Mandarin, are closely related, while the difference between Peking dialect and Cantonese, according to Prof. John De Francis, is as great as between Italian and Spanish or between English and Dutch. All these dialects have a common origin and the same script.

The written language is even more unique than the spoken. Pictographic in origin, it Contained six hundred signs at the beginning. These signs are the fundamental characters in Chinese writing. Some 214 of them have been named ‘radicals’ because they are the elements of the current language. Every word and every idea has its own separate sign. Characters represented ideas. But language reformers have overlaid the pictorial element with additions designed to define the term specifically, usually through the indication of the sound. “This system of writing.” says Will Durant, “is in every sense a high intellectual achievement; it classified the whole world–of objects, activities and qualities–under a few hundred roots or ‘radical signs’, combined with these signs some fifteen hundred distinguishing marks, and made them represent, in their completed forms, all the ideas used in literature and life.”

Jesuit missionaries who arrived in China during the 16th century were confronted with the difficulties of learning the Chinese language. They, therefore, introduced phonetic transcription of Chinese in Roman characters. These missionaries did not intend to do away completely with the Chinese characters, but they wanted to make their studies of the Chinese language easier through Romanisation. A section of Chinese intellectuals looked at Romanisation with disfavour, but many others evinced great interest in the alphabetisation of Chinese. Protestant missionaries who came later also did much work in this direction. Meanwhile, the Chinese intellectuals themselves launched a country-wide movement of language reform called the National Language Romanisation–the Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Different systems of alphabetisation were introduced by Chinese and European linguists, either for promoting literacy or for making the study of Chinese easier for foreigners. One such Romanisation,–the Yale system–was created in 1943 largely through the efforts of Prof. George A. Kennedy of the United States. An earlier system is the Wade system created by an English linguist. These are evidently meant to speed up the study of Chinese language among the illiterate or foreign beginners. But the script must be learnt separately. It is the key to Chinese literature, both, ancient and modern.

Chinese script and language are not difficult to learn in the sense in which all foreign languages are construed by devoted students. By constant practice, any difficult language could be learnt by any person. It all depended on the system of teaching, the devotion of the student and the ability of the teacher who conducted the classes. This is absolutely impossible without the aid of a trained Chinese teacher. To learn the thousands of characters or even five thousands and the spoken Peking dialect in its correct pronunciation would normally take about ten to fifteen years, and a complete mastery of all the characters would require about twenty-five years. A student studying a single Indian script and language like Sanskrit, Tamil or Malayalam is in a more advantageous position to master most of the spoken languages and scripts of India than a student who is required to master a foreign script and language like Chinese or Greek. It is easier for an Indian student to master the Indian languages than for a Chinese to master his own script and the different dialects spoken in China.

The study of Chinese language is not a prerequisite for acquiring knowledge of Chinese history, religion and literature, for most of the classics both ancient and modern could be read in their English renderings brought out by eminent Chinese and European savants. There are countless publications in English dealing with every aspect of China –political, social, religious, historical, linguistic,–and its art and literature. English literature on China is so vast and varied that one should spend a life-time for ransacking it entirely. A systematic study of these books, which in itself is a distinct education, would normally take about ten years. But proficiency in language and script will be immensely helpful in reading the originals and to further develop one’s wealth of knowledge on China. Anyway, language study is an essential factor for understanding China in true perspective.

We cannot but pay tributes to European scholars who devoted themselves to Chinese studies for several years. It was mainly due to their labours that we, Indians, have come to know the glories of Ancient China, her enduring culture and civilization, her three thousand years old history and linguistics. European scholars have taken to Chinese studies in all earnestness, probing deep into her mysteries and unearthing many secrets hitherto unknown to the outside world. Western educated Chinese have also proved equal to the task of interpreting China to us. Even the Oracle Bone Inscriptions of the Shang dynasty have been deciphered by Chinese scholars shedding more light on early Chinese civilization. The West can take pride in a Giles, Brandt, Rockhill, Karlgren, Beal and Watters,–masters of Chinese script and language; but India, despite her two thousand years old cultural relations, has not produced a single scholar in modern times who can rightly claim the title of Master in Chinese language and in its script. There are a few students these days who have taken to Chinese studies. But they have to pursue their studies for years before they obtain some knowledge of the script and the language. The Government of India sent some of these students to China for language studies, and they returned to India after two years. They learnt the Chinese language for two years through the Yale system. Our knowledge of China is lamentably superficial compared to the ocean of knowledge accumulated Western scholars. In the olden days, there were several Indian monks who had lived in China and learnt the language. They translated several Mahayanist Buddhist Sanskrit texts into Chinese. The Sanskrit originals of these Buddhist texts have been lost to India, either by the ravages of time or by foreign invasions.

The language reform movement in China initiated daring the early days of the Chinese Republic is an important phase in the life of the Chinese nation directed towards progress and national unity. Two names prominently associated with the movement are those of Dr. Hu Shih and Mr. Y. C. James Yen. Hu Shih advocated the adoption of the spoken language–the Pai-Hua–as the uniform language for education and literary composition. China has one written language, but two forms of literary composition, the classical and the plain. The exponents of Pai-Hua contended that it was an effective medium for educating the masses. James Yen inaugurated the Mass Education Movement for promoting literacy by means of Thousand character lessons. Both these reform movements received official support but lacked, popular approval. Opponents contended that the Chinese characters were unsuited for mass education. Hu Shih himself later admitted that the Pai Hua had merely been of help to a few intellectuals.

While the struggle between various groups of language reformers was in progress, Chinese intellectuals in the Soviet Union created a new Chinese alphabet in the Latinised script called the Sin-Wenz. It was first introduced among the Chinese in Russia. Text-books were also published in the Sin-Wenz. This movement gradually spread among the masses in Nationalist China. But the Government interdicted it and confiscated its literature. Many of its leaders were arrested and imprisoned. One of its top-rank leaders was shot dead by reactionaries. However, the Sin-Wenz movement won the enthusiastic support of popular leaders and litterateurs like the late celebrated Lu Hsun, the great master of Chinese ideographs in modern China. Lu Hsun strongly advocated the adoption of Sin-Wenz, or the New Writing as it is called in China. He also demanded Latinisation of all regional languages for the speedy elimination of illiteracy. Lu Hsun had said that if the ideographs were not destroyed, China would surely perish. Several years and much money were required to acquire some knowledge of the Chinese script. The masses, Lu Hsun contended, worked for more than thirteen hours a day and they had neither money nor time to learn the Chinese characters. What the masses wanted was a new phonetic writing, a new writing without the nuisance of tones, a new writing that dealt with all the regional languages. Sin-Wenz, Lu-Hsun asserted, met these requirements. This movement, therefore, received the unstinted support of several intellectuals including Madam Sun Yat-Sen, Dr. Sun-Fo, Dr. Hu Shih, Mr. Ko Mo-Joe, the late Tsai Yuan-Pei and Dr. H. C. Chen, a veteran educationist of Hongkong.

The two-fold object of the language reform movement in China as in India is the elimination of illiteracy and the strengthening of national unity. Of the forty-five crores of Chinese, over ninety per cent are illiterate even today. Therefore, the Latinxua and the Sin-Wenz may ultimately influence the linguistic policy of the new Communist Government, although it is yet too early to say anything about it. With the probable adoption of Sin-Wenz in Communist China, Soviet Russia’s literary and cultural conquest of China would become a reality.