The Progress of Ethnology

Learning is highly honored in Japan, and books are as cheap and common as in China. The written language is a singular and most difficult mixture of Chinese characters, with the syllabic symbols adopted by the Japanese, rendering its perusal a great labor, more so than that of Chinese, because Chinese must first be mastered. The spoken language is polysyllabic and harmonious, and possesses conjugations, tenses, cases, &c., to facilitate its perspicuity, and increase its variety of expressions. The arts in which they chiefly excel are in the manufacture of silken and linen goods, copper-ware, lackered-ware, porcelain and basket work. Their cutlery is despicable, and the specimens of their carving, which are seen abroad, do not equal those produced by the Chinese. Agriculture is pursued on much the same system as in China – minute subdivision of the soil and constant manuring, together with frequent watering. Rice and fish are the staples of food; vegetables are used in great abundance, but meats only sparingly. The habits and sports of the people are influenced so much by the peculiar notions attending a feudal society, such as adherence to the local prince, and maintenance of his honor, wearing coats of arms, privileged orders, and hereditary titles, that there is little similarity in the state of society in Japan and China, notwithstanding a similar religion and literature. The Japanese were called the Spaniards of the East by Xavier, and the comparison is good at this day. They have, perhaps, more genius and imagination than the Chinese, but are not as peaceable or industrious.

General view of the languages of the Japanese, Coreans, Chinese and Cochinchinese. The four nations here briefly noticed; viz., the Japanese, Coreans, Chinese and Cochinchinese, have been collectively called the Chinese language nations, from the peculiar relations and connections they have had through the medium of that language. The relation has throughout been one of a literary character, fostered to some extent by religious prejudices, but depending chiefly for its permanence and extension upon the superiority of the writings of the Chinese. It is, in some respects, without a parallel in the history of man. While European languages have all been indebted for many of their words to the two leading ancient tongues of that continent, their bases have been diverse, and the words they have imported from Greek and Latin have undergone various changes, so much so as sometimes hardly to be recognized. This is not the case with these four nations of eastern Asia. They have all adopted the characters used by the leading nation without alteration, and with them, of course, have to a very great degree, taken her authors, her books, her knowledge and her opinions, as their own.

One of the most observable features of the national character of the Chinese, is its conservative inclinations. Not only is it seen in the actions of government and in the writings of scholars, but still more in the habits of the people and their modes of thinking. It has been cherished by that government, as it is by all governments, as a sure and safe principle of preservation, but it is also advocated by the people. The geographical position of China has isolated it from all western nations, while the political, literary and social superiority of its people over the contiguous nations, has combined to foster their conceit and affectation of supremacy, and make them disinclined to have any intimate or equal relations with others. But one of the strongest and most comprehensive of these conservative influences has arisen from the nature of the language, strengthened by the extent to which education has been diffused among the people. The language is of such a character, combining mystery and difficulty with elegance and ingenuity, as greatly to captivate a people who have time and inclination to trace out the marks and veins on the pavement in the temple of science, but not the invention or investigation to seek out and explore its hidden chambers. The character of this language and the nature of the connection between the nations who use it, may here be briefly exhibited.

The Chinese ascribe the invention of their characters to Tsang Kieh, one of the principal ministers or scholars in the reign of Hwangti, about 2650 years before Christ; and although there is no very certain information recorded respecting their origin, there is nothing which seems to be fabulous or supernatural. The characters first depicted were the common objects in nature and art, as the sun, rain, man, parts of the body, animals, a house, &c., and were probably drawn sufficiently accurate to be detected without much if any explanation. They were all described in outline, and generally with far less completeness than the Egyptian symbols. It is not known how many of the primitive characters were made, but one feature attached to them all, – none of them contained any clue to the sound. The inventors must necessarily, one would suppose, have soon perceived this radical defect in their symbols, but they either saw the incompatibility of uniting the phonetic and pictorial modes, or else were so pleased with their varied pictures and symbols, that they cared very little how the reader acquired the sounds. At first, too perhaps, the number of persons who spoke this language was so small, that there was little difficulty in making them all acquainted with the meaning of the symbols, and when once their meaning was learned, they were of course called by the name of the thing represented, which everybody knew. The necessity of incorporating some clue to the sound of the thing, or idea denoted, became more and more evident, however, as the variety of the symbols multiplied, and the number of people increased. One of the strongest evidences, that the designing of these symbols was contemporary with the earliest days of the Chinese as a people, is deduced from the fact that they are all monosyllabic; the radical words in all languages are mostly of this character, but in nearly all others, the single sounds soon coalesce and combine, while in Chinese this has been prevented by the nature of the written language. There is not, so far as the nature of the case goes, any reason why the sounds of Chinese characters should all be monosyllabic, any more than the Arabic numerals. But not only was the increase of inhabitants, as we suppose, a reason for making the symbols phonetic, the need of reducing the labor of learning the ever growing list, and the difficulty of distinguishing between species of the same genus and things of the same sort, was a still stronger motive. This was done by the combination of a leading type with some other well understood character, chosen quite arbitrarily, but possessing the same sound as the new object to be represented. Thus, supposing a new fish called pih was to be represented by a character; by taking the symbol for fish and joining it to any well known character pronounced pih, no matter what was its meaning, the compound symbol clearly expressed, to those who understood its elementary parts, the fish pih. But neither does this compound contain any more clue to its sound to those unacquainted with the component elements, than its marks and hooks do of its meaning to those who have never learned them. When once the form and meaning of the primitive symbols have been learned, however, the meaning and sounds of the compound ones can, in many cases, be inferred to a greater or less degree; but so varied has been the principle of combination, that no dependence can be placed upon such etymologies for the meaning. In the various mutations the written language has undergone, the sound is not now so certain as it was probably at first; but in the majority of characters, it can be inferred with a considerable degree of certainty, though the idea is exhibited so indefinitely as to afford almost no assistance in guessing at it. A dictionary is indispensable in ascertaining the meaning, and almost as necessary to learn the sound of all Chinese characters. The meaning can be explained without any greater trouble than in other languages, but the sounds of characters can only be given by quoting other characters of the same sound, which the scholar is supposed to know, if he knows enough to use the dictionary.

These remarks will, perhaps, explain the general composition of Chinese characters. By far the greater part of them are now formed, either of the original pictorial symbols, greatly modified, indeed, and changed from their likeness to the things they stand for, or of those joined to each other in a compound character, partly symbolical and partly phonetic. The former part is called the radical, the latter the primitive. The Chinese divide the characters into six classes, viz., imitative symbols, or those original figures which bore a resemblance to the forms of material objects; indicative symbols, where the position of the two parts point out the idea; symbols combining ideas, a class not very unlike the preceding, but more complex; inverted symbols; metaphoric symbols, as that of the natural heart, denoting the affections; and lastly, phonetic symbols. Out of twenty-four thousand two hundred and thirty-five characters, (nearly all the different ones there are in the language), twenty-one thousand eight hundred and ten of them are phonetic, or as much so as the nature of their composition would allow, though there is no other clue to the sound than to learn the sound of the parts or of the whole, either from the people themselves or from a dictionary. The Chinese tyro learns the sounds of most of the characters, as boys do the names of minerals, by tradition. As he stands before his master, he and the whole class hear from his mouth their names, and repeat them until they are remembered. Consequently, almost an infinite variety in the sounds of the characters arise from this mode of learning them, while the meanings remain fixed; though there still remains enough resemblance in the sounds to show their common origin, as, bien, meen, mien, and meeng, all meaning the face, and written with the same character. The local differences in pronunciation are so great within a few hundred miles, in some parts of China, that the people barely understand each other when they speak; and even in two towns fifty miles apart, the local patois can be detected, though the dissimilarity is not so great as to prevent their inhabitants conversing together. For purposes of intercourse among civilians, who being from distant parts of the empire, might otherwise find considerable difficulty in making themselves understood if each spoke his own local patois, there is a court dialect which not only civilians, but all educated men are obliged or expected to understand. This is the common pronunciation over the northeastern provinces of Chihli, Shantung, Nganhwui, and Kiangsu, and somewhat in the contiguous provinces also, though everywhere in these regions with some slight local variations. This dialect is called kwan hwa, and has been usually termed the mandarin109 dialect, but it is properly the Chinese spoken language, and the variations from it are the dialects and patois. It is evident, however, that one sound of a character is no more correct than another; for there being no sound in any character, each one calls it as he has been taught, while all give it the same meaning, exactly as Europeans do with the numerals. Of course, no one can read or write Chinese before he has studied it, and the apparent singularity of people from China, Japan, and Annam all being able to communicate by writing but not converse by speech, is easily explained by the different sounds they give the characters. It is, however, really no more singular than that scholars in all Christian nations understand each others' music and arithmetic, after they have learned those sciences and the mode of notation.

The diversity of pronunciations tends naturally to break up the nation into small communities, and the Chinese owe their present homogeneity and grandeur in no small degree to their written language; for, however, a man may differ in his speech, he is sure that he will be everywhere understood when he writes, and will understand every one who writes to him. It has also been a bond of union from its extensive literature, at once the pride of its own scholars, and the admiration of surrounding nations. It is perhaps owing to the fact that the literature of China contains the canons of the Budhist religion and the ethics of Confucius, that it was adopted by the Japanese, Coreans and Annamese. These nations have taken the characters of the Chinese language, and given them such names as pleased them. In Japan and Corea, there has been no uniform rule of adoption, but the Annamese, who formerly had more intimate connexions with China than at present, approach much nearer to the sounds spoken by the Chinese.

The nature of the relations between these three nations and China, therefore, somewhat resembles that which European nations, we may suppose, now would have towards ancient Greece and Rome, if they still existed as independent powers, and should be visited by scholars from the shores of the Baltic, whose native countries, however, had risen no higher in civilization and morals than their source. The comparison is not complete in all respects, but near enough for analogy. The Japanese have never paid tribute to China, but have been invaded by her armies, and in their turn have ravaged the eastern coasts of the continent. The isolated policy their rulers have adopted, has prevented our tracing those philological comparisons between their original language and those of Siberia or central Asia, which would elucidate its origin. The Japanese up to the time of the sixteenth daïri, named Ouzin Tenwo, had no written character, all the orders of government being proclaimed viva voce. In the year B.C. 284, this monarch sent an embassy to the southern part of Corea, to obtain learned persons who could introduce the civilization and literature of China into his dominions, and obtained Wonin, who fulfilled the royal wishes so satisfactorily, that the Japanese have since accorded him divine honors. Since his day, the Chinese characters have been employed among the Japanese. However, as the construction of the Japanese language differs materially from that of the Chinese, and as the same Chinese character has many meanings, which would be expressed by different words in the native Japanese, confusion and difficulty arose in the use of the symbolic characters. But it was not until the eighth century, that a remedy was provided by the invention of a syllabary, a middle contrivance, partaking chiefly of the nature of an alphabet but containing some traces of hieroglyphics. The characters of this syllabary were formed by taking Chinese characters, either in whole or in part, and using them phonetically, but as indivisible syllables. Consequently, every one of them contained a vowel sound, rendering the language very euphonous. The characters in this syllabary were called katakana, i. e. "parts of letters." There were at first forty-seven, but another was added some years after in order to express the final n, as ma-mo-ra-n, instead of ma-mo-ra-nu, making forty-eight, the present number. This syllabary and that invented for the Cherokees by Guess, are the only two in the world. The number of sounds has been increased from forty-eight to seventy-three, by the addition of diacritical marks to some of the syllables. This syllabary enabled the Japanese to express the sounds of their vernacular without difficulty. But the long use of the Chinese had already introduced a great number of sounds from that language into it, besides giving the people a liking for the elegant and ingenious combinations of that unwieldy medium of thought, so that the scholars in the country still cultivated the more difficult language, and wrote their books in it. The incorporation of Chinese sounds into the native Japanese, seems to have arisen from the necessity of distinguishing between the various meanings of the Chinese character, so that while the native word would express one, the original sound would express another, but the unchangeable symbol stand for both to the eye.

The admiration of the Chinese characters, led in time to the invention of a second syllabary, having the same sounds but far more difficult to learn from the number of characters in it and their complicated forms. It is called hirakana, or "equal writing," because it is intelligible without the addition of Chinese characters; it is now the common medium of communication, in epistolary composition of all kinds, story books, and other everyday uses. There are one hundred and one characters in the hirakana, or nearly three modes of writing each of the forty-eight syllables, and they are run together as rapidly and far more fancifully than in our own running-hand, when that is compared with the Roman character. The characters are mostly contractions of Chinese characters used simply as phonetic symbols, without any more reference to their meaning than in the katakana. The more ancient of the two is now usually employed in dictionaries, by the side of Chinese characters in books to explain them to the reader, or at their bottom to indicate the case of the word. In reading a Chinese book, a good Japanese scholar makes a kind of running translation into his own vernacular, sometimes giving the sound, and sometimes giving the sense, and the katakana is used in the latter case, to indicate the tense, or case of the native word. Having the Chinese language as well as its native stores to draw from, the Japanese is both copious and flexible, and by its syllabic construction, also euphonious and mellifluous, in these respects being far superior to the Chinese. The following stanza is from one of the Dutch writers; it is written with thirty-one syllables.

Kokorodani makotono,Michi ni kanai naba,Inorazu totemo kamiyaMamoran.

There are still two other syllabaries, one called Manyo-kana, and the other Yamato-kana, both of which are formed of still more complicated Chinese characters, also used phonetically. Neither of these syllabaries is generally used entirely alone, but the three are joined together or interchanged somewhat according to the fancy of the writer, in a manner similar to Archdeacon Wrangham's famous echo poem. Such a complicated mode of writing has this unfortunate result, however, of so seriously obstructing the avenues to the temple of science, that the greatest part of the common people are unable to enter, and must be content with admiring the structure afar off. Most of them content themselves with learning to write and read in the hirakana, and get as much knowledge of Chinese as will enable them to read the names of places, signs, people, &c., for which those characters are universally used. Besides the phonetic use of Chinese characters in these syllabaries, they are employed very extensively as words, with their own meanings, partly because they are more nervous and expressive in the estimation of the writer than the vernacular, and partly to show his learning and shorten his labor. Commonly, characters so used are called by their Japanese meanings, but sometimes too by their Chinese names.110

The connection between the Chinese and Japanese, therefore, is very intimate, and presents a curious instance of assimilation between a symbolic and syllabic language, though at the cost of much hard study and labor to acquire the mongrel compound. It is another example of Asiatic toil upon the media of thought, rather than investigations in the world of thought and science itself; for no people who possessed invention, research, or science, would ever have encumbered themselves with so burdensome a vehicle of communication. The Chinese do not attend to the Japanese language, and have no knowledge of its structure, or the principles on which it has combined with their own. Their intercourse with Japan is entirely commercial; that of the Japanese with them, chiefly literary.

The Coreans have also adopted the Chinese character, but without many of the elaborate modifications in use among the Japanese. They have had more intercourse with the Chinese, but have not been able to make their polysyllabic words assimilate with the monosyllables of the Chinese. They have invented an alphabet, the letters of which combine to form syllables, and these syllabic compounds are then used like the Japanese characters to express their own words. The original letters consist of fifteen consonants, called ka, na, ta, la or ra, ma or ba, pa, sa or sha, nga, tsa or cha, ts´a or ch´a, k´a, t´a, p´a, ha, and wa; and eleven vowels, a, ya, o, yo, oh, yoh, ú, yú, u, í, and âh. The combinations of these form altogether one hundred and sixty-eight syllables, the last fourteen of which are triply combined by introducing the sound of w between the consonants and some of the vowels, as kwa, ts´hwo, &c. The sounds and meanings of Chinese characters are expressed in this syllabary in the duoglott works prepared by the Coreans for learning Chinese; while it is used by itself in works intended for the natives. The Coreans have not, like the Japanese, unnecessarily increased the difficulty of their own language by employing a great number of signs for the same sound, but are content with one series. It is to be hoped that this facility results in a greater diffusion of knowledge among the people. The Japanese have the inflections of cases, moods, tenses and voices, in their language; but these features are denoted in Corean by the collocation of the words, and the words themselves remain unchanged as in Chinese. The sounds of the Corean are pleasant, and both it and the Japanese allow many alterations and elisions for the sake of euphony. Further investigation will probably show some connection originally between the Corean and Manchu languages, though the former of these has been more modified by the Chinese than the latter.111

The people of Annam have adopted the Chinese characters without making a syllabary or alphabet to express their own vernacular. The inhabitants of this country are evidently of the same race as the Chinese, and now acknowledge a nominal subjection to the emperor of China by sending a triennial embassy to Peking, partly commercial and partly tributary. The sounds given to the Chinese characters are, however, so unlike those given them in China, that the two nations cannot converse with each other. The Annamese have many sounds in their spoken language which no Chinese can enunciate. The court dialect is learned by educated men, and books are written and printed in Chinese. The sounds given to the characters are all monosyllabic, and slight analogies can be traced running through the variations; but they offer very little assistance to any one, who, knowing only one mode of pronunciation, wishes to learn the other.

Much of the interest connected with the investigation of the Chinese and its cognate tongues, arises from the immense multitudes which speak and write them; and from the influence which China has, through the writings of her sages, exerted over the minds and progress of her neighbors. There is nothing like it in European history; but the spell cast over the intellects of the millions in eastern Asia, by the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and their disciples, is likely erelong to be broken by the infusion of Christian knowledge, the extension of commerce, and a better understanding of their political and social rights by the multitudes who now adopt them.

For much of the information embraced in this memoir on China, Japan, and the adjacent countries, I am indebted to the Chinese Repository, (a monthly journal printed at Canton), and more especially to one of its accomplished editors, Mr. S. Wells Williams. This gentleman during a residence of twelve years in China, has made himself familiar with the written and spoken language of the Chinese, and is ranked, by some of the eminent Sinologists of Europe, among the profoundest adepts in that branch of literature and philology. Mr. Williams has also studied the Japanese language, which he reads and speaks; and is probably the only man in America familiar with the languages of China and Japan. Several natives of Japan, driven by adverse winds from their native shores, found their way to China, and were subsequently taken by an American ship to Yedo, but were not permitted to land. From these men, Mr. Williams has learned the spoken Japanese, and as much of the written language as they could impart. This gentleman is at present in New York making arrangements for getting founts of Chinese, Japanese, and Manchu type, for printing in these languages.