Chinese calligraphy : an introduction to its aesthetic and technique : with 6 plates and 155 text illustratons

INTRODUCTION

true,—contains more than seventy per cent of words derived from at least ten different languages. Again, Chinese has only monosyllabic words, in which respect it is simpler than German or English, which have words of fifteen or more letters and nine or ten syllables, difficult both to write and to pronounce. And there are other points. Chinese has no such element as accent, a part of the English language which strangers find extremely difficult to learn; nor has it grammatical inflection—no difference in number, gender, case, person, voice, mood, tense, or degree of comparison—not even prefix and suffix. Surely these are advantages? The ordinary affairs of life are complicated enough; most of us wish that we could stretch time to twice its length: if, therefore, we can simplify language to its basic elements, so much, surely, the better for us! Chinese has had simplicity of form from its earliest days. The style of the classical literary language is condensed to the extreme of significant brevity, though from the richness of its content and the grace of its manner we must infer that it passed through a period of purgation (as it might be called) before reaching its present form.

The characters and the construction of the Chinese language are unchanging; time has scarcely affected them. We can read one of the most ancient of all books, ‘ The Book of Changes’ I-Ching (3 #), written in Chinese about three thousand years ago, and then turn to a daily newspaper, and although we certainly find a considerable change in the terms, phrases, facts and ideas, the characters, grammar, and that to which we may give the general term of ‘style’, do not appear strange. How different is the situation of an Englishman of to-day attempting to read one of the Anglo-Saxon poets or the writings

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