Having no polysyllables, the Chinese supply their place by a minute variety in their vowel sounds. They have no grammar:(130) the same word is at once an adjective, a substantive, and a verb! Affixes and suffixes, such as occur in give, giv-er, gif-t, are unknown. The modifications of meaning these forms convey are expressed either by altering the position of the words or by additional terms. The plural is the same as the singular; though, to avoid obscurity, in extreme cases the clumsy expedient of repetition is resorted to, as in Tschin-tschin, “Man-man” (i.e. Men); or distinct words indicative of number are prefixed, such as Muen, “Many,” Tschung, “All!”
It was the opinion of Adelung that the Chinese language differed not merely in its structure, but in its elements, from the other languages of the human race. He supposed this nation to have sprung from the same stock as those of western Asia. But their speech he conceives to have been constructed after the separation.
The peculiar monosyllabic structure of the Chinese seems to justify the conclusion, that the nations of Europe and western Asia are more nearly allied in descent to the Negro tribes of the interior of Africa and to the Indian tribes of America than they are to the Chinese and the nations of the contiguous countries of the south-west of Asia. But that Adelung’s conclusion, that the Chinese is a radically distinct tongue is an erroneous one will now be shown by examples, to which the _peculiar structure of that language will only serve to give additional_(131)_ force_; for while in most of the following examples the words compared are essentially the same, the Chinese monosyllables being identical with Hebrew or European monosyllables, or with terms which partake of that character, in other instances it will be found that the differences which occur have been caused solely by the addition of the characteristic suffixes and affixes of the polysyllabic languages, which are not used in the Chinese! Thus we have Mu, “A Mouse,” (_Chin._,) Mū-s, Mu-os, Mu (_Greek_), the root in the latter being the same as in the former; Fo and Foo Tsin, “A Fa-ther,” (_Chin._,) Moo and Moo Tsin, “A Mo-ther,” (_Chin._)
I shall commence these examples with the Chinese pronouns, most of which are absolutely identical with those of the polysyllabic languages. This branch of the comparison will serve to place in a striking point of view the erroneous nature of the opinion generally received among philologists, that nations which agree are necessarily more nearly allied than those which differ(132) in their grammatical forms, the Chinese being found in this respect to agree in an unequivocal manner with the kindred English and German, in some of those very points in which they mutually differ widely!