ON THE CHINESE SYSTEM OF WRITING. 21 



very gratifying to me to know whether the inferences that I have drawn from 

 it are justified by a full comparison of the two languages and their system of 

 writing, made by such a master hand as that of your correspondent. It would 

 show clearly whether and how far the Chinese characters, as applied by the 

 two nations to their respective idioms, can serve as a common medium of com- 

 munication between them, when they are ignorant of each others' spoken 

 language. 



From the lights that we possess it would appear that the languages of China 

 and Cochinchina, though both monosyllabic, and having the same grammatical 

 structure, are yet very different from each other. That there are in the latter 

 a number of Chinese words more or less corrupted cannot be denied; but the 

 mass of the language shows clearly that the two nations cannot understand one 

 another when speaking. The same difference appears in the written charac- 

 ters; they have been originally Chinese, and many of them remain such, but 

 a great number are so altered in their form as not to be recognised, while those, 

 the form of which has not been varied, are either differently combined or asso- 

 ciated together, or are applied to represent words different from those which 

 they express in Chinese; and what is most remarkable is, that, in many 

 instances, they have been applied to words which, in Chinese and Cochinchi- 

 nese, have the same sound, but not the same meaning. From this I would 

 naturally conclude that the two nations cannot understand each other in 

 writing any more than orally, at least to any considerable extent. 



There can be no doubt that those nations are all of the same race, and 

 descended from the same stock. It also clearly appears that civilization and 

 the art of writing was introduced into the land of Annam by the Chinese ; but 

 the Annamites have been so long independent of the Celestial Empire, if ever 

 they were subjected to it, that it is not extraordinary that their language and 

 their writing should have experienced considerable changes in the course of 

 so many ages. 



That being the case, it will be asked : How comes it, then, that the Cochin- 

 chinese and the Chinese understand each other in writing, though they cannot 

 by word of mouth? The enthusiasts attribute this to some mysterious virtue 

 in the Chinese characters; to their permanent perspicuity, as Dr. Marshman 

 expresses it; but the philosopher seeks for more natural causes; he knows that 

 writing was invented to be the representation of some oral language, and it is 



VII. — F 



