fi on the Chinese language. Sept. 12. 



the characters themselves, the sounds of them (as 

 nearly as he could represent them by our letters) 

 and an exact verbal translation of them, from which 

 you will immediately observe, that in this sentence, 

 consisting of twelve characters only, one of them, 

 ■which answers to our word thing, is repeated four 

 times, and so makes a third part of the whole *. 



Rendered into good Englifh it would run thus : 

 " In fliape it is square, and it is hard and black ; 



and though it is ugly in appearance, yet it is of great: 



use." 



London, Fd. j8. 1775. 



The circumstance that 1 would most wifh to know 

 is, whether in oral exprefsion a mode of phraseology 

 similar to the above translation be adopted, which 

 I scarcely think pofsible. If it be not, then it must 

 happen that in China the written language is a thing 

 totally different from tlie oral, and that of course the 

 reader must be obliged, as he goes along, to translate 

 it, as it were, from the im-itten into the oral lan- 

 guage. Some elucidations on this subject would 

 prove very interesting. 



• The Chinese characters are omitte(i. for want of types of that kind. 



■f There are several rem irks would have occurred espccting thtjirm 

 of t'. e o. <g'.nal Chine&e characters^ could I have inserted theoi, but these 

 i must osa^t. 



