Chinese Language

V

Writing System

The Chinese written language is of an old and conservative type that assigns a single distinctive symbol, or character, to each syllable. Knowledge of 3,000 to 4,000 characters is needed to read newspapers, and a large dictionary contains more than 40,000 characters (arranged according to sound or form). The oldest discovered texts are oracular sayings incised on tortoise shells and cattle scapulae by court diviners of the Shang dynasty beginning in the early 14th century bc; these are the so-called oracle-bone inscriptions. Although the writing system has since been standardized and stylistically altered, its principles and many of its symbols remain fundamentally the same.

Like other scripts of ancient origin, Chinese is derived from picture writing. It grew into a word-by-word representation of language when it was discovered that words too abstract to be readily pictured could be indicated by their sound rather than their sense. Unlike other scripts, however, Chinese still works pictographically as well as phonetically. Moreover, its sound indications have not been adapted to changes of pronunciation but have remained keyed to the pronunciation of 3,000 years ago. The building blocks of the system are several hundred pictographs for such basic words as man, horse, and axe. In addition, expanded, or compound, pictographs exist. For example, a symbol of this type representing a man carrying grain means “harvest,” and thus “year” (nian).

Phonetic loans are pictographs of concrete words borrowed to indicate abstract words of the same or similar sound. The principle here is that of the rebus, or visual pun. Thus, the pictograph for dustpan (ji) was borrowed for this, his, her, its (qi or ji). Through the Zhou period (11th century to 3rd century bc) many characters had such a dual use. If at that time the scribes had agreed that only the “dustpan” pictograph would stand for any syllable pronounced ji, they would have discovered the principle of the phonetic syllabary, precursor of the alphabet. Because of the great number of homonyms in Chinese, however, scribes instead retreated to picture writing. The picture of the dustpan came to be used exclusively for his, her, its. In the rarer instances when scribes actually meant to refer to a dustpan, however, they avoided ambiguity by employing a compound symbol in which “dustpan” had added to it the pictograph, or signific, for “bamboo,” representing the material from which dustpans were made. This process for reducing the ambiguity of phonetic loans became in time a process by which any pictograph, borrowed for its sound, could be joined to any other chosen to indicate the meaning, forming a phonetic/signific compound. Thus, “dustpan,” with the addition of an “earth” signific instead of “bamboo,” indicated ji, ”base, foundation.” Today, simple pictographs continue to be used for some of the most basic vocabulary—home, mother, child, rice, fire. Perhaps 95 percent of the words in the dictionary are written with phonetic/signific compounds, however.

To express modern concepts, Chinese generally makes use of equivalents from its native stock of meaningful syllables or renders such terms in phonetic spelling. Thus, chemistry is expressed in Chinese as “study of transformations.”

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Qin Shihuangdi (Ch’in Shih-huang-ti), first emperor of a unified China, suppressed many regional scripts and enforced a simplified, standardized writing called the Small Seal. In the Han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220) this developed into the Clerical, Running, Draft, and Standard scripts. Printed Chinese is modeled on the Standard Script. Cursive or rapid writing (the Running and Draft scripts) introduced many abbreviated characters used in artistic calligraphy and in commercial and private correspondence, but it was long banned from official documents. The printing of abbreviated characters is still forbidden in Taiwan but has become the normal practice in the People's Republic of China and Singapore.

VI

Methods of Transliteration

In the English-speaking world, since 1892, Chinese words (except personal and place names) have usually been transliterated according to a phonetic spelling system called Wade-Giles romanization, propounded by British Orientalists Sir Thomas Wade and Herbert Giles. Personal names were romanized according to individual wishes, however, and place names followed the nonsystematic spellings of the Chinese Post Office. Since 1958 another phonetic romanization known as pinyin (spelling) has had official standing in the People's Republic of China, where it is used for telegrams and in primary education. Replacement of the traditional characters by pinyin has been advocated but is unlikely to be carried through completely because of the threat it poses to literature and historical documentation in the classical language. Simplification of the sound system through time, with the resultant homonyms, has made the terse classical style unintelligible when transcribed in an alphabetic script. Since January 1, 1979, Xinhua (New China News Agency) has used pinyin in all dispatches to foreign countries. The United States government, many scholarly publications, and newspapers such as the New York Times have also adopted the pinyin system, as has this encyclopedia.

VII

Development of the Language

The modern Chinese dialects (from the 11th century ad) evolved from Old, or Archaic, Chinese (8th century to 3rd century bc), the sounds of which have been tentatively reconstructed. Although monosyllabic, Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. The next stage of Chinese that has been carefully analyzed was Middle, or Ancient, Chinese (to about the 11th century ad). By this time the rich sound system of Old Chinese had progressed far toward the extreme simplification seen in the modern dialects. For instance, Old Chinese possessed series of consonants such as p, ph, b, bh (where h stands for aspiration or rough breathing). In Middle Chinese this had become p, ph, bh; in Mandarin only p and ph (now spelled b and p) are left.

The modern Mandarin syllable consists, at the least, of a so-called final element—namely, a vowel (a, e) or semivowel (i, u) or some combination of these (a diphthong or triphthong)—with a tone (level, rising, dipping, or falling) and sometimes a final consonant (an n, ng, or r). Old Chinese, however, had in addition a final p, t, k, b, d, g, and m. The final element may be preceded by an initial consonant but never by a consonant cluster; Old Chinese probably had clusters, as at the beginning of klam and glam.

As sonic distinctions became fewer—for example, as final n absorbed final m, so that syllables such as lam and lan became simply lan—the number of Mandarin syllables different from one another in sound fell to about 1,300. No fewer words existed, but more words were homonyms. Thus, the words for poetry, bestow, moist, lose, corpse, and louse had all been pronounced differently from one another in Middle Chinese; in Mandarin they all become shi in the level tone. In fact, so many homonyms came to exist that ambiguity would have become intolerable if compound words had not been simultaneously developed. Thus, poetry became shi-ge (poetry-song), and teacher became lao-shi (old-teacher). Although a modern Chinese dictionary contains many more such compounds than one-syllable expressions, most of the compounds still break down into independently meaningful syllables.

See also Chinese Literature.

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