Miscellanies. 399 



them differently, using their own language to designate them, and they, 

 as well as the Chinese themselves, have to learn the meaning of the 

 characters from teachers, who explain them in the dialect spoken 

 amongst the people. The dialects spoken by the different nations, 

 who use the Chinese character, are very distinct from the language of 

 China proper. The Koreans and Japanese, whilst they transact all 

 important business in the Chinese character, have a syllabary with 

 which they write their own language. The Cochin Chinese occasion- 

 ally use the Chinese in a contracted form, without any reference to 

 its meaning, to express sounds, but they have no syllabary. 



It is not strictly true that sound is not inherent in the^hinese char- 

 acter. A majority of the signs are not pronounced by the Chinese at 

 random, nor do the nations abandon all analogy in reading them, al- 

 though they vary much. Mr. Gutzlaff has been struck with the ease 

 with which communication may be held with the Cochin Chinese, Jap- 

 anese and Koreans, by means of the Chinese character, even without 

 comprehending a word of their idiom. This, he says, does not refer 

 to the learned classes only, butto the very fishermen and peasants, with 

 some exceptions only. In the Loo Choo Islands, men of distinction 

 talk Chinese with great fluency, but the mass of the people speak a di- 

 alect of the Japanese, and employ the Chinese character as well as the 

 Japanese syllabary. Mr. Gutzlaffconsiders it certain, that the nations 

 who have adopted the Chinese character, attach the same meaning to 

 it as the natives from whom it was originally derived, and that its con- 

 struction is likewise retained with scarcely any alterations. 



The communication of Mr. Du Ponceau is a rejoinder to that of Mr. 

 Gutzlaff. Mr. Du Ponceau repeatedly combats the notion entertained 

 by some, that the superiority of the Chinese alphabet is such that it 

 forms a kind of pasigraphic system, which may be adapted to every 

 language. He admits, to a certain extent, what he was disposed at one 

 time to doubt, that the Chinese characters do actually serve as a means 

 of communication between different nations, who can neither speak 

 nor understand each other's oral language, and he investigates at some 

 length, the causes by which the eft'ect is induced ; but he expresses 

 himself at a loss to understand how the fishermen and peasants of Ja- 

 pan, Korea and Cochin China, "with only some exceptions," can be 

 readily communicated with by means of Chinese characters, even by a 

 person who does not understand a single word of their spoken lan- 

 guage. The remark of Mr. Gutzlaff, he conceives, cannot be meant 

 to imply that all, or nearly all the fishermen and peasants of the coun- 

 tries referred to, can read and write the Chinese ; for, on the author- 

 ity of Mr. Medhurst, there are villages, even on the coast of China, 

 where few, if any, of the inhabitants can either read or write. If, 



