ON THE CHINESE SYSTEM OF WRITING. 27 



nortli and north-west by Chinese Tartary, every where else by the sea, It is 

 tributary to the empire of China. 



We should know very little of the language of that country if it were not 

 for the recent publication of the Rev. Mr. Medhurst, entitled " A Comparative 

 Vocabulary of the Chinese, Corean, and Japanese Languages," compiled by a 

 native of Corea, which has lately made its way into this country. I have had 

 the book but a few days in my possession, through the kindness of my learned 

 friend Mr. Pickering, of Boston, to whom it belongs. I have not, therefore, 

 been able to study it as much as I wished. It is to be regretted that the vene- 

 rable missionary contented himself with publishing a translation of that inte- 

 resting work, to which he added very few observations of his own, from which, 

 and the work itself, I have been able to deduce the following facts. 



Corea, like Japan, has two languages, the one vernacular, the other learned. 

 In the former are written all works intended for common reading; works of 

 higher literature are in the learned idiom. 



The vernacular or popular language has no affinity with either the Chinese 

 or Japanese; it is probably derived from some Tartar dialect. It is not, as far 

 as I can judge, monosyllabic; and yet it does not appear to have words of a 

 greater length than two syllables, but on this I have not had a sufficient oppor- 

 tunity to form a decided opinion. Of its syntax or grammatical forms I can 

 say nothing. It has, like the Sanscrit, an alphabetic syllabary, which, I think, 

 is much superior to that, from its simplicity and clearness. It is not, like the 

 Japanese, formed out of Chinese characters. It consists of fifty-two elementary 

 signs, of which twenty-seven, called initials, are single, double, or aspirated 

 consonants, and twenty-five, called finals, are vowels or diphthongs. I mean 

 diphthongs to the ear, and not to the eye. 



By means of these fifty-two characters, joined or placed close to each other 

 in the most ingenious manner, the six hundred and seventy-five syllables, of 

 which the language consists, are represented, and never leave, as in the 

 Sanscrit, the vowel sounds to be understood. They are so simple in their forms 

 that they may be joined, as we sometimes join in our printed books, the let- 

 ters fi^ ffi, Ji, ffi, &c. Thus the consonant K is written "f , and the conso- 

 nant N thus f-. The sign of the long vowel A is i^. Now the syllable KA 

 is written ff , and the syllable Na ^4. . I know of no other syllabary formed 

 on this simple and elegant model. 



