In the past few years quite a number of Chinese intellectuals, especially etymologists, were seriously concerned for the Mainland Reds' Romanization or Latinization plan by which, it was feared, all the Chinese characters, symbolic of the Chinese culture, might be replaced by the Romanized symbols, and consequently, all the Chinese classics might no longer be recognizable. From the very beginning I have been rather skeptical about its realizability in view of the fact that neither Marx nor Lenin was a linguist, and that the dialectic method would not be applicable to the linguistic problem. Now, my speculative thinking has been confirmed by the latest development or the conclusive announcement of a "revised draft plan," reported in The New York Times, January 12, 1958, which reads in part as follows:
"For years the Chinese Communist regime has been trying to make up its mind about employing an alphabet for the Chinese language.
"...The 'Government' has no intention to drop the ancient characters and make Chinese a phonetic language, at least not at this stage. The alphabet that has been decided upon will be used for the time being as a phonetic auxiliary for Chinese characters.
"The alphabet will serve for annotating the ideographs in dictionaries and language study texts. It will be used for indexing, to show the pronunciation of foreign names and technical terms, to indicate the pronunciation of standard spoken Chinese and help spread knowledge of the national spoken tongue, and for telegraphic transmissions, replacing the present code for Chinese characters.
"The Latin alphabet that has finally been adopted is simply the twenty-six-letter Latin alphabet. An earlier plan that involved adding to the Latin letter several letters from the Russian alphabet has been dropped.
"The adoption of the alphabetical scheme does not make Chinese a phonetic language. Whether the Chinese ideographs, which have made an imperishable contribution, should be replaced by a Latinized or any other phonetic language forms a question that we are not in a hurry to decide.''
Thus evident enough, the so-called linguistic revolution or language reform that has been rife for years ends in fiasco because replacement of the Chinese characters by an alphabet embodied in the Romanization or Latinization movement has proved to be merely wishful thinking.
Why has the Romanization attempt ended in failure? It has nothing to do with politics. The matter falls entirely within the linguistic arena where no legerdemain would be tolerated. Hence, it behooves us to account for the frustration from the linguistic point of view.
Obviously one and the same sound in Chinese has to do duty for different words. Thus the following represent only a fraction of total number of words pronounced shih: 史 "history," 使 "to employ," 屍 "a corpse," 市 "a market," 師 "an army," 獅 "a lion," 恃 "to rely on," 侍 "to wait on," 詩 "poetry," 時 "time," 識 "to know," 施 "to bestow," 實 "solid," 失 "to lose," 示 "to proclaim," 視 "to look at," 十 "ten," 拾 "to pick up," 石 "stone," 世"generation," 食 "to eat," 室 "a house," 氏 "a clan," 始 "beginning," 釋 "to let go," 試 "to test," 事 "affair," 勢 "power," 士 "officer," 誓 "to swear," 逝 "to pass away," 適 "to happen." 1 Under such circumstances, to use one Romanized symbol in representing the above-mentioned characters widely different in meaning would be confusing. No deus ex machina can be expected.
The Problem of Language Improvement
If the Romanization of Chinese has been doomed to failure on account of the predetermined nature of the Chinese character-formation, it would be inane to hold to the opinion that the Chinese language in its present form is perfect in itself and that no improvement should be contemplated.
Hieroglyphic and ideographic in its main origin, and distinctive from the Indo-European system, the Chinese language has developed generally in its present form for more than 3000 years, each character possessing its semantic background and each stroke suggesting its etymological sense. The monosyllabism with a variety of four tones - the even, the rising, the sinking and the entering, each of which falls again into an upper and a lower series - shapes the Chinese characters into a comprehensive gradus by which beautiful poetry and melodious opera have been written. Indeed, the symmetrical beauty together with connotative metaphors is almost unique.
However, the observation above should at the same time not blink at the striking comments on the Chinese language by international leading linguists in recent years.
It is pointed out that Chinese is "strikingly poor in vocables, or separate sounds for the conveyance of speech. The number of these vocables varies from between 800 and 900 in Cantonese to no more than 420 in the vernacular of Peking."2 That is an undeniable fact. But the reason why? My inference is not that ancient Chinese were incapable of creating more vocables by using Umlaut or such like, but that the men of letters of old times deliberately employed limited vocables or different words of the same sound in order to facilitate composing poems and rhythmic essays as seen from the fact that the rhythmic essays - peculiar to China - antedated the prose. Any linguist proficient in history of Chinese literature will unhesitatingly be so convinced.
Another comment has been found in connection with language typology, the "traditional classification...into four kinds of languages: isolating, agglutinative, fusional (synthetic) and polysynthetic. Chinese is given as the typical isolating language. By this is meant that its words are uninflected (have no grammatical endings which change with changing functions in constructions). Von Humboldt, a comparative philologist and founder of the University of Berlin, considered the most primitive type to be the 'isolating' languages, in which the words are all simple roots with nothing resembling inflectional forms. Now, if von Humboldt meant that the Chinese words - however the language might be regarded as belonging to the isolation or analytical group - were simple roots, it would evince that the comparative philologist knew nothing about Chinese etymology. Except for the very few, the Chinese characters in their present form, dating back to some 3000 years ago, are not simple roots, but quasi-fusional words. Take a few characters at random for an example. Hsin (信) is composed of two words, or a wrapper and a root, meaning "he speaks." As such, it corresponds to on dit in French, man sagt in German, or dict in Latin. After the compounding or fusing process (showing Subject+Object) the word became a noun, which has subsequently been employed as a verb as well. Another word wu (武) is composed of two words (Verb+Noun), meaning 'stop (the) sword.' This formation is just the same as the English words 'stopgap,' 'killjoy,' have been made. There is no doubt about the similar ingenuity of the ancient East and West word-makers.
In this connection, it would be very impressive to note an authoritative statement in the late Edward Sapir's masterpiece Language (New York, 1921). "There are just five languages that have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. They are classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. In comparison with these culturally important languages, Hebrew and French sink into a secondary position." (P. 194.) Now, among the five carriers of culture, it may be noted, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin have spawned the Indo-European languages in addition to their own splendid ancient literature, and yet the three classical languages are no longer employed as living languages by any people of the world. They are survived by Chinese and Arabic. Assuredly, Chinese is much more extensive in influence than Arabic, and the distinction between classical Chinese and colloquial Chinese proves to be no more than the difference between the Miltonian style and The New York Times English.
The illustration above has actually gainsaid the traditional classification, which no longer stands in good stead. One eminent contemporary American linguist, Professor Clarence L. Meader of the University of Michigan, states that "few, if any," of the languages "belong exclusively to anyone class. As a matter of fact, both the analytic tendency (toward isolation) and the synthetic (toward inflection) are present in all languages at all times. Now one may prevail, now the other, as in Old English there were elaborate inflections, while at present English belongs rather to the isolating, as does Chinese. In fact languages show such complexity and variety that it may be doubted whether any principle of classification can be consistently applied to them." In this respect we are particularly interested in noting that English and Chinese have developed along the same direction - toward isolation.
To trace the historical development based on comparative philology is a monumental work which has hardly been started in China, but so far Chinese etymologists have based themselves on their "master's teachings" (師說) which date back to only some two thousand years ago - say the Han dynasty - when Hsu Shen's Chinese Etymology, the only authoritative work in the line, was just published. It is remarkable that Otto Jesperson, the late Danish great linguist, in his Language, Its Nature, Development and Origin (London, 1922) questions: "But is it absolutely certain that Chinese has retained its structure unchanged from the very first period? By no means. As early as 1861, R. Lepsius, from a comparison of Chinese and Tibetan, had derived a conviction that the monosyllabic character of Chinese is not original, but is a lapes (!) from an earlier polysyllabic structure." In his footnotes on Page 373 of the same book, he develops his reasoning thus:
"I must also mention A. Conrady, Eine Indochinesisehe Causative-denominative-bildung (Leipsig, 1896), in which Lepsius's theory is carried a great step further and it is demonstrated with very great learning that many of the tone relations (as well as modifications of initial sounds) of Chinese and kindred languages find their explanation in the previous existence of prefixes which are now extinct, but which can still be pointed out in Tibetan. Though I ought not, therefore, to have spoken of prefixes instead of 'flexional endings' above, p. 371, the essence of the contention that prehistoric Chinese must have had a polysyllabic and non-isolating structure is thus borne out by the researches of competent specialists in the field."
Otto Jesperson's theory, though little known to Chinese etymologists who have cleaved to their "master's teachings," has been widely accepted by Western linguists. Professor Giuliano Bonfante of Princeton University confirms his theory as follows:
"It was held widely during the nineteenth century that originally all languages were isolating (that is, had only concrete monosyllabic words or 'root'). Then by subordinating some roots to others and lowering them to the status of grammatical tools, they reached the agglutinative stage; finally, by fusing the elements into words, they arrived at the inflectional stage. This theory is now abandoned; however, the fact should be retained that a language can pass from one stage to another. Chinese is now isolating, but was certainly not so once (see Otto Jesperson, pp. 370 ff.), and English, French, Persian were once heavily inflectional."
From the authoritative statements of the linguists a conclusion may be drawn that to consider an inflectional language more advanced than an isolating one, or vice versa, is untenable. Each language has its advantages. In the present stage English has become the most comprehensive language in the world, because it has been enriched by utilizing Greek, Latin and other roots and affixes. As a matter of fact, the left side and/or the wrapper may serve with the corresponding functions of the English prefix. Unfortunately all the left sides and wrappers of the Chinese characters are fixed, there being nothing corresponding to English living prefixes. Hence, characteristic of the Chinese language is the etymological fixation, which may have had something to do with the cultural stagnation in the past few centuries. For one thing, there is some advantage, nevertheless, as viewed from the fact that Chinese students today can read Confucius or pre-Confucius's works without tears, while English students lacking proficiency in Middle English can never understand Chaucer thoroughly and they would be puzzled even by some archaic words in the course of reading Elizabethan authors. The reason why? English has wrought considerable morphological as well as semantic changes, and yet Chinese has undergone comparatively less changes, even semantically, since Confucius's time.
Admittedly, language usually follows a natural, imperceptible course; collective improvements based on linguistic principles are nonetheless highly desirable, if not indispensable. A distinguished example is the French language whose consistently being improved by the French Academy has been profoundly admired by Matthew Arnold in his famous essay, "The Literary Influence of Academies." The following paragraph quoted from that essay will account for what the French Academy has been doing for French:
"This improvement of the language was in truth the declared grand aim for the operations of the Academy. Its statutes of foundation, approved by Richelieu before the royal edict establishing it was issued, say expressly: 'The Academy's principal function shall be to work with all the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and science.' This zeal for making a nation's great instrument of thought - its language, - correct and worthy, is undoubtedly a sign full of promise, - a weighty earnest of future power. It is said that Richelieu had it in his mind that French should succeed Latin in its general ascendancy, as Latin has succeeded Greek; if it was so, even this wish has to some extent been fulfilled. But at any rate, the ethical influences of style in language, - its close relations, so often pointed out, with character, - are most important. Richelieu, a man of high culture, and, at the same time, of great character, felt them profoundly; and that he should have sought to regularise, strengthen, and perpetuate them by an institution for perfecting language, is alone a striking proof of his governing spirit and of his genius." Consequently French has become an exact language, hence a diplomatic language.
So far as Chinese is concerned, it is merely a natural development. Though there was once a government Orthographer (祕書省正字) instituted some thousand years ago and the imperial examinations used to exert considerable influence on morphological and semantic aspects of the Chinese characters, we probably should not overestimate their effects.
Before conclusion it may be stressed that with all its past achievements the Chinese language still invites improvements based upon comparative philological principles, so that the cultured language will constantly be rendered "pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and sciences" as is any modern European language. This monumental task cannot be done without the efforts of the Chinese etymologists and semantics, who should nevertheless work closely with comparative philologists. The linguistic problems confronting them are more than one. Tentatively I would pick out the following: How are we to deal with the brand-new scientific terms that are increasing every year and puzzling the translators? Is it desirable and feasible to unfix the prefixes? Is it worth while to create polysyllabic characters like tu-shu-kuan (圕) (which is supposed to have been devised by someone twenty years ago, but not yet adopted by Chinese dictionaries)? If all these problems and others like them could be tackled by competent specialists, the Chinese language would be well improved with the time.
Remarks:
1. Encyc. Brit., 1955 under "Chinese Language."
2. op. cit., under "China Language."
3. op. cit., under "Language."
4. Encyc. Am., under "Language," by Clarence L. Meader.
5. op. cit., under "China Language."