People often ask me if there is any affinity between the Chinese
language and ours. I can at once say there is no affinity whatever, but
this requires much explanation before I can clearly show it.
The written language of China, viz. ideographs, is the same all over
the extensive sphere of China proper, but its pronunciation is different
almost in every province. The spoken language of the Chinese is, roughly
speaking, the same as the written language, as is the case in the
Western nations. Therefore, the Chinese residing in different provinces
do not understand each other colloquially, except those educated in the
Mandarine Chinese, which is in fact the pronunciation used in Peking
amongst the Mandarins and studied by all Mandarins in provinces as well
as those in Peking.
The first difference between Chinese and Japanese is that the former is
monosyllabic, whilst the latter is polysyllabic. The second difference,
which is a natural consequence of the first, is that in Chinese there is
no declension of nouns or conjugation of verbs, whilst in Japanese there
are conjugations of verbs and a method of the formation of the cases of
nouns which is in purport similar to declensions. The third difference
is the position or order of words in sentences. The fourth difference is
the difference of pronunciation of the Chinese ideographs, viz.
characters, even when they are used in our writing in their original
shapes.