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Updated: May 2, 2025
There are, for example, forty thousand word-signs, all different, in the Chinese language, and to represent these signs there must be separate, movable type-pieces. It is said that it takes a long period of time to distribute the type and lay out "the case." The typesetter must know the word by sight to tell its meaning, otherwise he will make serious blunders.
But wine and companionship had always the effect of inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found himself struggling with the too vast energy of the new language, as it passed through the heated brain of Syme. "We must have several word-signs," said Syme seriously "words that we are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is 'coeval'. What's yours?"
My friend Doctor Tenney, of the American Legation in Peking, asserts that at least five years of the average Chinese pupil's school life might be saved if the language were based on an alphabet like ours instead of on such arbitrary word-signs.
Meanwhile Tom and the young Indian who, whether that was his real Indian name or not, was called Long Hair had become quite intimate. Nevertheless, not many words passed between them, for Long Hair was more reticent, if possible, than the rest of his company. But without word-signs they managed to understand each other. Long Hair, indeed, appeared to read Tom's thoughts intuitively, and Mrs.
There is another obstacle in the way of a Chinese newspaper of liberal views, like the "Chung Sai Yat Po." It cannot get its type from China, as the Government is opposed to every reform paper. The type for such a journal is cast in a Japanese foundry in Yokohama. It is said that about ten thousand word-signs are used in the printing of the newspaper.
"Why," cried he, "they look like a stenographer's word-signs." "Good!" said Ashton-Kirk. "And that, my dear fellow, is exactly what they are. There, scrawled erratically in dripping tallow, is a three word sentence in Benn Pitman's phonetic characters. It is roughly done, and may have occupied some minutes; but it is well done, and in excellent German. I'll write it out for you."
It would be just about as sensible to teach a pupil to repeat the sounds of the Chinese language by reading the Chinese word-signs, but without comprehending the meaning of the sounds and signs. Is it any wonder that beginners lose interest in their work, and refuse to practise except when compelled to do so?
The Chinese system of writing comprises more than forty thousand separate symbols, each a different word. It requires the memorizing of at least three thousand word-signs to read and write their language. The national phonetic script is made up of sixty distinct characters that answer to our twenty-four.
Nor does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode. But they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed seven hundred sheets per hour that, until the introduction of steam, they far outstripped Europeans.
A poem is not primarily a series of printed word-signs addressed to the eye; it is a series of sounds addressed to the ear, and the arbitrary symbols for these sounds do not convey the poem unless they are audibly rendered except to those readers who, like the skilled readers of printed music, can instantly hear the indicated sounds without any actual rendition of them into physical tone.
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