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the French student in Heidelberg.
7.
For students whose mother tongue is English a second
language is properly enforced in Group II; while Indians (like
Portuguese and others) will naturally take their own mother tongue
in that Group.
8.
But the peculiarity about Chinese is that the written
language (as in (a) and still more in (b) of Group II) is in itself
even to a Chinese to a great extent a second, and a very difficult
second, language.
y.
The so-called "dialects" of spoken Chinese are not dialects
A Yorkshireman may in the proper sense, but languages of a sort.
find it difficult to understand a Londoner but they are at least
trying to use the same words and the same grammatical constructions.
10.
Until recently no serious attempt was made to put in writing
the various sounds by which the ordinary Chinese in various regions
were able to convey their thoughts by word of mouth.
Where it was
necessary to convey such thoughts on paper the established written
language was and still is used, a dead language in that it is primarily
pictorial, but having the enormous advantage of transcending ali
dialects and being universally understood throughout China.
11.
Any attempted analogy from Europe is almost bound to be
misleading. It is probably true that spoken Mandarin differs as much
from spoken Cantonese as did mediaeval Italian from mediaeval Spanish,
which had probably little in common except their common Romance origin.
But to suppose that written Chinese is analogous to the Latin of
a monkish chronicle which would in those days be equally understood
by educated men in Spain or Italy is to overlook the predominantly
pictorial nature of the former; unless we can make ourselves imagine
that such a chronicle read aloud by an Italian to another Italian
would be unintelligible until expounded word for word, and further
that the italian's pronunciation even of the Latin words differed
from that of the Spanish reader.
12.
in the schools of Hong Kong it has always been held that
the normal education of all Chinese snouid include the written
language which they are bound to need in after life.
Actually they