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Remarks on the Cochinchinese Language
AUG.
ART. VII.
Remarks on the Cochinchinese language, designed to disprove the opinion that the language of Cochinchina is dif- ferent from that of China. In a note to the editor.
In reading, in a late number of an American Journal, a notice of the Cochinchinese language, I observed a statement that the two nations, viz., the Chinese and Cochinchinese, "do not understand each other, either in reading or speaking;" and again, "that the Cochinchinese cannot read Chinese books, unless they have learned Chinese." We have been accustomed to think that the only written language the Cochinchinese have is the Chinese, and of course they cannot read Chinese books before they have learned them; but we are still dis- posed to think that every native of Cochinchina, who has learned to read in his own country, can read Chinese books. We are inclined to this belief from the fact, which is well authenticated, that books prepared and printed in Cochinchina have been circulated and read understandingly by the Chinese, who have never been in that coun- try, and again Chinese books have, under our own observation, been sought for and intelligently read by the Cochinchinese, not only by the higher classes but by the common people, such as prisoners of war, among several hundreds of whom an equal or greater proportion could read Chinese books than among the same class of native born Chinese. We have also seen Cochinchinese, able to read a Chinese book and to explain the meaning through the medium of a third lan- guage, who could not speak a word of Chinese; and we have also had an opportunity, during a visit to their own country, while desti- tute of any spoken language we knew in common, to prove by a practical use of the Chinese character as a medium of communicat- ing thought, that it is understood by them generally. For not only the petty officers, who visited us on ship-board, but among the fisher- men and cottagers, we found persons who readily understood our inquiries, and by means of the pencil settled the prices and quantity of the various articles of provisions required for the ship. They also gave to the character the same signification, and assigned it the same location in a sentence. that a Chinese would, allowing for the differ- ent forms of expression, which different individuals, speaking the same language, will sometimes adopt, and especially persons speaking different dialects of the same language It will probably be found that, although the Chinese written character may on the whole be