[The Civilization Of China by Herbert A. Giles]@TWC D-Link bookThe Civilization Of China CHAPTER I--THE FEUDAL AGE 8/30
Many amusing examples are current of blunders committed by faulty speakers, such as that of the student who told his servant to bring him a goose, when what he really wanted was some salt, both goose and salt having the same sound, _yen_, but quite different intonations.
The following specimen has the advantage of being true. A British official reported to the Foreign Office that the people of Tientsin were in the habit of shouting after foreigners, "Mao-tsu, mao-tsu" (pronounced _mowdza_, _ow_ as in _how_), from which he gathered that they were much struck by the head-gear of the barbarian.
Now, it is a fact that _mao-tsu_, uttered with a certain intonation, means a hat; but with another intonation, it means "hairy one," and the latter, referring to the big beards of foreigners, was the meaning intended to be conveyed.
This epithet is still to be heard, and is often preceded by the adjective "red." The written characters, known to have been in use for the past three thousand years, were originally rude pictures, as of men, birds, horses, dogs, houses, the numerals (one, two, three, four), etc., etc., and it is still possible to trace in the modified modern forms of these characters more or less striking resemblances to the objects intended. The next step was to put two or more characters together, to express by their combination an abstract idea, as, for instance, a _hand_ holding a _rod_ = father; but of course this simple process did not carry the Chinese very far, and they soon managed to hit on a joint picture and phonetic system, which enabled them to multiply characters indefinitely, new compounds being formed for use as required.
It is thus that new characters can still be produced, if necessary, to express novel objects or ideas.
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