20 Mr. Du Ponceau on some Points connected 



French character faimerois, without knowing the Frencli mode 

 of conjugating verbs ? How would a Latin phrase be under- 

 stood by an Englishman or Frenchman, merely by means of 

 signs appropriate to each word ? Our ideas, independent of 

 speech, are vague, fleeting, and confused ; language alone fixes 

 them, and not in the same manner with every nation. Some 

 languages take in a group of ideas and express them in one 

 word ; others analyse a single idea, and have a separate word 

 for each minute part of which it is composed. Some take an 

 idea as it were in front, others in profile, and others in the rear ; 

 and hence the immense variety of forms and of modes of ex- 

 pression diat exists in the different languages of the earth. 

 All languages abound in metaphors and elliptical modes of 

 speech, which vary according to the genius of each particular 

 idiom. In no language are these figures more frequent than 

 in the Chinese, which is admitted to be elliptical in the highest 

 degree, and is full of far-fetched metaphorical expressions. 

 For instance, the grandees of the empire are called the Jour 

 seas {qicattior maria), to express which the Chinese writing has 

 two chai'acters, one for quatuor and the other for maria^ which 

 is very distant from the idea of superiority or greatness. I ask 

 how these characters can be understood or read in a language 

 that has not adopted the same mode of expression ? Again : 

 the English phrase, " / do not expect it" is rendered in Chi- 

 nese by " ho-w dare!" and the sentence " What ijou are alarmed 

 about is not of much importance" is thus expressed : " You tJiis 

 one bother not greatly required*." It would be difficult to 

 read this intelligibly in any language but the Chinese, or one 

 formed exactly on the same mode), and in every respect ana- 

 logous to it. Nor could the corresponding literal English 

 phrases be read intelligibly in Chinese, for want of similar 

 turns of expression and grammatical forms. 



A purely ideographical language, therefore, unconnected 

 with spoken words, cannot in my opinion possibly exist ; there 

 is no universal standard for the fixation of ideas ; we cannot 

 abstract our ideas from the channel in which language has 

 taught them to run : hence the Chinese writing is and can be 

 nothing else than a servile representation of the spoken lan- 

 guage, as far as visible signs can be made to represent audible 

 sounds. I defy all the philosophers of Europe to frame a 

 written language (as they are pleased to call it) that will not 

 bear a direct and close analogy to some one of the oral lan- 

 guages which they have previously learned. It will be Eng- 

 lish, Latin, French, Greek, or whatever else they may choose ; 

 but it will not be an original written idiom, in which ideas 



* Morrison's Chinese Dialogues, vii. 197- 



will 



