The Chinese Language

adapted from Spirit of Chinese People

by Ku Hung-Ming

All foreigners who have tried to learn Chinese say that Chinese is a very difficult language. But is Chinese a difficult language? Before, however, we answer this question, let us understand what we mean by the Chinese language. There are, as everybody knows, two languages – I do not mean dialects, -- in China, the spoken and the written language. Now, by the way, does anybody know the reason why the Chinese insist upon having these two distinct, spoken and written language? I will here give you the reason. In China, as it was at one time in Europe when Latin was the learned or written language, the people are properly divided into two distinct classes, the educated and the uneducated. The colloquial or spoken language is the language for the use of the uneducated, and the written language is the language for the use of the really educated. In this way half educated people do not exist in this country. That is the reason, I say, why the Chinese insist upon having two languages. Now think of the consequences of having half educated people in a country. Look at Europe and America today. In Europe and America since, the disuse of Latin, the sharp distinction between the spoken and the written language has disappeared, there has arisen a class of half educated people who are allowed to use the same language as the really educated people, who talk of civilization, liberty, neutrality, militarism and panslavinism, without in the understanding what these words really mean. People say that Prussian Militarism is a danger to civilization. But to me it seems, the half educated man, the mob of half educated men in the world today, is the real danger to civilization. But that is neither here nor there.

Now to come to the question, is Chinese a difficult language? My answer is, yes and no. Let us first take the spoken language. The Chinese spoken language, I say, is not only not difficult, but as compared with the half dozen languages that I know, -- the easiest language in the world except, --Malay. Spoken Chinese is easy because it is an extremely simply language. It is a language without case, without tense, without regular and irregular verbs; in fact without grammar or any rule whatever. But people have said to me that Chinese is difficult even because of its simplicity; even because it has no rule or grammar. That, however, cannot be true. Malay like Chinese, is also a simple language without grammar or rules; and yet Europeans who learn it, do not find it difficult. Thus in itself and for the Chinese colloquial or spoken Chinese at least is not a difficult language. But for educated Europeans and especially for half educated Europeans who come to China, even colloquial or spoken Chinese is a very difficult language: and why? Because spoken or colloquial Chinese is, as I said, the language of uneducated men, of thoroughly uneducated men; in fact the language of a child. Now as a proof of this, we all know how easily European children learn colloquial or spoken Chinese, while learned philogues and sinologues insist in saying that Chinese is so difficult. Chinese, colloquial Chinese, I say again is the language of a child. My first advice to my foreign friends who want to learn Chinese is “Be ye like little children, you will then not only enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but you will also be able to learn Chinese.”

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But now to sum up what I want to say on the Chinese language. Spoken as well as written Chinese is, in one sense, a very difficult language. It is difficult, not because it is complex. Many European languages such as Latin and French are difficult because they are complex and have many rules. Chinese is difficult not because it is complex, but because it is deep. It is difficult because it is a language for expressing deep feeling in simple language. That is the secret of the difficulty of the Chinese language. In fact, as I have said else where, Chinese is a language of the heart: a poetical language. That is the reason why even a simple letter in prose written in classical Chinese reads like poetry. In order to understand written Chinese, especially what I call full court dress Chinese, you must have your full nature, -- the heart and the head, the soul and the intellect equally developed.