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This little classic on the Chinese spoken and written language has remained standard reading both for the student and the general reader. It gives a lucid account of the development and distinguishing features of Chinese writing and speech.
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Sound and Symbol in Chinese • i by BERNHARD KARLGREN J A u. (i^ii ) \ \ Revised edition r- ^ ^O is rlv V SOUND AND SYMBOL IN C H I N E S E § Bernhard Karlgren Sound and Symbol in Chinese by BERNHARD KARLGREN Revised edition HONG KONG U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS © Hong Kong University Press 1962 2nd impression 1971 3rd impression 1990 ISBN 962-209-257-8 The original English edition appeared in 1923 in the The World's Manuals. Language and Literature Series, General Editor, C.T. Onions. This revised edition is brought out with the permission of The Clarendon Press. Oxford. Printed in Hong Kong by Elite Printing Company Limited. SIX CHAPTERS i. Introduction 1 2. The Ancient Language 6 3. Word Formation . 16 4. The Script • 32 5. Syntax . . . . • 54 6. Rhetoric . . . . • 83 • 95 Bibliographical Notes NOTES ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF CHINESE T h e vowels a, e, i, o, u, ii are pronounced as in German. e is the 'neutral vowel' of English about, German Knabtf. i as in si: let the tongue remain in the position of s when pronouncing the following i. T h e symbol ', as in k'u, marks a strong aspiration, k-h-u. k* and ts* are both pronounced as ch befor i and ii. h and s represent the German 'ich-laut' before i and ii. h before all other vowels the German 'ach-laut*. j is the sonant sibilant of French /amais, English pleasure. CHAPTER I T H E scholar who examines the structure and evolution of human speech finds material of the highest value in every one of the several thousand languages of the world. The phonetic laws and inflexions of a South Sea language or a Negro language may be just as instructive, in the comparative study of linguistics, as the corresponding phenomena in Latin or German. The non-specialist public, on the contrary, attaches a widely varying value to the different languages. On the one hand, a language is considered of more practical importance the larger extension it has, i.e. the greater the number of people who speak it; on the other, a language is appreciated in proportion as it possesses a rich and valuable literature and thus plays a great part in civilization. It is remarkable that the Europeans have until recent times paid but scant attention to a language which in both these respects must be said to occupy a very prominent place among the languages of the world, namely, Chinese. Spoken by a larger number of people than any other language, it is at the same time a language having a venerable and extensive literature, a language which has played in eastern Asia a part comparable to that of Latin and Greek in Europe. An exact figure of the number of people who speak Chinese as their mother tongue cannot be given. We can only state, in the way of approximation, that Chinese is spoken over an area in eastern and central Asia that is larger than Europe, and by a population of something between 600 and 700 millions. There are, moreover, considerable Chinese colonies in other parts of the wrorld, for instance in 2 SOUND AND SYMBOL Malaya. And to this it must be added that for many centuries it served as literary language in Japan, Korea and Annam. Not only does Chinese exceed in extent the most widely