MANY eminent philologists suggest a time in the history of human speech when language was monosyllabic, when by a few simple utterances human beings were able to express many things, indicating by gesture or tone which of the words having the same sound was the thing expressed.

Later on we find language developed by the connection of two or three of these root words, agglutinated, or stuck together as one word, by which this obtained a broader meaning. This is the first stage in polysyllabism, and is known as the agglutinative stage. Later, human speech passed into the inflectional stage, where these agglutinated words having coalesced or melted into one, became so changed in time by phonetic corruption that finally it becomes impossible to determine which part was the original root and which the modifying element of the earlier stage.

Of the monosyllabic stage in language, the Chinese is a distinguished example. This language is referred to by many eminent philologists as the most primitive in structure of any living tongue. It is a language of monosyllabic roots, limited in number, these roots possessing neither inflections nor parts of speech. Each word is a root and each root is a word, which in turn may be used, according to its place in a sentence, as a verb, a noun, an adjective, a participle, or some other grammatical form.

In speaking, the Chinese express these homophones by varying tones and gestures. In writing, their meaning is ingeniously explained by the use of two characters. One of these is a phonogram, which gives the sound of the word; the other is an ideogram or picture form, that explains which of the words having this sound is the one indicated. These ideograms are styled “keys,” and later on it will be observed are identical with the determinatives of the Assyrian and Egyptian systems. As an instance of the Chinese use of these keys, is the phonogram, ha. This has eight distinct significations. Thus, it may denote a banana tree, a war chariot, a scar, a cry, or any other of its various significations according to the key associated with this phonogram.

Thus this language, possessing but a limited number of root words, is so expanded by the varying combinations of phonetic signs and ideographic characters, that its acquisition for reading or writing is a formidable achievement.

Some of the recent dictionaries of the English language record a vocabulary of two hundred thousand words. To write any or all of these one needs only to learn the twenty-six signs of our alphabet. To write a common business letter, or to read an ordinary book in Chinese, it is necessary that the scribe or student should know familiarly from six to seven thousand of these groups of characters by which to express the forty or fifty thousand words in the vocabulary of the Chinese.

Again, many of these characters are so similar in form that to write them accurately requires intense concentration, and acute powers of memory. Notwithstanding this, China has been a center of culture and intellectual activity from her first appearance upon the stage of history.

From the earliest period, the social and political system of the Chinese has been based upon educational qualifications. All political dignities, honors and preferments, by unalterable law and usage depend upon the educated abilities and scholarship of candidates for office.

The rank of mandarin comes by no hereditary right, nor by favor of a sovereign, but through severe intellectual effort. If in some cases this is obtained through corruption and bribery of some clever scholar who sells his literary privileges to some richer competitor, this does not alter the case; honors still go to scholarship.

It is said of these successful men, the true students, that it would be difficult to parallel them in any country for readiness with the pen and retentive memory. If they are not highly educated, it is due to their false system of educational merit, which consists in an undue exercise of the memory at the expense of the thinking powers. It is also due to the fact that it is a stereotyped system, based upon an ancient usage and custom, concerned with the past and ancient tradition rather than present or future progress.

The early history of this people is specially interesting in the light of recent discoveries. These suggest, and the suggestions are confirmed in the ancient literature of the Chinese, that at a period about B. C. 2500, these people made their first appearance in China from some locality south of the Caspian Sea, in western Asia. This is supposed, from certain historical correspondences, to have been Susiana, and that their emigration was the result of political disturbances occurring throughout western Asia at that date. That, driven from their early home, they wandered eastward, finally settling in the fertile districts of Shansi and Honan, near the Yellow river. About the same time, other families of this people settled to the south in Annim, from whence these kindred people finally spread over all China.

When they first came into the country, they found there aboriginal tribes of various races. In their historical annals the most important of these primitive inhabitants are referred to as the “Kwei people.” It is said of these that they practiced the art of writing and possessed a literature which is referred to by the Chinese as the “Kwei Books,” which included a treatise on music. M. de Lacouperie conjectures these primitive people to be of the Aryan stock, of whom remnants are to be found at the present day in Cambodia.

When the Chinese came into the land they had a culture of their own. They were advanced in the industrial arts and they possessed a system of writing and a literature.

They date the origin of writing with them to a mythical emperor, Hwang-le, who invented the art, selecting for this purpose objects in the air, and on the earth, and in the world around, substituting these representations or symbols of things for the knotted cords then in use.

Modern Chinese writing gives but a faint suggestion of a derivation from ancient pictographs. These, however, can be traced by referring to archaic forms of these characters.

Again, in Chinese words formed by two characters, the one representing the sound, and the other the key which indicates the sound, these two characters are so imposed, the one upon the other, as in a modern monogram, or are so closely associated, that to the uninitiated they appear as one character.

When, however, these characters are separated, they bear often distinct resemblance to objects, and in the archaic forms of these characters their picture origin is distinctly apparent.

Dr. S. W. Williams, in his work “The Middle Kingdom,” Vol. I, has illustrations, showing fine examples of archaic and modern forms of Chinese characters that are in evidence of the pictorial origin of the Chinese system.

The references to the mythical emperor, Hwang-le, who, according to Chinese annals, invented their system of writing, seems to have antedated the appearance of this people in China. In their historical literature, his name is written Nak-hon-ti, and he is so nearly identical in name, character and works to the Susian deity, Nak-hun-ti, that the two are evidently the same. This correspondence suggests the early association of the Chinese with the families of the same race who inhabited Susiana in primitive times, which continue in the names of other heroes common to Accadian legends and the annals of the Chinese.

Again, the accordance of the Chaldean and Chinese chronology in astronomical and other scientific data cannot be regarded as accidental.

Among many remarkable parallelisms in the literature of both races are the astrological chapters of the “She King,” the most ancient of the dynastic histories of the Chinese, and an astrologic chapter in an Accadian document. These have been translated by Professor Sayce, from the cuneiform, who finds constant occurrence of the same expressions in both records relating to particular forecasts, connected with certain planets, as “Soldiers arise,” “Gold is exchanged,” and many others.

Again, the division of the Chinese empire by the Emperor Yaou into twelve portions, governed by twelve “Pastor Princes,” in imitation of the feudal system of ancient Susa, is another evidence of the former association or close contact of these distinct people.

In the literature of the Chinese there is a work for which they claim the highest antiquity. Until recently no clew had been found for its interpretation. This was the “Yih King,” or “Book of Changes,” which has been a sealed mystery to the ablest Chinese scholars of all ages, including Confucius. Its interpretation has, however, been accomplished by M. de Lacouperie who finds this work to be a collection of syllabaries such as are common in Accadian literature. These are interspersed with chapters on astronomical and astrological lore. Others again, refer to the ethnology of primitive inhabitants of the country; all of these, however, taking the form of vocabularies only possible to interpret by recognizing their syllabic character.

The appearance of this work in ancient Chinese literature is explained in two ways. Prof. Douglas regards this as an evidence that in by-gone ages this language was polysyllabic. He points to the fact that certain words indicate a former polysyllabism and from this infers that the language as it now appears is an example of phonetic decay. Others, on the contrary, see in the occasional but rare evidences of agglutination, the influence of contact with other races speaking an agglutinative or polysyllabic tongue, and of which the above example in their ancient literature is perhaps a literary remains.

It is incredible that a race so advanced in polysyllabism as evidenced by the “Yih King,” or “Book of Changes,” could revert to so pure a monosyllabism as is now presented by the Chinese language. Phonetic decay is possible to many words in a language, but so general a reversion to primitive conditions is scarcely possible of a whole language.

Reference has been made in the Chinese system of writing to their use of picture forms or ideographic signs, in association with the phonograms to explain the meaning or particular use of these signs.

This principle, so often referred to, is by no means a special invention of the Chinese, but as we shall see, occurs in all original pictorial systems of writing with the development of phonetism. This is, that when phonetic values begin to attach themselves to the primitive ideographs, these are retained and attached to the signs expressing the primitive sound.

“As if,” says Prof. Sayce, “to assist the memory in remembering the meaning and pronunciation of a particular word.”

In this way evidently the “keys” of the Chinese system had their origin, as also the determinatives of the cuneiform, the hieroglyphic systems of the Egyptians, the Maya or Mexican, and other pictorial systems.

Among the many advantages obtained from a purely syllabic, or purely alphabetic system of writing is the easy adjustment of these signs to various forms of speech. This is eminently true of alphabetic systems. On the other hand the application of non-alphabetic characters to other than the original language to which these were adapted is by no means so simple and manageable in results.

We have seen how the Chinese, by the simple use of the phonogram and the ideogram, were enabled by the structure of their language to retain this form without variation through the ages.

The tendency in polysyllabic languages after reaching the phonetic stage, was to greater complexity and an increase of explanatory signs in systems of writing. Sometimes the transmissions of these primitive systems from one race to another, led to simpler methods.

It, however, not infrequently happened that these transmissions led to greater complexity. This depended somewhat upon the diversity between the languages spoken by the authors of the primitive system of writing and those who adopted it.

While speech and mode of writing are distinct and independent, the one of the other, the influence of language structure in the evolution of graphic systems is conspicuous. Thus a sentence of English speech might be expressed by Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the Tel Armana tablets, more than one language appears in the cuneiform. We have seen how the so called Hittite characters were found on occasion yielding Greek words, and the use of the Roman alphabet for French, German, Italian and other languages, are every day examples.

The fact however remains, that in the process of the development of primitive systems of writing, before the use of an alphabet, the influence of language structure upon the systems of writing is an important factor in the case.

A curious phenomenon in the history of human speech is the preference shown by certain families of language for special combinations of vowels and consonants. The simplest combination is of a single vowel with a preceding consonant in the formation of syllables. For instance, such words as Ho-no-lu-lu, Mi-ka-do and others.

The Japanese form their syllables only in this way. The same is true of Polynesian dialects and also certain families of language in Africa south of the Equator.

Some distinguished philologists suggest this relation of consonant and vowel as survivals of the original elements of speech; an example, perhaps, in language, of “the line of least resistance.” It is easier to utter sa than as, ta than at, and so on. However this may be, it is a notable fact that certain families of speech form their syllables only in this way.

Again, the Semitic languages are alone in their use of three consonants in the formation of root words; three consonants with their complementary vowels and no more.

Other languages form their syllables with every possible combination of consonants and vowels, some showing a preference for the consonants, others for the vowels, while again others combine their syllables as the case may be, showing no decided preferences for special combinations of vowels and consonants.

These conditions have had their influence on the development of graphic systems. In the simplest combination of a consonant and vowel, as sa, se, si, so, su, if the combining power is only one way and never another, as as, es, is, os, us, the number of syllables that can be formed in such a language are few, and the number of signs to express these are consequently limited. But when the combining power is both ways, the number of possible syllables increases with every increase of these combinations of vowels and consonants, and the number of signs correspondingly.

The transmission of the Chinese system of writing to the Japanese, which occurred about the third century, B. C., indicates this influence of language structure towards simplicity. The Japanese language is polysyllabic. No syllable contains more than one vowel, with a single preceding consonant.

In the adoption by the Japanese of the Chinese characters in the Ka-ta-ka-na syllabary, a certain number of phonograms were selected which would give the sound of the unions of consonants and vowels in the Japanese language. As spoken, this includes five vowels and fifteen consonants. As these combine only in one way there are but seventy-five possible combinations of vowels and consonants in this language. As some of these possible combinations never occur, the use of forty-five of these syllabic signs are all that is necessary to form any word in the Japanese language, with the Ka-ta-ka-na syllabary.

In the formation of this syllabary the ideographic characters of the Chinese system were found unnecessary and were rejected. The result has been one of the best syllabaries that has ever been constructed.

The Japanese have another syllabary, the Hi-ra-ka-na, derived from a cursive script of the Chinese. This syllabary, however, is more complicated, including with the syllabics a greater number of signs as variants, and homophones, in all nearly three hundred; a marked contrast to the simplicity of the other. It is, however, one among the many instances we have in the evolution of letters, where the simpler way seems so easy and evident, but yet is not recognized.