Oct. 8, We have noticed in our notes fon Chinese Personalities that Mr, Tsai Yuan-pet, who, until recently, held the office of Minister of Education has issued a notice that his Board had been engaged for two years in devising a system romanized spelling suitable for representing the sounds of the Chinese language by the western alphabet and this is intended to be used in teaching the primary grades in the nation schools, The difficulty of the Chinese written Janguage is patent to everyone who has ever glanced at a Chinese book. The characters look like a dense forest of complicated symbols in which the hardy adventurer likely to lose himself before he has penetrated very far into its depths. It is true that sinolotell us that the language wonderfully flexible in spite of the apparent rigidity of its construction, But no foreigner has ever yet mastered its. intrioacies so far as to be able to write a wen-chang, an essay, in classical style. There are a number of savants who could, fon occasion, write a letter in chai be recognizable meaning to a Chinese But these men would, themselves, be the first to admit that the style of their composition would hardly bear comparison with that of a scholar in normal school. The language is. certainly difficult to master. It is probable that Chinese, and indeed all, writing commenced with rude pictures scrawled by prehistoric man and, from these pictographs, developed ultimate-into phonetic signs. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are pice fograms in process of transformation into symbols indic: ing the sound of the word represented by signs that give no indication of their phonetic value. A very large phonetic element has crept into the formation of the characters but years ago, it promulgated. the Chu-yin phonetic system in an effort to standardize pronunciation throughout the whole of China. That system had to be taught in all government schools and though it did some good and Mr. Wang Chen-ting, Minister, for Foreign Affairs, in a cent speech, claimed that it had [good results, it was not an unqualified success. It used simplified characters, or, rather, fragments of characters as phonetic signs instead of the Roman alphabet which it is now proposed to introduce. This is the principle on which the Japanese "kana" phonetic, which also introduced by' Buddhists, is founded. The has been of tremendous educational influence in the primary schools of Japan. So much so that the "Lomaji" Roman alphabet has not made headway against it. The Chu-yin has familiarized thou-nds of Chinese students with phonetic principle of spelling words by a system of signi and its promoters, apparently, now feel that it is possible to go a step further and introduce, Roman letters.
This is a decided advance, for missionary—we think it was Arthur Smith—once said No nation can progress very far until it has learned to say ABC." Kemal: -Pasha has decreed that Turkey shall abolish the Arabic signs it now in writing and follow the! European usage of printing in Roman type. Kemal Pasha, like Amanullah Khan, is an autocrat and the sight' of reverend Mullahs, sitting on the ground, laboriously forming a.b.c. on sand plate would be almost as amusing as gentleman of the same type coming to the Afghan council chamber in frock coats and starched shirts. In any ease, the introduction of a Romanized system for China will open a wide door to the illiterates in this country and make it possible for many. them to learn to read and: write their own language. it is so erratic that it cannot be relied upon, and yet the Chines language seems peculiarly ssu: ceptible to representation by an script. It is does not con-ound that cannot be represented by five letters. There" are, thus, no long, difficult polysyllabie words. needs no diacritic marks except the aspirate which Is indicated by an inverted comma as—! Chang, Chang. The tones are 4 difficulty but they can be in-chated by circles, by numeral or by a simple horizontal, perpendicular or sloping dash over the written word. It is seldom that a tone would require to be indicated as a Chinese says, reads, the word, unconsciously slying the correct tone; he cannot say it wrongly. +Kang-hsi's dictionary spells unfamiliar characters by a system of initial and final sounds which was probably introduced by Buddhist priests from India who were familiar with thei own phonetic writings.. This system has been followed by every romanized script devised by foreigners for convenience in studying the language. It is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.