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Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction
Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world, and has
a rich social, cultural and historical background. This is a comprehensive guide
to the linguistic structure of Chinese, providing an accessible introduction to
each of the key areas. It describes the fundamentals of its writing system,
its pronunciation and tonal sound system, its morphology (how words are
structured), and its syntax (how sentences are formed) – as well as its historical
development, and the diverse ways in which it interacts with other languages.
Setting the discussion of all aspects of Chinese firmly within the context
of the language in use, Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction will be of great
benefit to learners wishing to extend their knowledge and competence in the
language, and their teachers. It will also be a useful starting point for students
of linguistics beginning work on the structure of this major world language.
C h a o f e n S u n is Associate Professor of Chinese in the Department of

Asian Languages, Stanford University, and Adjunct Professor at East China
Normal University, Shanghai. He is editor of Chinese Historical Syntax and
Morphology (1999), Proceedings of the North American Conference of Chi-
nese Linguistics (1999), and Studies on the History of Chinese Syntax (1997);
and author of Word Order Change and Grammaticalization in the History of
Chinese (1996).
Linguistic Introductions available from Cambridge University Press
Romani: A Linguistic Introduction Yaron Matras

Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction Neil G. Jacobs
Portuguese: A Linguistic Introduction Milton Azevedo
Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction Antonio Loprieno
Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction Chao Fen Sun
Russian: A Linguistic Introduction Paul Cubberley
Introducción a la lingüistica hispánica Jose Ignacio Hualde, Antxon Olarrea,
Anna Marı́a Escobar
French: A Linguistic Introduction Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Douglas Kibbee and
Fred Jenkins
An Introduction to Language and Linguisties edited by Ralph Fasold and
Jeffrey Connor-Linton
Derivations in Minimalism Samuel David Epstein and T. Daniel Seely
Chinese: A Linguistic
Introduction
Chaofen Sun
  
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521823807
© Chaofen Sun 2006
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2006
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Contents
List of maps viii

List of tables ix
List of figures x
Preface xi
Major chronological divisions of Chinese history xiii
Major periods of the Chinese language xiv
Introduction 1
1 Historical background of the language 13
1.1 Prehistoric time 13
1.2 Oracle-bone and bronze scripts 14
1.3 Old Chinese (771 BCE to 220 CE) 15
1.4 Middle Chinese (220 CE to 960) 17
1.5 Early modern Chinese (960 to 1900) 18
1.6 Modern Chinese (1900 to present) 20
1.7 Modern Chinese grammar and its lexicon 23
1.8 Simplification of Chinese script 26
1.9 Formation of Chinese dialects 28
1.9.1 Northern Chinese (Mandarin) 29
1.9.2 Southern dialects 30
2 Phonetics of standard Chinese 34

2.1 Initials 35
2.2 Finals 36
2.2.1 Medials (on-glide) 37
2.2.2 Main vowels 37
2.2.3 Syllabic terminals (off-glide) 38
2.3 Rhotacization 38
2.4 Tones 39
2.5 Tone-sandhi 40
v
vi Contents
3 Chinese morphology 1 45
3.1 Compounding 49
3.2 Derivation-like affixes 56
3.2.1 Prefixes 56
3.2.2 Suffixes 58
3.2.3 Potential markers -de- and -bu- as infixes 60
3.3 Inflection-like affixes 64
3.3.1 Perfective marker -le 64
3.3.2 Experiential marker -guo 68
3.3.3 Imperfective marker -zhe 70
3.4 Summary 73
4 Chinese morphology 2 75
4.1 Clitics 75
4.1.1 Sentence-final particles 75
4.1.2 Locative particles 81
4.2 Reduplication 88
4.2.1 Classifiers 88
4.2.2 Informal kinship terms 89
4.2.3 Adjectives 90
4.2.4 Verbs 92
4.3 Beyond morphology 95
4.4 Summary 99
5 Chinese writing 101

5.1 Chinese characters 101
5.2 The history of Chinese script 103
5.3 The strokes of Chinese writing 107
5.4 Simplified standard script 110
6 Chinese language and culture 115

6.1 Cultural beliefs and Chinese expressions 116
6.1.1 Philosophical beliefs and Chinese expressions 116
6.1.2 Metaphors the Chinese live by 122
6.1.3 Politeness 126
6.2 Language contacts and borrowings 133
6.3 Neologisms and morpheme-syllable script 141
6.4 Summary 145
7 Chinese syntax 1 147

7.1 Linear order, lexical categories, subcategorization, and
semantic roles 148
Contents vii
7.2 Other lexical categories 153

7.3 Constituency 158
7.4 Selectional restrictions 164
7.5 Chinese pronouns and demonstratives 166
7.6 Negation 170
7.7 Sentence types 172
7.7.1 Interrogative 172
7.7.2 Imperative 181
8 Chinese syntax 2 184

8.1 Nominalization 186
8.2 Relative clauses 188
8.3 Cleft sentences 189
8.4 Adverbials 191
8.4.1 The word order and semantics of some common
Chinese adverbs 191
8.4.2 Adverbial clauses 197
8.5 Serial-verb constructions 200
8.5.1 Three types of serial-verb constructions 200
8.5.2 Causative construction 205
8.6 Prepositions 206
8.6.1 Flexible prepositional phrases 206
8.6.2 The comparative, passive, and bă constructions 209
8.6.2.1 Comparative 209
8.6.2.2 Passive 211
8.6.2.3 The bă construction 212
8.7 Summary 218
Appendix 1 Phonetic symbols 220

Appendix 2 Capitalized abbreviations 223
References 225
Index 229
Maps
1 Languages spoken in China page 3

2 The Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE) 16
3 The Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) 18
viii
Tables
1 Tonal variation in Chinese dialects page 7

2 Pronunciation of some Chinese cognates in different
dialects 7
3 A comparison of the languages used in the speech
communities in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou 10
1.1 Sino-Tibetan comparisons 14
1.2 Initials in pŭtōnghuà 22
1.3 Finals in pŭtōnghuà 22
2.1 The four basic tones in standard Chinese 39
5.1 Early development of Chinese script 104
6.1 Five categories under the five elements 125
6.2 Chinese terms for European words in three Chinese
communities 140
ix
Figures
2.1 Chinese initial consonants page 36

2.2 Chinese medials 37
2.3 Chinese main vowels 37
2.4 Chinese syllabic terminals 38
2.5 Chinese rhotacization 38
8.1 Phrase structure tree for example (8.2a) 185
8.2 Phrase structure tree for example (8.2b) 186
x
Preface
Over the past decade, with more and more students thinking of a China-related
career, interest in Chinese culture and China’s languages has grown rapidly.
In the meantime, at Stanford University where I teach Chinese linguistics, the
Chinese as a foreign language program has become the second-largest one
in terms of the number of students enrolled in different levels of instruction.
In writing this book, I hope to systematically introduce English-speaking
students to some basic linguistic knowledge, in addition to different socio-
cultural aspects of the Chinese languages to meet their diverse interests. I first
recognized the need for such an elementary book when I was preparing to
teach a new course on Chinese language, culture and society in 1998 and could
not find any published work in English specifically dealing with the topic.
It so happened that in the summer of 2001 Ms. Kate Brett of Cambridge
University Press visited me and, upon hearing of my search for such a book,
encouraged me to write one myself. The following year, I submitted a book
proposal and was very glad that Cambridge University Press quickly decided
to move forward with it.
In the course of writing the manuscript, I have received generous support
from my colleagues and friends. In particular I want to take this opportunity
to express my gratitude to the Dean’s office of the School of Humanities and
Sciences at Stanford University and Stanford Humanities Center for provid-
ing me with a Stanford Humanities Fellowship that has given me a year’s
time to write up this manuscript. I also want to thank the Stanford Center for
East Asian Studies that provided me with an undergraduate research assis-
tantship in the 2004 summer allowing me to work with Andrea Snavely, who
has corrected my English errors and offered many valuable suggestions to
make the manuscript more readable to a general audience. In addition, I want
to acknowledge my gratitude toward the anonymous Cambridge University
Press reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions making me clarify
my thinking and correcting many mistakes. I am also grateful to Cambridge
xi
xii Preface
University Press editor, Ms. Helen Barton, for her patience. Finally, I must
mention my many students over the years as they are really the reason for me
to write this book. In the course of this effort, my knowledge of the field was
greatly extended either through our discussion and debate in and out of class
or through the research I did on various topics of our common interest.
Of course, all the errors in this book are completely mine.
Major chronological divisions of
Chinese history
Xia dynasty – twenty-first to sixteenth centuries BCE

Shang dynasty – sixteenth to eleventh centuries BCE
Western Zhou dynasty – eleventh century to 770 BCE
Spring and Autumn period – 770 to 403 BCE
Warring States period – 403 to 221 BCE
Qin dynasty – 221 to 207 BCE
Han dynasty – 206 BCE to 220 CE
Three Kingdoms period – 220 CE to 265
Jin dynasty – 265 to 420
Northern and Southern dynasty – 420 to 589
Sui dynasty – 589 to 618
Tang dynasty – 618 to 907
Five Dynasties period – 907 to 960
Northern Song dynasty – 960 to 1127
Southern Song dynasty – 1127 to 1279
Liao dynasty – 916 to 1126
Jin dynasty – 1115 to 1234
Yuan dynasty – 1279 to 1368
Ming dynasty – 1368 to 1644
Qing dynasty – 1644 to 1911
xiii
Major periods of the Chinese language
Oracle and Bronze inscriptions sixteenth century to 771 BCE

Old Chinese 771 BCE to 220 CE
Middle Chinese 220 CE to 960
Early Modern Chinese 960 to 1900
Modern Chinese 1900 to present
xiv
Introduction
The phonetic transcriptions used in this book for Mandarin data are the
officially adopted hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n spelling used in China. The data from vari-
ous Chinese dialects are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet
adopted by the International Phonetic Association (see Appendix 1).
1 China and Chinese in the world

For centuries China stood as the most powerful country in Asia with a splendid
civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in many ways. With the longest
unbroken line of recorded history, its extant literature has lasted for more than
three millennia, with a legacy extending back to 1500 BCE and with many out-
standing Chinese scholars in science, philosophy, literature, and many other
fields that continue to influence the modern world. However, in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, China was devastated by a series of foreign inva-
sions, famines, and internal turmoils that prevented it from keeping pace with
the rapid developments in science and technology and caused it to lag behind
the industrialized world in many aspects. It was not until 1979, when Chinese
leaders decided to reopen China’s doors to the outside world and to convert its
state-planned economy into a market-oriented one, that China’s national econ-
omy started to develop at one of the world’s fastest growth rates. After more
than twenty years of sustained development, China is now the fourth-largest
trading nation and has the second-largest foreign reserves in the world.1 Its
major trading partners include the United States, Japan, Germany, France,
the United Kingdom and many other European Union members. In fact, it
has been claimed that, measured on a purchasing-power parity basis, China
currently stands as the second-largest economy in the world after the United
States.2
As the world is becoming more and more integrated, contacts between
China and the rest of the world have also become common. During the last
1
2 Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction
ten years of the twentieth century, China actually sent more international
students than any other country in the world to study in the United States. In
recent years, many people, particularly overseas Chinese, have moved to live
and build up their careers in the People’s Republic of China.
The population in China alone accounts for about 1.3 billion,3 approxi-
mately one-fifth of the total population of the human race. With such a high
percentage of the human race growing up speaking different varieties of the
language as their first language, Chinese is indisputably one of the most com-
monly used languages in the world.
Against such a background, interest in the Chinese language has grown
rapidly outside China. Over the last decade, many colleges in the United
States saw the number of students enrolled in their Chinese-language classes
double, or in some cases triple. It has been reported4 that, accompanying
China’s becoming an official member of the World Trade Organization in
2003, the total number of non-Chinese students who were studying Chinese
outside the People’s Republic of China reached 25 million. In the same year,
there was a great shortage of qualified Chinese-language instructors in the
People’s Republic to teach some 50,000 foreign students who had traveled to
China to study Chinese.
2 China
China is a unitary multinational state which officially recognizes 56 eth-
nic groups including Han, Zhuang, Uygur, Hui, Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Manchu,
Mongol, Buyi, and Korean. Chinese, or zhōngguórén , is used to refer
to all citizens the People’s Republic of China regardless of ethnic national-
ity. Apart from the Han majority, the non-Han Chinese, with a total of more
than 96.5 million people, constitute roughly 8% of the total population in
the People’s Republic. Small as the percentage may appear, they neverthe-
less inhabit nearly 60% of the land mass of the nation. Nearly all the ethnic
groups have spoken languages of their own, and twenty-three have written
languages of their own (Map 1 is a linguistic map of China). In the south are the
Tai-speaking Zhuang people; in southwest China reside the Tibeto-Burman
speakers like Tibetans, Yi, etc; in the northwest corner live the Turkic branch
Altaic speakers like Uygurs and Kazakhs; in the north are Altaic speakers like
Mongols, Koreans, etc. With a population larger than 15 million, Zhuang is,
next to Han, the largest ethnic group in China. However, there are eighteen
Introduction 3
Map 1
other ethnic groups with a population larger than a million, including Manchu,
Hui, Miao, Uygur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Korean and Kazakh. Another fifteen
ethnic groups have a population larger than 100,000. The rest are smaller
(Zhou 2003).
The territory of China currently occupies an area of about 9,600,000 square
kilometers in East Asia, a country that is geographically almost as big as the
United States or only 700,000 square kilometers smaller than the entirety
of Europe. After the 1911 Revolution when the Qing Empire fell after a
popular revolt led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party, the new Republic
was then known as zhōnghuá mı́ngguó “Republic of China.” Later,
in 1949, the Nationalists under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-

shek, lost the civil war and control of most of China to the Chinese Communist
Party led by Mao Zedong, and the name of the country was changed into
zhōnghuá rénmı́n gònghéguó “the People’s Republic of China.”
Nowadays, the Republic of China has jurisdiction over the island of Taiwan
where the Nationalist government continued to rule after its defeat in the
mainland in 1949. However, in spite of the differences in official names, the
Chinese people in modern times most commonly identify China in Chinese
with the shortened form zhōngguó , that is composed of the first and last
syllables of the two official names of modern China.
In Chinese history, the country was most commonly referred to in Chinese
by the name of its ruling empire such as dàqı̄ngguó “the Qing Empire”
(1644–1911 CE). Even the English name of the country, i.e., China, may be
phonetically related to the sounds of the name of the powerful Qin dynasty
(221–207 BCE), which defeated various warring states and established the
first Chinese empire with a highly centralized government. However, after
the 1911 Revolution, the country was commonly referred to as zhōngguó.
Furthermore, the Chinese people have used zhōngguó to denote the area
where the natives accept and carry on the Chinese civilization for a very
long time, although sinologists sometimes translate zhōngguó into English
literally as Middle Kingdom or sometimes Central States. In isolation, the
two syllables, zhōng and guó , that make up the short name actually carry
the meanings “middle” or “central” for zhōng and “country” or “state” for guó
separately. But the notion of Central States implies multiple entities, whereas
Middle Kingdom refers to one country. As early as the Chunqiu period (770–
476 BCE),5 zhōng-guó, refers to a geographical area with many warring states
and, therefore, Central States is an appropriate translation for the land at that
time. For example, in (1) zhōngguó was already in use referring to an area
contrasting with yı́dı́ “foreign countries” in a document written over two
millennia ago.
(1)
Huán gōng jiù zhōngguó ér rǎng yı́-dı́
Name duke save central-states and resist foreign-foreign
“Duke Huan saved the central states and resisted the foreign
countries.”
Introduction 5
Therefore, at that time, zhōngguó was already used as a term to distinguish

the states that embraced Chinese civilization from those that did not. However,
after all the warring states were unified by the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE)
under one central government, the term zhōngguó, from its former sense, a
central area occupied by a number of states, naturally developed into a noun
for the unified country. This happened as early as the Han dynasty (206 BCE–
220 CE). In example (2), zhōngguó clearly refers to the entire Han empire.
Therefore, it makes sense to translate it as “Middle Kingdom.”
(2)
tiān-xià mı́ng shān bā ér sān zài mán-yı́
sky-down noted mountain eight and three in foreign-foreign
wŭ zài zhōng-guó
five in central-state
“There are eight famous mountains in the world. Three are in
foreign countries, and five in the Middle Kingdom.”
From these examples we can see that the Chinese name for China,
zhōngguó, originally refers to a number of states situated roughly along the
Yellow River in North China that defines the limits of Chinese civilization and
later becomes a noun designating the unified empire. In modern times, when
serving as a short name for China, the meanings of “central,” or “middle” in
this lexical item are completely lost.6
3 Chinese
Chinese, as a language name in English, refers to the Sinitic subgroup of
Sino-Tibetan languages in Asia. But it can be translated into various Chinese
nouns for the language encompassing many different ideas depending on the
context. First of all, Chinese can be translated as zhōngwén generally
referring to the language. Zhōngwén is also the right term to use for
the academic discipline in studying Chinese language and literature, such as
zhōngwénxı̀ for the Chinese department in a university setting. Second,
the term hànyŭ “Han language” is used in the context contrasting the
languages spoken by the Han nationality that makes up 92% of the 1.3 billion
Chinese citizens of the People’s Republic with all of the non-Han languages
spoken in China and the rest of the world. Therefore, foreign students who are
now learning Chinese are said to be learning hànyŭ . Third, as hànyŭ is
a general term for the languages, many of which are mutually unintelligible
among speakers of different varieties of Han language, it by default refers
to the standard dialect of the country that is known as pŭtōnghuà lit-
erally meaning “common language” in the People’s Republic. Pŭtōnghuà
is a constructed norm based upon the language, a variety of Northern
Chinese, spoken in the capital city, Beijing. Moreover, Chinese corresponds
to a number of Chinese equivalents depending on the given speech commu-
nity. In Singapore, an important Chinese-speaking community, as well as in
the other Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, Chinese is known as huáyŭ
“Hua-language,” as Huá is another Chinese name for the Han-Chinese. In
Taiwan, for historical reasons, standard Chinese is known as guóyŭ ,
literally “national language.” Different as huáyŭ and guóyŭ may
appear, the standard is practically the same as pŭtōnghuà. Mandarin refer-
ring to Northern Chinese in English originated from the fact that the Mandarin
officials of the Qing Empire spoke to each other in that language. Fourth,
“Chinese” also refers to different Chinese dialects, or hànfāngyán , but
does not include any of the non-Han-Chinese languages spoken by ethnic
minorities in China.
An extraordinary phenomenon for the Han-Chinese is the lack of mutual
intelligibility among people within the same ethnic group. A Chinese person
from Beijing who has grown up speaking the most prestigious dialect of the
nation cannot speak or understand the local languages in the south, or the so-
called Southern Chinese dialects, such as those used in the streets of Shanghai
or Hong Kong. Traditionally, Han-Chinese is divided into seven major dialect
groups, Mandarin (or beifanghua Northern Chinese), Wu, Xiang, Gan, Kejia
(Hakka), Yue (Cantonese), and Min.7 Among the Han-Chinese, Northern
Chinese speakers comprise 70% (840 million), Wu 8.5% (102 million), Yue
5.5% (66 million), Min 4.5% (54 million), Kejia 4% (48 million), Gan 2.5%
(30 million), and Xiang 5% (60 million).8 In spite of sharing a large number
of cognates, or words of common origin, Chinese dialects vary most strik-
ingly in their sound systems. All Chinese dialects have tones with different
pitch contours for each syllable (for details see chapter 2). Table 1 shows
the tonal variations of different dialects as given in hànyŭ fāngyı̄n zı̀huı̀ “A
list of words with dialectal pronunciations” (Chinese Department, Beijing
University 1989).
Introduction 7
Table 1 Tonal variation in Chinese dialects. 55, 35, 214, etc. are tonal
values. For a more detailed description please refer to section 2.4.
Dialect City Tones (with tonal values)
Mandarin Beijing four tones: 55, 35, 214, 51

Wu Suzhou seven tones: 44, 24, 52, 412, 31, 4, 23
Xiang Changsha six tones: 33, 13, 41, 55, 21, 24
Gan Nanchang seven tones: 42, 24, 213, 45, 21, 5, 21
Kejia Meixian six tones: 44, 11, 31, 52, 1, 5
Yue Guangzhou nine tones: 55, 21, 35, 23, 33, 22, 5, 22, 2
Min Xiamen seven tones: 55, 24, 51, 11, 33, 32, 5
Table 2 Pronunciation of some Chinese cognates in different dialects.
City “mouth” “gold” “male” “province”
Beijing kou jin nan sheng

Suzhou k’y t in nø *sə n/saŋ
Changsha kə u t in lan sə n
Nanchang k’iε u t in lan *sε n/saŋ
Meixian *k’ε u/hε u kim nam *sε n/saŋ
Guangzhou hɐ u kɐ m nam ʃ aŋ
Xiamen *k’ɔ /k’au kim lam siŋ
* The first of the pair represents literary pronunciation, wéndú, and the second colloquial
pronunciation, báidú.
The examples in Table 2 show the diversified pronunciation of cognates

for mouth, gold, male, and province in different Chinese dialects (Chinese
Department, Beijing University 1989).
The seven major Chinese dialect groups are actually like many European
languages that are members of the Indo-European language group but are
mutually unintelligible. However, unlike Europeans, the inability to under-
stand each other’s speech has not made Chinese speakers feel any less Chinese,
regardless of the variety of language they grew up speaking. Norman (1988: 1)
observes that:
The explanation is to be found in the profound unity of Chinese culture that has been
transmitted in an unbroken line beginning from the third millennium BC and continuing
down to the present day. Even in periods of political disunity at various times in the
past, the ideal of a single, culturally unified Chinese empire has never been forgotten.
The Chinese language, especially in its written form, has always been one of the most
powerful symbols of this cultural unity.
Unlike European languages, the writings of which are alphabetical and bear
a direct relationship to the speech sounds in the given language, Chinese
writing adopts a logographic system with characters that are partially morpho-
syllabic (see Chapter 4).9 Although Chinese speakers from different parts of
the country may not be able to carry out a meaningful conversation in their
own spoken language, they can easily communicate in writing, which creates
a common, solidifying, and profound cultural bond among all Chinese dialect
speakers.
This connection is made possible by the fact that the grammar of writ-
ten Chinese generally follows the grammar of standard Chinese pŭtōnghuà
without incorporating into it too many regional dialectal features. All Han-
Chinese children, particularly those growing up in dialect-speaking areas,
must learn to write in this literary language in school. Fortunately, in spite of
some minor structural variations, the syntactic structures in pŭtōnghuà and
the various dialects do not differ substantially, thus making learning less oner-
ous for dialect-speaking children. Their primary task in learning pŭtōnghuà
is to a large extent simply to master the sound system of the national standard.
For example, other than the differences in speech sounds, the most conspicu-
ous difference between two sentences in pŭtōnghuà and Cantonese, or a Yue
dialect, is perhaps the perfective marker (glossed as PFV in (3), le versus zo,
that may not share a common origin.
(3) pŭtōnghuà:
wŏ măi le yı̀-běn shū
1st buy PFV a-CL book
“I have bought a book.”
Cantonese:
η o mai zo jat-pun Sy
I buy PFV a-CL book
“I have bought a book.”
Of course, these similarities do not mean that learning the grammar of

standard Chinese is completely effortless for dialect-speaking Chinese chil-
dren. Dialectal variations among the Chinese dialects go beyond speech
sounds and vocabularies and definitely reach sentence grammar. For exam-
ple, in (4) the adverb xiān “first” goes before the verb in pŭtōnghuà but
Introduction 9
the adverb Sin with a similar function in Cantonese takes the sentence-final
position.
(4) pŭtōnghuà:
wŏ xiān qù
I first go
“I go first.”
Cantonese:
η o haη Sin
I go first
“I go first.”
It is highly possible for a Cantonese speaker to learn to say something with the
correct pŭtōnghuà pronunciation, but with the Cantonese sentence grammar
like wŏ qù xiān “I go first.” In this case, even though the sentence may sound
very odd to a Northern Chinese speaker, the chance for her/him to comprehend
the sentence is still good. However, in the school setting, the wrong word
order in syntax would still be considered incorrect and not tolerated by the
teachers. In most cases, children growing up in a Cantonese-speaking area
would be taught to avoid speaking pŭtōnghuà and writing formally in this
kind of ungrammatical manner.
Standard Chinese, or pŭtōnghuà, is generally considered to be the most
prestigious variety of the Chinese language all over the country, perhaps
only with the exception of Hong Kong, which is located in the Yue-speaking
area. For example, whereas in the city of Shanghai, which is located in the
Wu-speaking area, the language that is most commonly used in schools is
pŭtōnghuà, it is not so in Hong Kong as its sovereignty was not returned
to the Chinese authorities until 1997. During the 150 years of colonial rule
under the United Kingdom, English was considered the primary language of
the colony even though the majority of the people living in the colony could
not speak this language. Compared to Hong Kong, Guangzhou (Canton),
another city located in the Yue-speaking area which was never placed under
British rule, has a profile in which English is hardly used at all in any sociolin-
guistic domain. It seems that even though pŭtōnghuà is most prestigious in
the two Southern-dialect-speaking cities, Shanghai and Guangzhou, English
is still the language that enjoys the highest prestige in Hong Kong as English
still figures most importantly in legal, governmental, and educational sectors,
Table 3 A comparison of the languages used in the speech communities in

Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou. This is a translation of Zou and You
‘s (2001: 91–92) Table 2.1.4. The original is written completely in Chinese.
I have made some minor modifications in light of social changes since 1997.
Domain Hong Kong Shanghai Guangzhou
Family Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese

Media Cantonese Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà/Cantonese
Official meetings Cantonese/English Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà
Official reports Cantonese/English Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà
Chatting Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese
Shopping Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese
Newspapers Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà
Campus language Cantonese/English Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà/Cantonese
Airports/stations Cantonese/English Pŭtōnghuà Cantonese/Pŭtōnghuà
Court English Pŭtōnghuà Pŭtōnghuà
Police Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese
Public transport Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese
Restaurants Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese
Local operas Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese
a phenomenon that can be considered a colonial legacy. Table 3 is taken with

some minor modifications from Zou and You (2001), outlining different func-
tions that standard Chinese, local dialects, and English serve for the 98% of
Hong Kong residents who are ethnic Chinese as compared to the Chinese in
Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The characterization of the languages used in different social domains also
shows that, within the three cities under scrutiny, standard Chinese is most
widely used in the city of Shanghai and least used in the city of Hong Kong.
As Cantonese is perhaps the most developed variety of Southern dialects,
the linguistic situations in the cities located in Southern dialect areas vary
between those in Guangzhou and Shanghai.
4 Readership
To a certain extent, this book is shaped by my previous students who were
eager to find out how Chinese flourishes within the context of Chinese
civilization, how its writing system evolved over time, how it interacts with
Introduction 11
the different languages surrounding it, what make up Chinese, what the fun-
damentals of its grammar are, etc. There are two groups of people to whom
this book is addressed. The first group is Chinese-language teachers and spe-
cialists in different fields of Chinese studies. There are already a number
of textbooks and good descriptions of the Chinese language in English in
various areas of Chinese linguistics. However, there is not a book written in
English with an overview of the structure of the language at the introductory
level for students who are not necessarily linguistic majors but need to have a
good knowledge of the language in order to conduct research in a given field.
Furthermore, most students who have no previous linguistic background may
find many available books either too specialized as an introduction, or too
limited in scope of coverage. This then is a book written mainly for English
speakers about Chinese as a foreign linguistic system. Various aspects of the
language covered in this book are shaped by my experience in teaching such
an introductory course at Stanford University. In short, this book should be
of interest to students and teachers of Chinese who want to acquire a good
knowledge about it in general or simply to be sophisticated learners of the
language.
The second group of the intended readership is those who are not profes-
sionally involved in Chinese studies but, for the purposes of comparison or
broadening their knowledge base, seek a general understanding of the history
and linguistic structure of a major language such as Chinese. With these two
groups of readers in mind, I do not assume a professional competence in
linguistics but describe the structure of the language with a minimum of spe-
cialist terminology. Similarly, English-language references will normally be
given for recommended further reading, and Chinese sources will be provided
primarily as a supplement or when not available in English.
5 Structure and aims

This book provides an introduction to the linguistic structure of Chinese in all
its aspects including history, dialects, and sociolinguistics, as well as its sound
system, writing, morphology, and syntax. However, this book is not written
for specialists in various subfields of Chinese linguistics so they may find
the coverage of various topics somewhat cursory. Given the page limit, the
focus of the book is on standard Chinese, pŭtōnghuà, and the related linguistic
aspects of which non-specialists would like to gain some insight and better
understanding. Chapter 1 provides a relevant history of the country and of the
formation of the standard language, including language policies, with respect
to the writing system or orthography. Chapter 2 deals with the pŭtōnghuà
sound system. Chapters 3 and 4 consider various word-forming strategies
in Chinese. Chapter 5 introduces the development of Chinese script and the
internal structure of Chinese characters. Chapter 6 examines the Chinese lexi-
con with an eye to the cultural underpinnings related to influential philosophy,
religion, and commonly held social beliefs. It also discusses borrowings from
English, Japanese, and other languages resulting from language contacts.
Chapters 7 and 8 deal with Chinese lexical categories, phrase structure rules,
and various Chinese constructions a student of Chinese should understand.
further reading
Chen, Ping. 1999. Modern Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yuan, Jiahua. 1989. Yuyu fangyan gaiyao “An introduction of Chinese dialects.” Beijing:
Wenzi Gaige Chubanshe.
Zhou, Youguang. 2003. The historical evolution of Chinese languages and scripts. Trans-
lated by Liqing Zhang. The Ohio State University: National East Asian Languages
Resource Center.
notes
1. Singtao Times Weekly 2004-5-15. No. 42. p. 23.
2. www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html#Econ
3. United Nations Population Division: http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?Panel=3
4. 2002/7/22 “Education in China”
5. Wu, Baotang 1990.
6. Glahn 2000.
7. Yuan, Jiahua 1989.
8. Zhou, Youguang 2003.
9. Chen, Ping 1999.
1 Historical background of the language
1.1 Prehistoric time

Chinese people regularly refer to themselves as descendants of the Yan
Emperor Yándı̀ and Yellow Emperor Huángdı̀ who are legendary
personages commonly believed to have lived in the western part of modern-
day China about 5,000 years ago. It is said that they resided along a Ji river and
a Jiang river, thus some of their direct descendants still bear the family names
Jı̄ and Jiāng today. Furthermore, the Yellow Emperor is said to have
been a great inventor with many extravagant tales about him. He supposedly
drew up the first Chinese calendar and was responsible for many inventions
enabling Chinese people to sustain the hardships of life in ancient times. Most
important of all, as a charismatic warrior who defeated the surrounding ene-
mies, he is credited with founding the nation from which Chinese civilization
emerged.
The first Chinese dynasty, xià, was established in western China near the
Yellow River around the twenty-first century BCE. As Xia rhymes with the
word huá , which could mean “flower,” Chinese civilization is also known
as “Hua-Xia civilization,” huá-xià wénmı́ng. For this reason, Hua is still used
in names for the ethnic group and its language in modern time, such as
huá-yŭ for Chinese in Singapore.
Chinese, as a Sinitic group, is most closely related to the Tibeto-Burman
languages currently spoken in the areas around the southwestern parts of
modern China. It is reasonable to assume that in prehistoric time a branch
of proto-Sino-Tibetan-speaking people migrated down from the mountainous
regions of central Asia and settled down around the Yellow River, or Huánghé
in Chinese, valley where they cohabited with the indigenous people
giving rise to the Chinese civilization. A comparison with some of the basic
vocabulary in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages yields similarities that
13
Table 1.1 Sino-Tibetan comparisons, adapted from Norman

1988: 13, Table 1.2.
Middle Old Written Written

Putonghua Cantonese Chinese Chinese Tibetan Burmese
I wo ngo nguo ngag nga aŋ

three san sam sam sə m gsum sum
name ming miŋ mjäng mjing ming ə -mañ
eye yan ŋan mjuk mjə kw mig myak
fish yu jy ngjwo ngjag nya ŋa
die si ʃ ei si: sjid shi-ba se
kill sha ʃ at săt srat bsat sat
poison du tυ k duok də kw dug tok
cannot be an accident. The Middle Chinese, Old Chinese, Written Tibetan

(WT), and Written Burmese (WB) data in Table 1.1 are taken from Norman
(1987).1
1.2 Oracle-bone and bronze scripts

The earliest record of written Chinese is inscriptions carved on turtle shells and
oxen shoulder blades excavated from the ruins of the Shang dynasty (sixteenth
to eleventh centuries BCE) capital at modern Anyang in Henan province. This
type of writing is usually called “oracle-bone script” jiăgŭwén, and it
was carved there for the purpose of divination. It was first discovered acci-
dentally in Anyang in 1899 after a Qing-dynasty scholar, Wang Yirong, who
was an expert on bronze script, found a strong resemblance between bronze
script and the carvings on some “dragon bones” that had supposedly some
curative powers and were perhaps given to him as part of a medicinal prescrip-
tion (Gao 1996: 225–6). Currently, over 100,000 pieces of shells and bones
with engraved script have been recovered through excavation in Anyang.
A total of about 3,700 different characters have been identified from these
artifacts; however, only about 2,000 of them have so far been deciphered (Zou,
et al. 1999: 227). Closely related to the oracle-bone script is the bronze script
that is carved on the surface of bronze vessels supposedly placed in palaces
and used for sacrificial ceremonies at the times of Shang and Western Zhou
dynasties.
1.3 Old Chinese (771 BCE–220 CE)

Old Chinese is thought to be a kind of koine, a common language that was
used for communication, for the people from the central states. This lin-
guistic system is also known as yăyán, “refined speech.” Traditional
Chinese scholars also called the pronunciation of this refined speech zhèngyı̄n
“authentic pronunciation.” It probably evolved from the pronunciation of
the languages spoken in the Xia and Shang dynasties around what is today
Henan province. Evidence of this common language can be seen from a sen-
tence in The Analects, (a collection of quotations from Confucius) where it is
recorded:
(1.1) ,
zı́ suŏ yă yán, shı̄, shū, zhı́ lı̌, jiē
master PRON elegant speak, ode, document, conduct ritual, all
yă yán yĕ
elegant speech Part.
“What the Master (Confucius) discussed are the Book of Odes,
the Book of History, and the maintenance of propriety. (These)
are all refined speech.”
In other words Confucius, a native from the state of Lu (in the modern-day
Shandong province), was able to conduct his teaching in a common language
yăyán to his 3,000 disciples who hailed from different central states. Thus,
even 2,500 years ago there already appeared to be a common language among
the people from the central states. The phonological sources from which the
Old Chinese (also called Archaic Chinese by some sinologists) sound system
is reconstructed include both the rhymes of poems in The book of Odes
, which Confucius thought highly of, and the phonetic hints provided
by the structure of Chinese characters, particularly through the descriptions
in dictionaries such as Shuōwén Jiĕzı̀ compiled by Xu Shen of the
Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).
Xianyang
Qin Dynasty
Map 2 The Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE)
However, in spite of the existence of the more prestigious common language

such as the refined speech discussed above, in Confucius’ time, there was
obviously a lack of mutual intelligibility between the native tongues spoken
across the central states. Xu Shen observed that the people from the central
states spoke a different language, yányŭ yı̀shēng , and used a different
writing script, wénzı̀ yı̀xı́ng . Emperor Shi Huangdi of the Qin dynasty
(221–207 BCE; see Map 2 for a map of the Qin empire), after annexing the
central states into one unified Middle Kingdom, authorized his Counselor-
in-Chief Li Si to develop a standard script for the empire on the basis of the
script used in the former state of Qin. This constitutes the earliest effort on
record in Chinese history to standardize the written language.
Although the Qin dynasty is credited with the enormous accomplishment of
forming a highly centralized empire and making itself known in the West, it is
the Han Empire, ruling the land after Qin for more than 400 years, that gave its
name to the people and the language in China. Nearly two millennia after its
fall, about 92% of the Chinese in China nowadays still refer to themselves as
Han people and their language as the Han language. During the Han dynasty,
the common language, a variety of the language functioning like the refined
speech in the Qin dynasty, was called tōngyŭ, .
During the second half of the Han dynasty, Buddhism was transmit-
ted into the empire from India. As the religion spread, Buddhist scrip-
tures were translated into Chinese, some of which have provided most
useful texts for modern scholars to investigate elements of the spoken lan-
guage of Middle Chinese as they were written in a vernacular style that
clearly diverges from the Classical style prevalent in the canonical Confucian
texts.
1.4 Middle Chinese (220 CE to 960)

After the fall of the Han Empire (see Map 3) in the third century, China was
ravaged by constant civil wars and internal strife until the Sui dynasty (589–
618) reestablished an empire somewhat comparable to Han in terms of its
territorial control. At the same time large-scale immigration had brought a
great number of speakers of the common language in central China, including
some wealthy and noble families, to the coast around the area of present-day
Nanjing. As a result the language spoken there became very similar to that
of the common language spoken in central China. It was also during the
Sui dynasty that an imperial examination system known as kējŭ was
established to recruit government officials from among the brightest young
scholars in the country. In this kind of examination, which was practiced
for more than a millennium until the beginning of the last century, a test-
taker had to demonstrate his ability to compose poems by following the
strictly regulated rhyming schemes extremely popular among men of let-
ters in Sui and Tang times. The sound system in the rhyme book Qièyùn
, published under the name of Lu Fayan (601 CE) soon after the Sui
dynasty founded its empire, was considered the accepted norm. This book
divides Chinese syllables, represented by characters into various rhyming
categories, according to their tonal qualities. Rhyme books like Qièyùn also
explained the meanings and formation of the characters, thus functioning
Luoyang
Changan
Han Dynasty
Map 3 The Han Dynasty (206 BCE–CE 220)
as dictionaries that could be used by scholars from different regions of the

empire.
1.5 Early modern Chinese (960 to 1900)

After the fall of the Tang dynasty in CE 907, with the exception of the 160
years of the Northern Song dynasty and the 280 years of the Ming dynasty,
the vast area north of the Yangtze River, or the former central states, was ruled
by Altaic speakers for more than 500 years. Two rhyme books, Zhōngyuán
Yı̄nyùn and Hóngwŭ zhèngyùn , after the Tang dynasty are
of particular importance, as for many scholars they constitute the basis for
the reconstruction of the early modern Chinese sound system. Zhōngyuán

Yı̄nyùn published during the time of the Yuan dynasty shows that, in the
spoken language of the capital city of Beijing, the Middle Chinese tonal
category, rùshēng “entering tone” or syllables that end with a stop sound, was
lost after several hundred years of rule by the Altaic speakers.
Nevertheless, the Mongolian emperors ruled the whole of China only for
eighty-nine years before the Ming dynasty reestablished Han-Chinese rule
over the entire country with the city of Nanjing along the Yangtze River as its
capital. For this reason, the Nanjing variety of Han-Chinese was consid-
ered the most prestigious among different varieties of the Chinese language
at the time, as was observed by sixteenth-to-seventeenth-century Italian mis-
sionaries. These missionaries not only left us with the earliest Chinese texts in
which Roman letters were employed to annotate Chinese pronunciation but
also left us with some detailed descriptions of the sociolinguistic situation
of China as they saw it (South Coblin 1998). In the rhyme book Hóngwŭ
zhèngyùn published during the Han-Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644) the
entering tone reappeared. As a matter of fact, other than the northern modern
Chinese, many regional Chinese dialects today still retain syllables with stop
endings. The Beijing dialect actually would not enjoy its most prestigious
status until the nineteenth century (Chen 1999), more than a hundred years
after the Manchu Qing emperors (1644–1911) began governing the empire
from its capital, Beijing.
However, no serious language planning at the national level occurred until
the late nineteenth century. After repeated military defeats by foreign pow-
ers and partially inspired by the remarkable success of neighboring Japan in
transforming its nation into a major power in the world after its Meiji Restora-
tion (1868), the Chinese imperial government and the general public started
to undertake language planning, attempting to construct a national language
as part of efforts to modernize China. During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911),
in spite of the fact that Beijing dialect was the de facto official language used
in the court and known as guānhuà “Mandarin,” China, as a nation, could
not agree upon a norm to be the nation’s standard language. The Nanjing,
Wuhan, Shanghai, and Beijing dialects were all among those proposed by
various scholars to be adopted as the national language, guóyŭ . Further-
more, proposals were also made to adopt a phonetic-spelling system as an
alternative to the traditional character-based script.
1.6 Modern Chinese (1900–present)

However in 1911, before the Qing Imperial government had a chance to
choose, or to decide upon, a linguistic norm for the nation, the Empire fell after
a number of armed uprisings led by the Nationalist Party. Planning to adopt
a national language for the newly founded Republic of China was resumed
almost immediately after the revolution. In 1913, a commission consisting of
eighty-eight scholars with expertise in traditional phonology and philology,
representing all provinces of the country, met in Beijing for more than a
month. Ultimately, the Commission announced the official pronunciation of
more than 6,500 Chinese characters and its chosen alphabet for phonetic
annotation zhùyı̄n zı̀mǔ . But this announcement did not truly affect
the general public until 1919 when the Guóyı̄n zı̀diăn “Dictionary of national
pronunciation” was officially published.
Almost immediately the standard pronunciation came under attack for its
artificiality. For instance, the entering tone with stop endings was treated, in
accord with traditional rhyme books, as the standard for distinctive phonetic
values of many syllables represented by characters. However, practically no
native speakers in northern China, i.e., 70% of the Han-Chinese, knew how
to pronounce these syllables because syllables with stop endings did not exist
in their daily speech. In addition, the native speakers of southern dialects,
who did regularly speak with stop endings in their native tongues, did not
know how to speak the standard pronunciation with stop endings because
the dictionary published by the government only indicated each character’s
tonal category without specifying how exactly they should be spoken. In
order to rescue this version of the national language, Yuen Ren Chao, an
American-trained, skillful phonetician, and Pu Wang were entrusted with the
task of creating a standard pronunciation for the nation. The two succeeded in
their task by following the Beijing dialect and inventing ways to pronounce
all the non-existent stop endings for Mandarin. Even though gramophone
records with the new standard pronunciation were distributed to the entire
nation along with the Chinese textbooks, ordinary Chinese speakers, most
importantly elementary schoolteachers, were still at a loss when faced with
sounds that did not exist in their everyday speech. The fact of the matter was
that, in spite of all the effort, citizens of the Republic simply did not know
how to speak their national language. Finally, in 1932, in order to end this
national dilemma, the government abandoned the artificial standard pronun-

ciation by adopting the Beijing dialect as the national language and published
a new Guóyı̄n chángyòng zı̀huı̀ “A glossary of frequently used characters in
national pronunciation” with a list of 12,219 Chinese characters. In this dic-
tionary, the 1913 phonetic annotation was renamed as zhùyı̄n fúhào
“sound-annotating symbols.” From then on, the entering tones, together with
all the sounds non-existent in the Beijing dialect, were formally removed
from the standard pronunciation. Accompanying these innovations, a roman-
ized script, designed by Yuen Ren Chao in 1926 and known as guóyŭ luómăzı̀
“romanized spelling for the national language,” was distributed by the govern-
ment. Therefore, after 1932, with the newly adopted standard pronunciation,
the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China was able to vigorously
promote the use of the national language in elementary schools, and the nation
as a whole was able to rid itself of the traditional rhyme books that represented
an outdated norm no longer practical in modern time.
After 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong won a
number of decisive victories in the battlefields and assumed power in Beijing,
the same standard pronunciation system was advocated by the government
of the People’s Republic of China. In 1955, two national conferences con-
vened in Beijing under the sponsorship of the central government decided
on the standardization of the script and spoken language for the nation. The
new Chinese government, as compared to its predecessors, played a much
more active role in language planning. First of all, the Chinese government
replaced the name of guóyŭ “national language” with pŭtōnghuà
“common speech (language)” in order to highlight political equality among
all ethnic groups and their languages (Zhou 2003). The official definition of
pŭtōnghuà is: “the standard form of Modern Chinese with the Beijing phono-
logical system as its norm of pronunciation, and Northern dialects as its base
dialects, and looking to exemplary modern works in báihuà ‘vernacular lit-
erary language’ for its grammatical norms” (Chen 1999: 24). Second, as a
result of the 1955 conferences, a newly designed phonetic scheme to facil-
itate the promulgation of pŭtōnghuà was adopted by the People’s Republic
of China in 1958. Such a scheme is a romanized system called hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n
fāngàn “Chinese spelling system,” with hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n, or pı̄nyı̄n, for short.
The symbols in Table 1.2 and Table 1.3 are the phonetic symbols in the order
of zhùyı̄n fúhào “sound-annotating symbols” adopted in the 1930s, hànyŭ
Table 1.2 Initials in pŭtōnghuà. Phonetic

transcriptions in parentheses.
Labials b [p] p [ph ] m [m] f [f]

Alveolars d [t] t [th ] n [n] l [l]
Sibilants z [ts] c [tsh ] s [s]
Palatals j [tç ] q [tç h ] x [ç ]
Retroflexes zh [t ] ch [t h ] sh [ ] r []
Velars g [k] k [kh ] h [h]
Table 1.3 Finals in pŭtōnghuà. Phonetic

transcriptions given in parentheses.
a [a] o [o] e [ə ] (-i-)e [ε ]

er [ə r] i [i] u [u] ü [y]
ai [ai] ei [ei] ao [au] ou [ou]
an [an] en [ə n] ang [ɑŋ] eng [əŋ]
pı̄nyı̄n “Chinese spelling system,” with the International Phonetic Alphabet

in square parentheses.
It is necessary to note, however, that the hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n “Chinese spelling
system” is currently not used in place of Chinese writing in China. Instead, it is
a romanized system functioning to annotate standard Chinese pronunciation
with Roman letters.
Since 1958, the pı̄nyı̄n system has become very useful for foreigners to learn
to speak Chinese and it is now most widely adopted by teachers instructing
foreign students in Chinese. The success of pı̄nyı̄n overseas is partially because
of its similarities with English letters that make it much easier for students
who already know English not only to commit the Chinese phonetic symbols
to memory, but also to type Chinese text into English-enabled computers.
The zhùyı̄n fúhào system is still commonly used in Taiwan to annotate
Chinese sounds. Although the government in Taiwan has announced a suc-
cession of romanized systems to denote Chinese sounds, they have not yet
met with much success. In 1999, the Taiwanese government announced the
adoption of hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n as the official spelling system for street and place
names on the island, but the law was repealed in the following year after
the Democratic Progressive Party took power. Moreover, in 2002, Taiwan’s
Language Promotion Committee under the Ministry of Education decided

to promote a hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n based Tōngyòng “commonly used” pı̄nyı̄n
scheme. However, this system is still being debated on the island as the hànyŭ
pı̄nyı̄n system has already been adopted by most international organizations
to denote Chinese names. Furthermore, in 1998, the Library of Congress in
the United States announced romanization guidelines in cataloguing Chinese
materials through designating Chinese in hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n spelling without the
tone marks. For the lack of empty space between words, the guidelines also
decided to separate, or to place an empty space between, Chinese syllables
(not including geographical and personal names) instead of following the
established hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n practice in China to separate not syllables but rather
words. Given the popularity of the hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n system, it is, then, not very
clear how much more successful than its predecessors the newly adopted
Tōngyòng pı̄nyı̄n system in Taiwan will be.
1.7 Modern Chinese grammar and its lexicon

We noted above that Northern dialects are the basis for pŭtōnghuà’s spoken
norm and exemplary modern works in báihuà “vernacular literary lan-
guage” for its grammatical norms. However, such a policy did not come as
easily as it might appear. Traditionally, the vernacular literary language, in
spite of its immense popularity, was looked down upon by the upper sec-
tors of the society. Whereas the vernacular language functioned to serve the
low-culture needs for mass consumption, such as religious texts, folklore and
plays, wényán “literary language” was the only acceptable style in the pre-
vious imperial examinations and typical of the canonical Confucius texts. The
language of wényán that may be characteristic of some form of Old Chinese
(before 200 CE) is very detached from the spoken language of the Chinese
people in subsequent times throughout history in terms of pronunciation,
grammar, and lexicon. The endurance of such an artificial written language
as the only acceptable formal language for such a long time is partially due to
the logographic nature of the Chinese writing system which is independent
from the actual speech sounds of different times. Soon after the 1911 Revo-
lution that overthrew the Qing dynasty, a so-called New Cultural Movement
swept across the country and fundamentally changed the lives of all sectors
of Chinese society. Led by a group of reform-minded, westernized scholars
like Chen Duxiu, Fu Sinian, Hu Shi, Liu Bannong, Lu Xun and Qian Xuan-
tong, these young Chinese intellectuals identified three major themes for the
movement in forging a new Chinese culture: literary revolution, science and
democracy. It was their hope that these ideals would be more in harmony with
the contemporary era and the lives of the common people. They were highly
critical of many traditional values and blamed them for a large proportion of
the failings of the nation. For example, in an open letter to Professor Chen
Duxiu who was editor of a highly influential journal of the time, entitled Xı̄n
Qı̄ngnián “New Youth,”2 Qian Xuantong, an influential professor of
Chinese in Beijing Normal University, advocated the abolition of Chinese in
order to make the Chinese people into “a totally new and civilized, twentieth-
century-minded people.” He believed that China should adopt Esperanto to be
the official language of the nation (Ramsey 1987: 1). Obviously, few people,
even among the most radical reformers, were willing to go as far as replacing
Chinese completely with an artificial language. However, one of the most
significant outcomes of the New Cultural Movement was the replacement
of wényán “the literary language” with báihuà “the vernacular literary lan-
guage” as the standard written language of the nation. Hu Shi, an important
Chinese scholar who was educated in Cornell and Columbia Universities
in the United States, argued, citing Dante, Chaucer, and Wycliff in the
European tradition, that a new Chinese language could only come from great
literature. Thus, he argued that the national language should be modeled after
the type of language found in most of the acclaimed traditional fictions which
emerged during and after the Ming dynasty. A more radical branch of the
reformers represented by Qu Qiubai and Chen Wangdao advocated a totally
new báihuà that should be what they called dàzhòngyŭ “language of
the masses,” which would be a language that was actually spoken by ordinary
people and understood by them. In spite of the disagreements, many famous
Chinese writers such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Xu Zhimo, and Yu Dafu, who
emerged during and after the New Cultural Movement, all published their
writings primarily in the vernacular language with some grammatical forms
and lexical items characteristic of the dialects they grew up speaking. After
the 1930s, this kind of genre gradually became an acceptable writing style to
the general public.
Furthermore, the pŭtōnghuà pronunciation of various dialectal vocabular-
ies as given in Xiàndài hànyǔ cı́diăn “A Dictionary of Modern
Chinese” (published by the Institute of Linguistics of the Chinese Academy

of Social Sciences) follow their cognates’ pronunciation in Beijing dialect.
For example, in Shanghai dialect, the word for pauper is realized as
h
[p ieʔ sε ]. Interestingly, this word is known all over the country because of
the nation’s fascination with life in the metropolis of Shanghai as vividly
described in fiction and movies produced after the 1920s in Shanghai. How-
ever, Beijing dialect does not have syllables ending with a stop sound like
[ʔ ] or a syllable with a mid vowel like [ε ] following a sibilant [s]. These
sounds, or combinations of them, which do not exist in Beijing dialect, are
then replaced in the standard pronunciation by allowable sounds, or combi-
nations of them, in Beijing dialect for such words. Therefore, in pŭtōnghuà,
the Shanghainese word for pauper is realized as biēsān as is indicated in the
authoritative Xiàndài hànyŭ cı́diăn. Still another example can be the word
[loŋdaŋ] for neighborhood in Shanghai that has gained national recogni-
tion as well. But in the languages of north China, there is virtually no voiced
stop. Moreover, it is not even the right word in the languages of north China
when referring to neighborhood. So its pŭtōnghuà rendition given in Xiàndài
hànyŭ cı́diăn is lòngtáng, the way it can be easily pronounced in Beijing
dialect referring to neighborhoods in Shanghai.
The general dissatisfaction with the Chinese language among intellectuals
and the fascination with the technologically more advanced West also led to
some linguistic changes that can be called Europeanization of the language.
For instance, in terms of pronunciation, the Chinese third-person pronoun
is an invariable string tā. Since the New Cultural Movement, three Chinese
characters have been invented in written Chinese and have since become
formally recognized pronouns to distinguish between genders in written lan-
guage. These different characters are “human and male,” “human and
female,” and “non-human,” in spite of the fact that in reality they are all
pronounced in exactly the same way. It has also been noted that Chinese syn-
tax, to a certain extent, has also been influenced by Western languages such
as the extensive use of relative clauses, and passive constructions, in modern
Chinese (Li and Thompson 1981).
After nearly a hundred years of debate and effort in standardizing Chinese,
considerable progress has been made with respect to the pronunciation and the
lexicon of Chinese in the People’s Republic of China. After nearly fifty years
of promoting pŭtōnghuà in the country, it is now the language of instruction
and campus activities in all schools across the nation, with perhaps the excep-
tion of some remote areas and Hong Kong where teaching in elementary
schools is still conducted primarily in local dialects. According to Chen
(1999), in 1984 90% of the population in China could understand pŭtōnghuà,
and 50% of the population could speak it.
In 1996, guójiā jı̀shù jiāndūjú “the National Bureau on Tech-
nical Supervision” announced and put into practice hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n zhèngcı́fă
jı̄běn guı̄zé “basic rules for hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n orthography.” For example, these
rules required that in spelling out a Chinese name, the given name and fam-
ily name of a person are required to be separated, such as Lu Xun and Mao
Zedong. On the other hand, these rules designated that non-Chinese names
should be spelled according to the original language such as Karl Marx or
George Washington. However, special nouns that have commonly known Chi-
nese versions should be spelled according to Chinese such as Yı̄ngguó
for England and Měiguó for the United States of America. Although
different opinions may still exist as to the plausibility of some of these
rules even among the intellectual elite in China, the original regulations that
were officially announced by the government in 1988 are currently still in
effect. On October 31, 2000, the President of the People’s Republic of China,
Mr. Jiang Zemin, also signed into law zhōnghuá rénmı́n gònghéguó tōngyòng
yŭyán wénzı̀fă “Bill on the common language and orthography of the
People’s Republic of China,” reaffirming the official status of pŭtōnghuà
and its standard orthography.
1.8 Simplification of Chinese script

A common script is perhaps the most important means to convey ideas and
laws to every corner of a country where people speak mutually unintelligible
regional languages. However, the complexity of Chinese writing made the
language undoubtedly difficult to learn. A nineteenth-century scholar, Lu,
observed in 1892:
I believe that the strength and prosperity of the country depends upon the physical
sciences, which can grow and flourish only if all people – men and women, young and
old – are eager to learn and sagacious. If they are to be eager to learn and sagacious,
then the script needs to be phonetized in such a way that, after they have acquired the
alphabet and the spelling, they will know how to read without further instruction. It also
depends upon speech and writing being the same so that what is said by the mouth will
be understood by the mind. Furthermore, it depends upon having a simple script that is
easy to learn and write. As a result, this will save more than ten years. If all that time
is applied to the study of mathematics, physical sciences, chemistry, and other practical
studies, how can there be any fear that our country will not be rich and strong? (quoted
in Chen 1999: 165)
In line with the political needs of the empires and the technological devel-
opments relating to writing, different scripts have been prevalent at different
times. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Chinese reformers repeatedly advo-
cated the replacement of the Chinese script with an alphabet that writes down
what one says phonetically. Mao Zedong, a charismatic leader and chairman
of the Chinese Communist Party for more than thirty years, was originally
one of those who had such a conviction. He was reported to have told an
American journalist, Edgar Snow, in 1936 that latinization was a good instru-
ment with which to overcome illiteracy and that sooner or later the Chinese
people would have to abandon characters altogether in order to create a new
social culture in which the masses could participate fully (DeFrancis 1984).
A less radical proposal that would involve retention of the characters was pre-
sented by the American-trained philosopher Hu Shi (Chinese Ambassador to
the United States during World War II). Although he was also convinced that
China would ultimately have to adopt an alphabetic writing system in the
future, he, at the same time, believed that the large number of monosyllables
in the literary language, or wényán, made it difficult to change Chinese writ-
ing over to an alphabetic script without going through an intermediate stage
of báihuà writing, a genre characteristic of vernacular Chinese in the best
Chinese fiction (DeFrancis 1984).
In this national debate, many reformers concurred that as a first step toward
the goal of latinization of the Chinese script, it was necessary to simplify the
logographic, or non-alphabetic, writing first. In the 1930s the government
officially started the simplification of Chinese script. In August 1935 the
Nationalist government in Nanjing officially announced a list of 324 sim-
plified characters, known as “The First Set of Simplified Characters.” Three
principles were adopted in so doing: (1) adopt existing ones and do not create
new ones; (2) select those that circulate relatively widely in society; (3) do not
simplify characters that originally did not have too many strokes. However,
the list was not embraced by many conservatives, especially many influential
bureaucrats within the government’s own hierarchies, and was abolished only
a few months after its announcement.
The movement to simplify Chinese script experienced a large advance-
ment after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Currently
there are about 56,000 Chinese words,3 many of which are variant forms of a
common morpheme. In the early 1950s, to facilitate the literacy movement,
over 1,000 variant forms, or characters, were officially eliminated from stan-
dard usage. A Committee on Script Reform was set up in 1952 to formulate
some principles for simplifying Chinese characters. The goal was to reduce
the number of strokes for the most commonly used characters. In 1956, the
Scheme of Simplifying Chinese Characters was promulgated with 515 sim-
plified characters and 54 simplified radicals. Some of the strategies include:
a. to adopt a simpler original form by dropping a later added radical such as
for “cloud”
b. to adopt a simpler popular form such as for “10,000”
c. to adopt a simpler form from cursive script such as for
d. to create a new simpler character such as for .
The specific methods take account of omission for , shape reform
for , substitution by a homonym for , change of a component part
for , etc. After continuous effort, in 1964, a General List of Simplified
Characters was promulgated including 2,235 characters that make up roughly
90% of the characters used in modern Chinese publications (Zhou 2003).
Since then, Singapore has also adopted a simplified character set as its Chinese
orthography, although Hong Kong and Taiwan continue to use the traditional,
unsimplified script for cultural and political reasons.
1.9 Formation of Chinese dialects

Chinese dialects formed as a result of waves of migration by the Han-Chinese
moving out of the Yellow River area, or the former central states, first to
southern China, and later to southwestern China, at various times over the
last two millennia. The Chinese believe that they speak dialects of a single
language mostly because of the political institution of the nation and a cultural
heritage that they have shared for such a long time throughout history. Just as
the mighty Yellow River flows down from the Loess Plateau in northwestern
China, the earliest Chinese settlers moved down the hilly west and started
an agricultural civilization in the fertile land along the middle and, later the
lower, reach of the Yellow River. Whenever the central states were suffering
from floods or civil wars, waves of migrants started to move elsewhere.
1.9.1 Northern Chinese (Mandarin)
The plethora of linguistic diversity of Chinese languages in the south and one
unified Mandarin in the north might be related to the geographical character-
istics of China’s north and south. “Mandarin dialects,” (hereafter, Northern
Chinese or Northern dialects) are spread across the Yellow Plain and the
Loess Plateau which has a flat terrain that promotes travel and, consequently,
easy contact among the people there. Ramsey (1987: 22) observes that “[t]his
remarkable linguistic difference between a unified North and a fragmented
South is a measure of how much life and society have been affected by geog-
raphy.” As a result of this geography, a more uniform Northern Chinese area
is created with mutually intelligible dialects. In contrast, mutually unintel-
ligible dialects are spoken in the areas south of the Yangtze River because
people there were barricaded by mountains and rivers highly unfriendly to
traveling in pre-modern times.
The Northern dialects, with nearly 900 million speakers, are commonly
subdivided into four major varieties: Northwestern, Northern proper, River,
and Southwestern. The Northwestern variety refers to the dialects spoken
around the Loess Plateau region with the ancient capital city Xi’an as its cen-
ter. The Northern proper variety is spoken in the areas such as Hebei province,
Shangdong province, and provinces in the northeast (Manchuria). This variety
constitutes the basis of the standard dialect in modern China. The language
was formed through large-scale immigration of the people residing in this area
over the last several hundred years. People living in northern China started to
move to northeast China dōngběi , formerly known as Manchuria, after
the Qing emperors lifted, in the eighteenth century, the imperial rule pro-
hibiting Han-Chinese from migrating to the sacred land where the Manchu
originally lived. Therefore, Northeastern dialects bear a strong resemblance
to other Northern dialects as most migrants settling there originally moved
from the Northern dialect area. The River variety spoken in the region north
of the Yangtze River around the city of Nanjing was once considered the
most prestigious dialect of the nation during and after the Ming dynasty. The
Southwestern variety developed out of several waves of migrants settling in

the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou from central China after the
Ming dynasty. Many of the rebels, after losing in the battlefields to the victors
in central China, found these isolated areas easy refuge from the ultimate
defeat. As a result of frequent military action in these places, the native pop-
ulation was drastically reduced there. During the late eighteenth century the
Qing emperors dispatched troops to settle in these remote areas permanently
with their families and encouraged large-scale immigration from Hubei and
Hunan provinces to reclaim the land in southwestern China. Consequently,
the Southwestern variety in many ways resembles the language spoken in
Hubei province. Northern Chinese typically has fewer tones than Chinese
dialects in the south. However, the most remarkable feature distinguishing
Northern Chinese from the mutually unintelligible Southern Chinese dialects
is perhaps the lack of stop endings that are prevalent in many Southern dialects
like Wu, Yue, and Min.
1.9.2 Southern dialects
Traditionally six major Southern dialects are recognized. They are Wu, Xiang,
Min, Yue, Gan, and Kejia (Hakka). The Wu dialects, with over 80 million
speakers, are prevalent in the coastal regions and the Yangtze River delta
4
around the city of Shanghai. It was reported in Shiji “Family
of Duke Wu” that a sector of the population migrated to the region after a split
in a noble family who lived near the Wei River (in the central states) during
the Spring and Autumn period (770–403 BCE) and established the state Wu,
which gives its name to the dialect group. The language spoken by this group
of migrants may constitute the origin of the modern Wu dialects which have
seven (Suzhou) to eight tones (Wenzhou). This dialect group, unlike most of
the other Chinese dialects, retains the voiced and voiceless stop contrast in
its spoken language.
The Xiang dialect, spoken mostly in the modern Hunan province, is
probably a modified variety of the currently extinct Chu language which
flourished during the Warring States period (430–221 BCE). This dialect
resembles Northern Chinese a great deal because of its geographical affinity.
There are six different tones in the Xiang dialect (also known as New Xiang)
as it is spoken in Changsha , the capital city of Hunan province (Yuan
1989). The so-called Old Xiang (a modern dialect group) spoken in the city
of Shuangfeng, unlike the New Xiang in Changsha, retains the Middle Chinese
voiced and voiceless stop contrast and has five tones.
The Yue dialects are spoken in Guangdong province and in the Guangxi
Autonomous Region in southern China. The modern Yue dialects are believed
(Zhou 1991) to be a language that can be traced back to the language spoken
by the 500,000 troops dispatched by Qin Shihuang (246–209 BCE) to settle
along the south China coast in order to prevent the possible insurrection of the
aboriginal people residing there. As compared to other major Southern dialect
groups, Yue speakers have developed a stronger group identity associated with
the language and consider the most prestigious variety of Yue to be spoken
in the capital city of Guangdong province, Guangzhou. In the Ming dynasty,
Guangzhou was among the earliest port cities to start to trade with foreign
merchants arriving from overseas by ships and, therefore, was named by the
European merchants as Canton. (For this reason, in English Yue dialect is
popularly known as Cantonese.) In order to represent colloquial Cantonese,
non-traditional characters that are non-existent in standard Chinese script
were created and commonly used in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. No other
Chinese dialect has developed to such a degree of sophistication.
Yue-speakers traditionally call themselves táng-rén “Tang people” after
the powerful Tang dynasty (618–907), their language táng-huà “Tang
speech,” their clothes táng-zhuāng “Tang clothes,” and even all of China
táng-shān “Tang mountain.” The earliest Chinese immigrants to Europe
and North America in modern times also happened to be largely from the Yue-
speaking area. As a result, in many overseas “Chinatowns,” such as the one
in San Francisco, for a very long time the de facto Chinese spoken there
has been Cantonese rather than the national language in China. Interestingly,
all of the “Chinatowns” in Europe and America are commonly referred to in
Chinese as táng-rén-jiē “Tang people street,” referencing the Cantonese
tradition.
The Min dialects refer to the languages spoken in Fujian province. This
region became an administrative county for the first time during the Han
Empire (BCE 206–220 CE). In subsequent times, large-scale migration to the
region has occurred both by seas and by land, as many people were forced to
find a place to flee the political chaos caused by incessant war in north China.
During Western Jin (CE 265–420), thirteen counties were established along
the coast and near the mountainous areas of Fujian province. The language
spoken in these counties at that time may be the earliest form of the current Min
dialects. Large-scale immigration during the last several hundred years from
the area around the cities of Quanzhou and Xiamen (Amoy) have also placed
the Southern Min speakers in Taiwan and Hainan islands and created many
Southern Min-speaking Chinese communities in Southeast Asian countries
such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.
As Fujian Province has few navigable rivers and plenty of inaccessible
mountain ranges it is geographically isolated from other parts of China. Thus,
the Min dialects are some of the most heterogeneous in China. There are at
least nine different mutually unintelligible Min dialects in Fujian province
alone (Ramsey 1987). The better-known varieties of Min dialects include
Fuzhou (capital city representative of Northen Min), Xiamen (Amoy, rep-
resentative of Southern Min) and Chaozhou (Southern Min in Guangdong
Province). There are seven tones in the Fuzhou and Xiamen dialects, six in
the Jianou dialect, and eight in the Chaozhou dialect. The differences among
the varieties of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan and the Hainan islands gen-
erally correspond to the differences between the dialects spoken in the region
around Quanzhou and Xiaman from which most Southern Min speakers in
Taiwan and Hainan originated.
To the west of the Wu-speaking area along the Yangtze River in Jiangxi
province is the Gan-speaking region. The earliest migration wave into
northern Jiangxi occurred during the years of the Jin dynasty (265–420 CE).
The Gan dialect is generally considered to be a transitional dialect between
the languages spoken in the north and south of China. Syllables with -p, -t, -k
endings are clearly distinguishable in its Southern varieties, whereas these
stops are indistinguishable in its Northern variety spoken in Nanchang ,
the capital city of Jiangxi province (Ramsey 1987). There are seven tones in
the Nanchang dialect.
Kejia , popularly known as Hakka before the pŭtōnghuà spelling was
officially adopted, is the last major dialect group recognized in China. During
the later part of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), central China was once
again ravaged by civil wars and political instability. The Kejia dialects are
the result of waves of southward migration from Jiangxi into Fujian after
the Tang dynasty. Nowadays, Kejia-speaking communities are scattered all
over southern China including Guangdong, Fujian, Taiwan, Guangxi and
Guizhou. The dialect spoken in Meixian located in the mountainous

eastern Guangdong province is considered to be standard Kejia dialect. There
are six tones in this dialect, and it retains the Middle Chinese stop endings.
further reading
Chen, Ping. 1999. Modern Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DeFrancis, John. 1984. The Chinese language: fact and fantasy. Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press.
Norman, Jerry. 1988. Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ramsey, Robert. 1987. The languages of China. Princeton University Press.
Zhou, Youguang. 2003. The historical evolution of Chinese languages and scripts.
Translated by Liqing Zhang. Ohio State University: National East Asian Languages
Resource Center.
notes
1. In Table 1.1, some non-standard phonetics are used. These are taken from Norman
1988: 13, Table 1.2. Putonghua and Cantonese examples are added by me.
2. This journal also had an official French title, La Jeunesse.
3. Xiandai Hanyu da zidian.
4. Shiji “Records of a historian” is a collection of historical records compiled by a great
historian Sima Qian of the early Han dynasty (206 BCE).
2 Phonetics of standard Chinese
Phonetics is the study of the pronunciation of spoken languages. The pro-

nunciation of standard modern Chinese, or standard Chinese, is known as
pŭtōnghuà “common language” in the People’s Republic of China,
guóyŭ “national language” in Taiwan, or huáyŭ in Singapore. This
standard, hereafter pŭtōnghuà, is also the medium of instruction in nearly
all campuses in China. In Hong Kong, where people grow up speaking Can-
tonese, pŭtōnghuà is currently a compulsory subject for all students beginning
in Primary 1 (equivalent to the first grade in the American school system) of
the elementary school. The standard pronunciation of Chinese is based on
the variety of Northern Chinese spoken in the capital city, Beijing. Further-
more, in addition to the segmental phones similar to those represented by
the letters of the alphabets in European languages, standard Chinese is also
a tonal language with one of four basic tones, or a neutral tone, allotted per
syllable. Therefore, the syllable structure of standard Chinese is composed of
an initial segmental consonant, a medial (also known as on-glide), a vowel,
a syllabic terminal (or off-glide), and a supra-segmental tone. The traditional
conceptual framework of a Chinese syllable is to analyze Chinese syllables
in terms of initials, finals, and tones, in contrast to the cross-linguistic, or
common, practice that simply provides a phonemic inventory of consonants
and vowels. I have chosen to follow the Chinese tradition so that the reader
will become familiar with the sound system of initials, finals, and tones.
In the following discussion, phonetic symbols in the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA) are given in square brackets, to distinguish them from Chinese,
or English, spelling. In this book, hànyŭ pı̄nyı̄n, the romanized spelling system
officially adopted in the People’s Republic of China, will be used to annotate
standard Chinese sounds that are not represented in Chinese script. For exam-
ple, the word for “rabbit” is represented by the italicized tù, in the romanized
pı̄nyı̄n spelling, and , the character in the official Chinese orthography. To
34
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
We soon go S.E., and endless swarms of swimming birds come to
meet us, and appear to fly down with the river. The pelicans also
follow the very same direction, but rest every moment upon the
water. It appears that these birds are fonder of live fish, and leave
the dead ones to birds of prey, and on that account seek for the
inundated parts of the lower course of the stream. In a very short
time we go S.W., but immediately again, at eight o’clock, S.E. The
wind passes over to the E. in order to gain strength. Like yesterday
afternoon, the right shore, from N.E. to S.E., is now covered with
tokul-tops, partly collected together as villages, partly lying singly on
the line of the horizon, upon which also some dhellèb-palms may be
remarked.
To follow the shore of the river, and to define the limits of the
bed of the White Stream, over which it here and there rolls, the
principal thing would be to follow the line of the villages and old
trees, for these determine the peculiar marks of high water, elevated
by the river itself. From this high water we might, perhaps, be able
to ascertain the mean breadth of the river. But such a difficult
journey by land will be certainly, for a long time, an intricate
problem. The Turks themselves have also here, without perhaps
wishing it, failed in the first impression; so that from “children of
heaven” they have become “white devils,” in the eyes of the people.
Therefore we see on every side pillars of smoke ascending, which
are to be considered as signals of approaching danger, according to
the statement of our heroes; whilst the kindled reed-straw, or the
high grass of the savannah prairies, spreads its smoke horizontally.
Innumerable birds are perched round, in the ambaks; among them a
number of turtle-doves are cooing very peaceably, reminding me
more of the great Campo in Constantinople than of the lower shores
of the Nile.
Ten o’clock. Fadl told me, from the mast, that firm land was
approaching the shore from both sides. It was not long before we
perceived, whilst making three miles’ course, some tokuls also on
the left shore, part of them appearing to be of peculiar size. We see
also, in the middle of the reeds, on small eminences, two such huts,
said to serve fishermen for temporary abodes. Four men and a
woman make signs, or greet us, by raising up their arms high in the
air; but even with the best will, we are not able to force our way to
them, although they may have something we could pillage.
Nevertheless, the right shore retreats again, and we distinguish only
the palms of the last-mentioned village.
We continue S.S.E., and as the right shore goes back towards
S.E., the left shore approaches nearer with S.W. by S. The stream is
now more than 400 paces broad; its water is still very dark, and the
broad reeds, with the other aquatic plants, present such a verdant
appearance, that it is quite refreshing; and they shoot forth with
such vigour, that we imagine we see them growing. It is eleven
o’clock. The N.E. wind has again slackened. Our direction is S.E. The
water is stagnant in the reeds, not only shut out by them from the
current, but also kept back from the stream, which, notwithstanding
the narrowness of its bed, has only one mile in rapidity. An influx of
this stagnant water into the narrow river-bed can only, therefore,
take place according to the proportion in which the stream gradually
runs off, and is absorbed into this, its bed.
The Frenchmen pretend, when they return from the mast, to
adjust the genuine river-bed, but they will not believe that the water
has fallen so that one cannot see over the reeds and the marsh-
trees. The company was to have dined with us, but Feïzulla Capitan,
who had undertaken to invite the others, had gone first with the
sandal to Suliman Kashef, and had there caroused to such excess
that he even forgot to invite Suliman himself. Yet, this morning, he
thought that he had not only invited him, but also Selim Capitan and
the Frenchmen. We made, therefore, the necessary provision for this
repast, and waited for the vessels preceding us to bring up; until I
heard at last from Selim Capitan as he passed us, that Feïzulla had
not been to him.
The latitude yesterday was 8° 36′ 30″, and to-day, 8° 36′. We
remained generally, with small declinations, in the south-easterly
direction. The hygrometer indicated at three o’clock 40′, and after
five o’clock 50′, of atmospheric moisture, whilst in the night it had
70′ to 80′. The dew constantly shews itself first towards morning,
and the carpet lying upon the deck is as wet as if it had been dipped
in water. The cheerful verdure is explained from this cause, yet it will
be extremely monotonous if the same vegetation continues for any
distance. We supped together in our vessel, and the Russian
renegade, Captain Selim Aga, shewed his usual good scent, and
likewise appeared. We were merry, and had two Abu Hashis to
contend in witticisms; during which they wished each other to be
troubled with all the gnats, and kept up a continual scoffing.
CHAPTER VII.
QUESTION OF THE NAVIGATION OF THE NILE. — KING OF THE SNAKES. —
OFFERINGS TO HIM BY THE ARABS. — KURDISTAN. — MÀRIAN’S AUTHORITY
OVER THE NEGROES. — THE TAILOR CAPTAIN AGAIN. — DHELLÈB-PALMS. —
WANTON DESTRUCTION BY THE CREW. — ELEPHANTS: WHITE BIRDS ON
THEIR BACKS. — POISON-TREES. — THE NATION OF THE KÈKS: CUSTOMS
AND DESCRIPTION OF THEM. — FLESH OF CAMELS AND GIRAFFES. —
MERISSA PREPARED FROM ABRÈ. — THIBAUT DISCOVERED TO BE AN OLD
ACQUAINTANCE. — RECOLLECTIONS OF GREECE. — WILD CUCUMBERS. —
FEIZULLA CAPITAN’S DRINKING PROPENSITIES.
17th December.—Immediately after sunrise we sailed S.S.E.; at

eight o’clock, S.S.W., and at nine o’clock, S.W. by S. The stream we
navigate is tolerably broad, and appears, so far as we can see over
the reedy-sea, to be the only one. On the right shore we have still
the dhellèb-palms of yesterday in sight; the land retreats towards
S.E., whilst the left shore comes nearer, and lets us see individual
tokuls and villages. Some blacks stand on the shore, which
approaches us at nine o’clock within gun-shot. They greet us and
make signs, but we cannot go to them on account of the reeds,
willingly as we would make their acquaintance, in order to provide
ourselves again with meat. Ten o’clock. The left shore appears to go
S.W. with the river, calculating from some trees and dhellèb-palms.
The east wind is tolerably strong; we make three miles. A large
pelican was shot, and there were found in the pouch under its bill
twenty-four fresh fish, the size of moderate herrings. This burden
had impeded its flight from our vessels, and prevented it from
swallowing its prey, on the death-shot, as is usual with these birds.
If we consider this enigmatical stream territory, we ask ourselves
whether the white river, of and by itself, with such a weight of water,
can maintain these lagoons under an African sun? Were the Nile one
stream, it must flow off faster; for the rains have already ceased
here, and previously, indeed, under the Equator itself. How could the
Nile, which still shews its peculiar disposable mass of water, in its
main-stream, supply, quite alone, that enormous mass of water, and
even to the present time maintain under water these immense reedy
lakes, unless other tributary streams, the mouths of which stagnate,
owing to the level nature of the ground, and the counter-pressure of
the main-stream, supplied a nourishment great beyond belief, to
this, with which it equally rises and falls? For the whole mass of
water in complexu must suffer an incredible diminution during such
a long tract in its slow ebbing, under a burning sun, or this Bahr-el-
Abiad must have real giant-springs in its source.
A steam-boat here might surmount many difficulties, and give us
the necessary corrections for a map, which cannot be effected by
sailing with a constant wind, owing to the often diametrically
opposite windings, and the endless difficult calculations. In order to
bring such a steam-vessel safe over the upper cataracts of Wadi
Halfa, or even of Es-Suan, it must be constructed in such a manner
that the paddle-wheels could be entirely taken out, so that it might
be towed over by ropes, or it must be built in Khartùm, which,
indeed, might be difficult from want of good timber, as the sunt-tree,
though very strong, affords but brittle wood. The greatest difficulty
would be the establishment and protection of coal-magazines; and
with regard to applying charcoal to this purpose, although the White
Stream in its lower course has forests enough, yet not so on its
middle and upper part: and even if the requisite wood should be
found, much time must be lost in felling and preparing it for
charcoal. A considerable number of men also would be always
necessary for the protection of these establishments, and their
consumption of victuals would be so great, that their provisions
would leave no room for the charcoal, as the vessels could not be
heavier laden. There is another very great consideration,—these
labyrinths go through the marshy regions. If only a few men,
therefore, should be embarked, and other vessels employed to take
up coals, their crews must consist entirely of men selected for the
purpose, and known to one another, in order that they might
communicate with the inhabitants of the shore, and be able to aim
at something more than simply ascertaining the course of the river.
Europeans only are fit for this, as they have ideas of humanity, and
subjection to the will of One.
At last we have determined to take the clumsy kaiàss in tow, at
the droll request of Hässeïn Aga. Our vessel began with it, in order
to form a line with the other larger Dahabiës. At eleven o’clock we
discerned, upon a marsh island, near the left shore, some thirty
talle-trees; this genus we had missed for some time. Here we turn
S.S.E., and with a small bend E.S.E., and then E. by S. We were
driven by the east wind close to the right bank of the reeds before
we had reefed the sails. The only remaining hope that the river may
follow its winding course, and bring us, with the assistance of rowing
a short way, into a more favourable direction.
Hüsseïn Aga, who is on board our vessel, with another Kurd of
Suliman-kashefs, confirms what we had already heard from the Kurd
Abdul-Elliàb, and which all these people firmly believe,—namely, that
derwishes know how to prepare a liquor, which, if but once drunk of,
is a preventive thenceforward of the bite of a snake, or of rendering
it harmless. Such a derwish is said to be found even in Khartùm. But
some few words, which they assert to be a secret, are requisite to
exorcise or find out where snakes are. I then heard that the King of
the Snakes is called Shah Maràn. They cannot say, however, where
this Sultan lived or died before he assumed the form of a snake, nor
do they know his fixed residence, for he sometimes appears in one
place, sometimes in another, like the two tutelar deities by water and
land, Abu Seïd and Abd-el-Kader. The Arabs are also said to adjure
this Snake King in their exorcisms. Even the long sailor, Salem,
whom I had patronised on account of his German countenance, and
to whom I had given some piasters for the snakes he brought me,
one of which he even seized with naked hands before my eyes,
affirmed by his silence that he would not trust me, even under the
greatest promises of secrecy, with this mystery, inherited from his
father. The country of this Shah Maràn is in Turkish Kurdistàn, not
very far from Adana, where there are two villages exempted from
paying tribute on condition of supplying the snakes there with milk.
Abd-Elliab had himself offered milk to the snakes in that region,
and swore that he had seen with his own eyes this King, unless it
was a Wokil or deputy, of whom Maràn has many. Abd-Elliab poured
his milk into one of the basins there formed by nature, whereupon,
in the first place, a large snake, with long hair on its head, rolled out
from the hole in the rock, and drank of it. This great chief then
retired, without, however, speaking a word to him, as it had done to
others; because, at that time, he had not abjured strong drinks.
Afterwards other snakes crawled out from all the clefts of rocks, and
took the remains of the milk, as being subjects of the former one.
The two other Kurds (sing. Kurd plur. Krat), who were not friends
with this Koran-hero, vouched for the truth of their countryman’s
statement, and gave it as their opinion that the great Maràn only
shewed himself to a saint, or a Sultan; and that he had a human
face, for that otherwise he could not speak and give advice.
They related, likewise, more credible histories of their country;
how their capital city, Nausùd, stands upon a high, impregnable
rock, where the Sultan Haidar resides, and has six Bashas under
him; that all the warriors wear armour, and are mounted, and that
the mountaineers themselves have never been subdued. Then they
spoke of their manner of hunting, and their hawking for hares and
gazelles, and said that a good falcon costs 2000 piastres. They suffer
no Jews to reside in their state, and assert that the latter kill and
drink the blood of prisoners, when they happen to be Krat (Kurds).
At half-past four Selim Capitan returned to us, because he
thought some accident must have happened; the ships which had
preceded having waited for us three hours. Feizulla Capitan, with the
same zeal that he read, a short time ago, the Koràn, so that he
neither heard nor saw, now sits at his tailoring, and lets the crew do
what they like. They therefore never think of exerting themselves
and seizing the oar, but draw the vessel forward on the reeds,
slinging a rope round it to tow it. We had scarcely made one mile,
when the river wound towards the right side from E. by S. to S.S.E.,
and we saw beyond the reeds, projecting in a sharp angle, the other
vessels with their glittering sails.
That the reeds have sufficient strength to encroach in this
manner on the path of the river, or that a counterpressure from the
left shore, although no tributary stream is visible in the
neighbourhood takes place, indicates the weakness of the current.
So far it is established, that if a straighter bed here could be
assigned to the river, by removing the reeds, it would have a fall,
and, by that means, a more rapid flow. These marsh lakes might be
made dry at certain seasons of the year, and an immeasurable,
fertile, low country would be gained, such, perhaps, as exists not
elsewhere in the world. And this cutting through of the reeds does
not lie beyond the reach of possibility, if once ideas of cultivation of
land spread even here. Some miserable tokuls, on small elevated
spots, peep out from the reeds; their vicinity to snakes, gnats, and
other vermin, is not to be envied. We follow the course of the river,
at four o’clock, towards S.S.W., and set three more oars on, without
Feïzulla Capitan’s orders.
Again there is contention among the blacks, who are of different
tribes. Prince Mariàn, the serjeant, lashes away in a very vigorous
manner between them, with his nabùt, and by his simple look calms
the wild, inflamed passions of these Negroes, which neither the
Captain, nor Abd-Elliab (if even the latter had been still on board),
could have succeeded in doing. They have all a peculiar veneration
for this man, whom they call their Mak, and he had needs only
express a wish, and it would go hard with us whites.
We soon went S.S.W., and at sun-set, E.S.E. The rowers then rest
on their laurels, for Feïzulla must wind up his thread, and he never
once looks up to see whether the other vessels are going a-head. At
last I myself take to the oars, as well as Mariàn, in order to set the
people a good example. The tailor-captain sat up on the deck near
the lantern, and had himself fanned, for the gnats will not respect
his artistical fingers. He was never vexed at bringing down Selim
Capitan’s reproaches, for his tarrying behind, but only annoyed at
being obliged, though for a short time, to leave his sewing
implements, to which he faithfully stuck, with an incredible indolence
and indifference to every thing else. The people rested every
moment, and we did not reach the vessels waiting for us, where the
river goes S.E., till nine o’clock.
18th December.—Half an hour before sunrise we followed our
course towards S.E., and the east wind blew so faintly that it
scarcely swelled the sails, and we moved but with difficulty from the
spot. My mast-watcher, Fadl, says that a river, from the trees of the
left shore, which I see, upon the deck, behind us, towards N.W.,
enters into the land in a basin far above an hour; that this land is
covered with trees, and again approaches the river towards the
south, and that many tops of tokuls are visible upon the right tree-
less shore, away beyond the reeds and grass, at a distance of two
hours. We are therefore again in a lake, wherein this large village,
according to his account, lies upon a neck of land which corresponds
with the bay of the left bank.
After an hour and a half, we take to our oars, and double, for the
first time, a corner towards E., and immediately afterwards to E. by
N. The damp yesterday evening was so great that it penetrated our
clothes. In the reeds there was continual croaking, chirping,
waddling, and springing up of the spawning-fish, such as we had not
before heard. Birds also flew over us, uttering a shrill and whistling
sound, said to announce a storm. We torment ourselves till eleven
o’clock by slowly moving along the right shore of the reeds; and in
order to get the crew into some activity, I have forced the tailor out
of his shop, for the east wind has become stronger, and the river
makes a bend before us to the south, as we perceived by the masts
of the ships waiting for us. We sail, therefore, towards the south, to
the other vessels, which have already got a considerable start of us.
We quit this southern direction at the end of an hour, go for half an
hour towards S.E., and then more eastward and E. by S., where
again we are obliged to take to our oars. The group of the thirteen
dhellèb-palms, which previously stood south of us, retreats to the
left shore. We saw here four fishing-huts in the reeds, near which
some blacks were occupied in fishing. At noon S.E., and at two
o’clock towards E., sailing.
One can scarcely form an idea of the continual and extraordinary
windings of the river. Half an hour ago we saw, on the right, the
Muscovite’s vessel, and on the left the other vessels a-head on a line
with us, separated, however, by the high grass, from which their
masts and sails joyfully peeped forth. I could scarcely persuade
myself that we had proceeded from the one place, and shall steer to
the other. There is something cheerful and tranquilizing in this life-
like picture of ships seeking and finding each other again in the
immeasurable grass-sea, which gives us a feeling of security. It must
be a sight to the people of this region that they cannot comprehend,
owing to the distance.
Those sixteen dhellèb-palms have at last approached to within
gun-shot. I had counted them four times, and every time found
another, so exactly does one trunk cover the other. I do not call
them handsome trees, because they stand there in the green
wilderness; no, I find them really beautiful, for there is a peculiar
charm in them. They rise like double gigantic flowers upon slender
stalks, gently protruding in the middle, and not like those defoliated
date-palms, which stand meagerly, like large cabbage-stalks. It is
impossible that the latter should delight my poor heart, full of the
remembrance of shady trees,—the oaks and beech-trees of
Germany; the planes near Parnassus; the cypress on the Bosphorus,
and the chestnuts on the Asiatic Olympus. About three o’clock we
landed on the left shore, and found it dry, to our astonishment, but
still green, and covered with high grasses. Near the palms were four
ant-hills, on the tops of which we found the wet blue clay worked
up. Some miserable tokuls also stood around, but they were
deserted by the inhabitants. To my sorrow, I see again a sürtuk
destroyed, for the sake of some splinters of wood, merely to keep up
a fire the whole night for amusement, on board the sandal,—not to
drive away the gnats, for they let the fire burn in a clear flame.
Wherever they have the opportunity of displaying their petulance,
our blacks also are ever ready. They are not ever ashamed to have
always in their mouths the word “Abit,” although they themselves
are slaves, and will be so while they live, though clad in the soldier’s
smock frock, for the Turkish soldiery have not yet qualified
themselves for an honourable condition.
It shews a want of order, nautical policy, and tact, on the part of
the commanders, to allow the poor inhabitants of the left shore to
be injured. They are said for some days past to belong to the nation
of the Nuèhrs. Suliman Kashef has made over some of his own crew
to us, to assist in rowing our vessel; but Feïzulla plays tauola
(tavola), or backgammon, with a Turk, and thinks, when he does not
hear the stroke of the oar, that we are sailing. I had collected some
pretty plants near those villages, and found wild cucumbers, without
prickles, as well as a kind of aloe, seeming here to thrive on marshy
soil. About five o’clock we had to be towed a short distance; then we
took a little to our oars, and at sun-set joined the other ships in the
east. The river has a depth of three fathoms and about three-
quarters of a mile rapidity in the intersection. I appeal to Suliman
Kashef to prevent the taking away and hewing up of sürtuks. He
himself confesses that the Icthyophagi dwelling here in the reeds,
being entirely cut off from the rest of the world, would be lost, as it
were, without their fishing-boats, since they can neither swim nor
wade through the marshes; he promises therefore to forbid it.
19th December.—We had cast anchor in the middle of the
stream, and the right shore was raised above the grass, to the
distance of a quarter of an hour; it was quite bare, notwithstanding
its row of palm-trees. It is a dead calm, and we do not put ourselves
in motion till half-past seven o’clock, assisting the slackened sails by
rowing. We bend immediately to the W., and I see before me, to my
astonishment, the sixteen palms again standing and the row of
palms just mentioned behind us, as well as the vessels preceding us
on the left towards the E. Near the palms of the right shore, we
remarked not a family, but a small army of elephants, moving slowly
here and there under the trees, apparently for the purpose of tasting
the dhellèb-fruit. This is not yet grown to its full size, nor ripe; but
perhaps they will shake it down by the weight of their body, as I
have seen them in Taka, do with the doum-palms. Two elephants
were previously shewn me in the country, where we saw the giraffes
and ostriches, appearing in the far distance like hills, until they
began to move.
At half-past eight o’clock, S.E. by E., north-east wind, but faint,
and only one mile and a half course. In the space of half an hour, we
shall be advancing to the south, where the other ships are already.
The serpentine winding of the Nile would have a beautiful
appearance from an air-balloon, striving, as it does, to break a road
through the reeds in all directions.
The steersman would often be puzzled what direction to take if
we did not push against the stream, which requires labour and
exertion. If it were otherwise, they would let themselves drift with
“Allah Kerim,” and most certainly would fall every moment with the
high water into unknown paths among the reeds, and pass several
islands by force, or remain sticking therein.
At half-past nine o’clock we proceed westwards, in order to go
again southwards after a quarter of an hour, as we see by the
vessels sailing before us. At eleven o’clock to S.W. two miles and a
quarter, and at twelve o’clock only one mile and a quarter. At one
o’clock the wind has almost entirely died away, when we again turn
towards the south. The sixteen palms are still visible behind us, and
we must have advanced in little curves, as we see by the vessels
behind us, during my short sleep, caused by the nightly epileptic fits
of Feïzulla Capitan. Wonderful to relate, we have sailed by them, the
captain having roused himself, for a short time, from his apathy.
Bushes of high reeds, and little forests of ambaks in Nile grass;
before us a long group of palms, which, as Fadl at the mast-head
thinks, belongs to the right shore.
From south we make a small bend towards east, and turn a little
corner of the left shore of reeds to S.W., where we again derive
some advantage from the nearly exhausted wind. I hear from the
mast that the left shore winds back to south, and that the right
again approaches the river in a semicircle.
For some days past the stream has appeared whitish or clouded
to the superficial observer. Viewing it however, through the glass, we
find it quite clear. It is also well tasted, which was not the case
throughout the marshy lakes. If we find the river, having here a
breadth of five hundred paces, and a depth of from three to four
fathoms, we continue to ask the question, from whence does this
enormous mass of water come?
We have already passed the limits wherein the Mountains of the
Moon have been placed. It would almost seem the river is
accumulated in a cauldron-shaped valley, the declivities of which
encroach with long arms on the African world, and from which the
discharge after the periodical rains would be also only periodical.
Unless it has an immeasurable tributary stream as an unfailing
source from a south-westerly ramification of the Abyssinian high
lands, because the level ground, notwithstanding its tropical
vegetation, has too little power of attraction to justify such an
enormous power of throwing out water by the instrumentality of a
lake, under the absorbing African sun.
The breadth of the current amounts generally here to about five
hundred paces; its reed-lakes are always at the side. At half-past
two o’clock we move slowly S.S.E. with the north wind, which has
nearly died away, and set to work with the oars. We are glad that it
is a north wind, thinking that it may become constant before the end
of this month. Four o’clock. What Fadl said three hours ago is
confirmed even now, inasmuch as I see from the deck the right
shore more than a quarter of an hour distant, though I am not able
from the cabin to look over the reeds. The palms stand here in
graceful rows, and satisfy the wandering eye in search of something
to rest upon; an isolated dhellèb is also seen far up the river. We sail
W. by S., and a skirt of trees with some dhellèbs behind approaches
us, but is lost soon again in the distance to S.W. There is nothing to
be distinguished on the left shore. Ant-hills are visible in the reeds,
among which, in spite of their fresh green, there are dry spots.
On the right shore we noticed a giraffe and twenty elephants, the
latter teazed in an impudently friendly manner by white birds,
against whom they tossed up their trunks: their tormentors,
however, always returned to their heads and high backs, in order to
pick the ticks out of their thick skins, like the crows on the pigs in
Greece. They appear to me to be the very same birds we saw in
Egypt perched on cows and camels. When the last-named animals
have old wounds on their backs, they are visited by birds of prey. I
was never allowed to shoot them, because the Arabs believe that
they pick out only the tainted flesh, and even contribute to heal the
wounds, when the unmerciful cauterization of these people proves
ineffectual. Mariàn shewed me some trees, of singular shape, having
a corolla like that of a cactus. They are called Shudder el Simm, or
poison-trees. On the left bank of the river I saw fourteen miserable
tokuls upon the partly dried up morass, projecting between the
reeds, and various iron pots lying about. They had the usual pointed
roof of straw or halfa; the lower wall of reeds was plastered over
with morass. Judging from this plaster, which had fallen off three
feet high from the earth, the water had only risen here four feet,
reckoning the height of the island at a foot. This, the highest water-
line, had not been able to carry away an old thatched roof of some
four feet high, and six feet diameter.
Beyond these fishing-huts, spread far and wide in the water, is
reed grass, overtopped like a bush by high rushes. Now I find it
explained why the White Stream on the efflux of these slime-lakes,
wherein thousands of animals miserably die, stands in such bad
repute in Khartùm, because we found ourselves a short time ago,
when in a tributary arm of the river, in a nonplus,—the water being
really undrinkable. A microscope might generally give interesting
results in these places. The lakes must not be considered as similar
to the slime-lakes of the Blue Nile, Rhine, and Rhone.
Sunset, six o’clock.—From the mast the right shore is seen
retreating to the distance of an hour, and approaches again before
us, whilst the left bank comes near us for a moment, so that a round
basin with a wide mouth is created. We hoist sails, and row to S.E.
by S.
It is evident that the Nile, which we traverse, in spite of all its
circular windings, can never go out of the path of that old shore so
often denoted. It is certain that these windings enclose the gigantic
bed of the stream in vast curved lines; for the primitive stream could
not be arrested by a paltry opposition, as the present one is, even
by the reeds. If a journey by land were practicable on the old border
of the Nile, the road would be far shorter. The thermometer has now
got up to 25°. We stay behind during the night, because the crew
will not work any more. Feïzulla Capitan retreats ashamed into the
cabin and says not a word.
20th December.—Even before daybreak I went out of the cabin
to watch the weather; but the mist which melted away yesterday
morning at the rising-sun, did not make its appearance.
Nevertheless, I watched for the third time the dawn of morning, and
found I could read a printed book three-quarters of an hour before
sunrise. The morning dawn is, therefore, not so very short as is
generally believed. I had previously remarked this also in Khartùm.
We had 26° Reaumur, yesterday afternoon, in spite of the dead calm
only 25°. The fall of dew was considerable, and wetted my guns
even through the window, which I had scarcely opened. The
hippopotami put their heads above water, as if to consider the
appearance of our ships.
Immediately after the sunrise a gentle wind arose, directly
increasing, however, to a strong breeze, and we sailed from the
north, S.W.; but soon rounded a sharp corner of the reeds on the
right shore towards E. A group of high rushes of twenty feet high
above the water was entwined picturesquely with the blooming
convolvulus, which also floated in long tendrils with numerous
flowers upon the water, intersected, likewise, by high aquatic herbs
and low plants. The water hurries partly in cheerful flowing rivulets
through this group, in order to seek the nearest channel. The left
shore surrounds us at a distance of half an hour or an hour, in a
beautiful arch, with palm clumps and isolated trees, from N. to S. by
E.
Our course amounts to two miles and a half, and the rapidity of
the river here is generally half a mile. Nine o’clock.—Just as I lift up
my eyes, we go again from S.W. to E. by S., and immediately to
S.W., where we see some strong trees before us. Half-past nine
o’clock, S., then S.W., subsequently S., and then S.E., with four miles’
course.
Once more we see, after a lapse of a long time, a certain number
of people, said to form a considerable nation, under the name of
Kèks. The little village yonder contains only thirteen wretched tokuls;
the pointed roofs are low, and, like the walls, of straw. Among the
trees there are some which branch out vigorously, and have a thick
green foliage; they are said also to be found in upper Kordofàn or
Nuba, where, according to Mariàn, they are called Tihls. Their fruit is
long and large, like the pumpkin, and edible. Possibly a Nuba negro
may think them relishing; but subsequently, when we found a
number of such trees, called by the Arabs elephant-trees, I found
the unripe fruit not eatable. The Arabs also, who themselves eat
locusts, although not from choice, never eat this fruit even when
ripe. Isolated poison-trees also stand round about there. A second
village lay back in the reeds. The people were of a livid colour, and
naked; they smear themselves, as the Shilluks are said partly to do,
with Nile slime, as a protection against the sting of gnats.
It was affecting to see how these poor creatures raised both
hands high in the air, and let them slowly fall, by way of greeting. A
woman likewise, naked to the girdle, greeted us, placing her elbows
somewhat close to her body, and made with her hands, the flat side
upwards, the motion of saluting usual also with us. She had an ivory
ring round her head, and another round the neck; which last must
have been either ingeniously put together, or slipped over her head
in her youth. The men wore ivory rings around one arm. A man
turned towards his hut, as if inviting us in; another stood alone,
lifted his hands, and jumped round in a circle upon one spot.
DOUM-PALMS. DHELLEB-PALMS. BAOBABS. BAOBABS.
A VILLAGE OF THE SHILLUKS, ON THE LEFT SHORE OF THE NILE.
25TH MARCH, 1841.
Our Dinkas (whose language is allied to that of the Nuèhres and

Keks), said that they wanted durra from us, and told us that their
cows were far away, and would not return till evening. (Durra is
called in Bellet-Sudàn, esh, which denotes bread in Egypt, and
plainly indicates to the primeval bread-corn of the Egyptians found
still in the old tombs; but it is also here used for bread in the
Egyptian manner, whilst the pancake-bread is called kisra.) Our
Dinkas, as well as Mariàn, asserted in the most positive manner that
these Kèks kill no animal, but only live on grains of seed and milk. I
could distinguish no hair on their heads, and heard that they coat it
with clay, and let it dry in the sun. I greeted them with my hand,
and two of them repeatedly jumped in the air, and gave me to
understand that they recognised my salute. These must be the real
happy Ethiopians, for they seem to lead a blameless life, and they
do not even have festivals, like the Homeric ones. I could not
ascertain, with certainty, whether this sparing of animal life extends
also to game and fish; it was generally asserted, however, that they
eat cattle that die a natural death. The latter also is partly done in
the land of Sudàn, but not by the genuine Arabs; it is even contrary
to the Koràn, to eat a beast struck by a bullet, unless its throat has
been cut whilst it yet lived, to let out the blood: this is scouted also
by the Hebrews.
At Khartùm, I saw, one morning, quite early, two dead camels
lying on a public square; the men were cutting off large pieces to
roast, and the dogs stood mournfully around. I myself, with Drs.
Fisher and Pruner, helped to consume, in Kàhira, a roasted portion of
Clot Bey’s beautiful giraffe, which had eaten too much bersim (white
clover): the meat is very tender, and of tolerably fine grain; the
tongue appeared to me a real delicacy. I could never acquire a taste,
however, for the course fibrous flesh of camels, even when they
were young. A German cook might, however, know how to make it
palatable by a suitable sauce. We ourselves have dressed very
tolerable sauerbraten[6] from the tough beef in Khartùm.
Half past ten o’clock. We row round a corner N.E. by N., and are
obliged, owing to the north wind, which is against us in this short
passage, to make use of the sandal as a leader, in order to drag
after us the Kaiàss. We wind then S.S.W.: the wind has freshened,
and we make four miles. At noon a short track to the S.E., but only
for a short time, and we halt on the reeds, opposite to the right
shore. Thibaut visited and invited me to a Burma of merissa, which
he had prepared from Abrè. This Abrè is a very fine kind of bread; it
is baked on the usual pan (Docka), by pouring liquid dough of durra
meal on it, and immediately scraping it down with a knife; to free it
from the clay or iron-pan, some butter is put over it now and then. If
a handful of these broken wafers are thrown into a gara, with water,
they give a wonderful coolness to what they float in, and a pleasant
acid taste. On this account it is the usual drink in the land of Sudàn,
and a welcome draught to the thirsty traveller.
Thibaut had made a large Burma of water in a state of
fermentation with this fine bread, and let it work for three days, till
the bread part had sunk to the bottom. This merissa must, however,
be quickly drank, or else it becomes sour. Naturally enough, it was
far better than that prepared in the usual way from warm bread, and
withal uncommonly strong and intoxicating. Even the finer kind of
merissa, called in Sennaar Billbill, is inferior to it. Abrè Nareïn, as the
corpulent Sheikh Defalla prepared it for us during the campaign in
Taka, and as it is drank by the kings of Sennaar, is only superior to
it. This liquor is like beer, and twice put on the fire (Nar), whereby it
acquires its name Abrè Nareïn.
Thibaut’s Reïs (steersman) exhibited the first proofs of the
intoxicating effects of this merissa, and was persuaded to delegate
the task of steering the ship to the former; but Thibaut, who had
begun even earlier to test its strength, was still less capable of
commanding his vessel. The wind had thrown us, in a trice, towards
the other side of the little lake, which forms part of the river. I had
previously remarked the dazzling contrast which the water of the
basin made, through its dark-blue colour, to our course. We think
that we discern in the three segments of that water, three mouths of
a river, separated by the reeds. Beyond this, we also see a real water
track, coming from S.S.E., which may be a river of less importance,
but we could not approach close enough to discover this. It was only
with a great deal of difficulty that we got loose again from the reeds,
and came into the stream.
We saw Selim Capitan, somewhat behind this little lake, halting
at a village; and a man, who was soon after followed by four
women, wading through the water and going on board. This village,
on the left shore, was called Baiderol, and its Sheikh, Ajà. They gave
presents to these people, but could not learn from them the name of
the great lake; and were soon obliged to ship off, for all the tribe
poured down to get presents of glass beads. These people belonged
to the nation of the Kèks, who are always at war with the Nuèhrs. I
remarked here a new construction of tokuls; as usual, of reeds and
straw, but with flat, cupola-shaped roofs. In the former expedition,
the Turks came here also to Shàmata (contention-war) with the
natives, because the latter had incautiously fired arrows in the air,
which the Turks looked upon as a declaration of war, and therefore
shot down several people.
Thibaut read me the description he has given of Arnaud in his
journal; and I found in the course of conversation, that we had, in
1822, been together at Philhellenes, in Greece. We lodged close to
one another in Tripolizza, when the Greek heroes (who at that time
very modestly called themselves Romanians, and were unacquainted
with the name of Hellenes) began suddenly to murder, in a base
manner, at the Bazaar, fifty-four unarmed Turkish prisoners, who for
some time had managed to prolong their wretched existence in the
city. We Franks saved three of the wounded Turks in our house, and
would not give them up, though the blood-thirsty people collected
before the door. On this occasion, Dr. Dumont (familiar with the
modern Greek language), and the brave Captain Daumerque,
beloved by us all, (subsequently gloriously known in the Egyptian
army by the name of Khalim Agà,) distinguished themselves in the
manner most honourable to mankind in general, and man in
particular.
We remembered very well, that in the everlasting quarrels which
took place, the word “Greek” surpassed all other insults, and was
inevitably followed by a duel, without any other reparation of the
injured honour ever being thought of.
Without the knowledge of my parents, who fancied that I would
exchange Bonn for another university, I had travelled with my friend,
the now Professor Dieffenbach, of Berlin, to Marseilles. George
Thibaut had done the same thing, and thrown up his clerkship in
Paris. I found my books, the Pandects of Mackeldey, with the
Archbishop of Argos, turned into cartridges, in order that I might
beat the Turks blue with the Roman Corpus juris civilis, &c. It was a
dangerous and adventurous undertaking. Thibaut went with the
other Frenchmen and Italians to Egypt, to offer the Basha his
services. I learnt eventually to find out the fellows, who are even
now figuring away as robbers, and returned from Smyrna to my dear
native land, like an undeceived Phillhellene who had known,
however, how to distinguish the unworthy cause of these Synclides.
Ten years afterwards I again found the old people in celebrated
Hellas, only better laced up and combed, in high Turkish caps.
The river makes from this basin a strong bend to N.N.E.; we had
sometimes, therefore, to use oars, sometimes the towing-rope. The
breadth of the river, including the reeds, is from one hundred and
fifty to two hundred paces. The rapidity of the current below that
little lake is one mile; it decreases, however, to half a mile in the
basin, and amounts now to one mile and a half. Our course was very
troublesome, slow, and so irregular, that it would be difficult to
calculate the length of this short passage. We sailed then a short
tract to the S.W., then S. and E., rowed N.W., and after sunset to the
north, without having advanced further to the south. The latitude is
7° 48′, and the longitude 27° 41′ east of Paris.
21st December.—I passed the night on board Thibaut’s vessel,
for mine had remained behind. This morning we worked towards the
east. We found in the little lake of yesterday such beautiful clear
water as only the Blue Nile displays at low ebb. Its dark water is
kept back in a sharp cut by the current of the still high Nile. It may
be inferred that the goodness of it arises from a neighbouring
spring-lake, or from a mountain-river, the blue water of which may
flow, even in other places, imperceptibly through the reeds to the
Nile: this is the case also with the Gazelle River. It was a pity that,
when we drank of the beautiful water, the village of Baiderol lay
behind us. My vessel will not even yet work up; I visit, therefore, the
Frenchmen, to inspect the hygrometer. It was about eight o’clock,
and the hygrometer shewed 70°: at night, however, it had got up to
75°, and usually went back at noon to 20°: which may be taken as
the average in these lakes. For a long time there have been only
very few streaky clouds in the horizon, which were scarcely to be
distinguished from the firmament.
I saw yesterday evening the first shooting-stars; but none had
been remarked by any of the rest. At ten o’clock I jumped on Selim-
Capitan’s vessel, who had invited me by dumb show whilst I was
with Thibaut, during the dead calm. We sail with the north wind S.E.,
but the pleasure was soon at an end. Yet no! Selim-Capitan did me
the favour of sailing east by north with the north wind; but the oars,
however, were obliged to be used to assist us, in order to prevent
our running ashore. This manœuvre succeeded; and the others, who
had reefed their sails, followed the example. It lasted, however, only
a short time, for a strong S.E. wind getting up, threw us on the left
shore of the reeds on the right hand.
Selim-Capitan shews far more energy and attention than I should
have given him credit for, comprehends everything very quickly, and,
with the exception of his Greco-Turkish faults, which I will touch
upon afterwards, his character has been entirely mistaken. We
reckon our number of miles from yesterday at noon till to-day at the
same time, to be fifteen; and find, after the necessary reduction,
that we have advanced only two miles in direct line towards S. The
land retreats on all sides. From the deck I still discover the dark
vigorous trees of yesterday, called by Mariàn Tihl, and otherwise
named Shudder el Fill (elephant-tree), the large fruit of which is said
to be welcome food to elephants. At noon we towed southwards—a
very troublesome labour, for there are sloughs and gohrs on every
side in the reeds, which the crew must swim through in order to get
firmer ground for a short time. Even this presents many difficulties,
owing to the reeds and their great unevenness. Nevertheless, the
food of the crew is not so bad as in Khartùm, although for several
days we have been in want of meat; thus they are not very much
spoiled from their birth upwards. The N.E. wind, which was slack at
mid-day, freshens at three o’clock; we sail E.S.E., and in five minutes
again S.W by S., and make three miles. But already again we see the
river going eastward, and we follow it, really S.E. and E.S.E., and
then E. within a short time, for it makes eternal bends here, of two
hundred paces, or less, in breadth.
Four o’clock.—To S.; ten minutes after, to W. We see towards the
south, on the right shore, from aloft, a small land-lake, the white
basin of which denotes some depth, and appears not to be fed by
the main stream. We observe in the back ground, two villages, with
dhellèbs and other trees, and in the distance other villages upon a
bare whitish shore, skirted with some trees. The vessels coming
after us reach to our right side, where the left shore ought to lie, a
good gun-shot distance from the reeds—and, O illusion and fancy!—
the old shore on the right, with its villages and trees, is Sherk (East)
—that is, the right shore of the river.—Five o’clock, from S.W. to S.
We make only half a mile, whilst the current is not more rapid. At
sunset we remark a number of birds, mostly long-shanks, moving in
two divisions near one another from west to east, and perhaps
repairing to the already more exposed sources of the Nile.
Thermometer 17°, 25°—27°, and 22°, at the three different times of
the day. The river three fathoms in depth.
22nd December.—I remained last night on board Selim Capitan’s
vessel. From S.E., which direction we reached yesterday evening, we
now went with a faint north wind to east, and our course had one
mile and a half in rapidity. At last I saw on the low ground in the
south, a village, with a large tree, apparently a baobàb, and further
on the old right shore, with palms and other trees; when,—at half-
past eight o’clock,—no more was to be seen of the left shore. At
half-past nine o’clock we went to the right shore to fetch wood. The
crew landed under a suitable guard, with axes, for we remarked a
village in the neighbourhood, and feared the old acquaintance of this
people. There were, moreover, no regular trees to be seen here, but
only stunted and decayed trunks, standing on or near the countless
ant-hills. These serve the natives as watch-towers, as we had
already seen, but no person appeared on them. The stumps were
said to be torn and disfigured by the elephants; indeed we saw
several deep impressions made by the feet of these colossi, for the
river had flowed off from hence some time.
The wind has gone round to E., and is very favourable;
whereupon we sail also at half-past ten o’clock from this place S.E.
towards S., but soon draw to the E. and row; then sail to N.E., and
assist with the oars. At noon, owing to the dead calm, we are towed
in a south-easterly direction, and at three o’clock we make use
slightly of our sails to S.W. by S., and soon afterwards S.E. by S. On
the left shore, a long row of isolated trees is visible, also groups of
trees themselves, among which, afar off, are distinguished dhellèb-
palms. They mark, indeed, as usual, the real old shore, for they do
not thrive in the morass, but frequently also they may denote, like
other trees, the ephemeral margin of the river. The dhellèb-palms
come nearer before us in a wide bend, which, however, may be only
so in appearance. The reeds are already on dry ground, and a lower
border of the same forms the momentary limits of the river. We
remark also here on the right shore of the reeds, where we halt
about five o’clock, in a southerly direction, several deep foot-prints
of elephants, who have trod down and eaten away every thing, so
that only single bushes of high rushes remain. Ant-hills, of eight to
ten feet high, rise indeed around, but neither tree nor house—a real
elephant pasture-ground.
I went on board Suliman Kashef’s ship, and found there my
Feïzulla Capitan again, but in such a state of intoxication, that he
fancied I was lost from his ship. He regretted me, and I played also
this time again the “achùl el bennàt,” and carried him safely home. It
is a wonder that his crew, who have worked themselves tired the
whole day, and with whom he is always joking in his Turkish
drunkenness, do not thoroughly lose their patience and respect.
23rd December.—Instead of sailing at daybreak with the
favourable wind, one vessel went after the other to the left shore,
but we soon heard that the vessel of the commander, Selim Capitan,
was full of water, having drawn so much during the night, that if the
morning had not brought this circumstance to light, it would
inevitably have sunk. Biscuit, durra, wheat, and all the other
provisions were taken out, and dried on the sails spread on the
shore. Sale made a capital shooting excursion, and is very proud of
it: he requests his comrades not to shoot any more, for they only
throw away powder. The birds are generally the very same as those
we found in Taka. I shall return to this subject hereafter.
We could plainly remark near the numberless ant-hills, of eight to
ten feet high, and thirty to thirty-six paces in circumference, by the
difference of the same vegetation, how far the water has washed
over these hills, and how inconsiderably it has reached up to the
same, although the whole earth, in which there are many foot-
prints, and marks of elephants, rose itself only two feet above the
present surface of water. Even here, therefore, where a lake must
always disclose itself when the water is at its greatest height, the
ascent of the river is only slight, owing to its overflowing in an
immeasurable space. In a more extended excursion, I lighted upon a
low green plot of ground with water, and as I had remarked from the
deck and mast-head, these verdant tracks are found again in the
half-dug elephant-pasture. They may be old beds of the Nile, choked
up by reeds and slime.
Wild cucumbers were very frequently met with here, and with
their yellow flowers, often take the high rushes on the water into
their friendly embrace. The under stratum of the ground is formed
here also, as elsewhere, by blue clay, mixed with a little sand,
whereon a covering of humus lies, the vegetable parts of which are
visible in masses, less from their being decomposed by the
atmosphere, than from being worked up by the feet of animals.
Hygrometer, at eight o’clock, eighty degrees.
24th December.—After everything had been dried and packed up
again yesterday, we make, towards the evening, a very short track,
in order to secure ourselves somewhat more from the gnats, which
have, on the whole, decreased, and we cast anchor. Our clock, put
at six at sunset, shewed also six o’clock, when the sun rose S.E. by
E. The trombetta (drummers) beat a reveillée at the first tinge of
dawn; that is here an hour and a quarter before the sun; yet I could
not read for the first half hour.
The whole sky has been clouded since we left the country of the
Shilluks; and although they are not our heavy white clouds, the sun
cannot penetrate through them. A mist, in appearance like a coast
cut off from the horizon, surrounded us on all sides, without visibly
extending itself in our neighbourhood. This layer of mist, however,
was open from S. to S.W., where the river probably flows, with which
the mist nearest to us melted away before daybreak, as I have so
often remarked on the Rhine. The hazy streak of the rising sun is
splendidly irradiated from E. to S., and therefore deludes us to
believe that it is a broad luminous stream, or white lake, contrasted
with the dark edge of the sky. I had remarked, the evening before
last, a similar misty veil to the east, and, as I expected, there were
light mists yesterday morning, before sunrise, on the river, and
slowly floating down with it.
We went this morning E.S.E., and at seven o’clock S.W., without
having got ahead, for the very feint north wind had not yet made up
its mind. One of our vessels sails towards E. in the grass, and
appears to have struck into another road, in order to cut us off.
Isolated dhellèb-palms on the right shore, and towards N.E. a whole
group of them; whilst on the left shore a great wood is visible,
drawing into the land, as I hear, from the west. Before this forest
shady Tihl-trees, with broad branches, in our neighbourhood; the
right shore retreats again here, with its blooming ambak-thicket.
The lakes seem, in some measure, to be at an end; but the
gigantic bed of the stream remains, although the old high shores are
not, perhaps, to be discovered, for we cannot approach the real dry
ground, as the river does not extend so far. This must, however,
have been an extensive margin of the river, separated from it,
between which, towards the sides, the water flows and ripples in
small rivulets, like a meadow under water. It is said that there are no
more doum-palms here, although I would take some trees in the
distance for them, having, it is true, a stunted appearance compared
with those in Taka, but similar to those commonly found on the
White River.
Half-past eight o’clock. To S.E. by S.; then an easterly direction,
with the usual deviations, and at last S. From the mast is seen, near
the before-named shady elephant-trees, a whole herd of these
lovers of their fruit,—the white birds on their massive backs, whom
they are trying to drive away with their trunks.
About ten o’clock S.E. by E. and S.E. I think I see on the right
shore, a small river, discharging itself in the reeds, for the colour in
the little basin is different from that of our water. Immediately
afterwards, a small village, composed of low, wretched tokuls. A dog
looked at us, but did not bark, much as he was teased; he was a
large-boned greyhound, such as are seen generally in Taka and
Sennaar. This fishermen’s village stands some three feet above the
water, and we see by the fresh repairing of the huts with Nile slime,
that the river must have washed against this place. Four sails go on
the right, at a regular distance W., in the reeds, whilst the vessels
sailing a-head in S.E., also look over the reeds, and move towards
the E. The ambak-wood continues almost uninterruptedly on our left.
About eleven o’clock, from S.W., is an extensive bend to the E., and
afterwards to N.E., as it appears from the other vessels. On the right
stands an enclosed dhellèb-palm, quite solitary in the wide green
lake; and yet it delights the eye as a resting-point, like the sails far
and near.
From the undulating eastern direction, swerving to the N.E.,
where the towing-path is now made through the reeds, we wheel,
according to the dear old custom, towards S., in which direction we
halt at noon on the right shore, to wait for the other vessels. The
north-wind having become stronger since half-past eight o’clock,
promises to be favourable for the two windings we see before us.
We see over those vessels, towards S.E., clouds of smoke arise in
the forest, about half an hour distant, as we did yesterday and the
day before. Over the green-flat, to the E., from which bushes of high
rushes and ant-hills rise, several dhellèb-palms.
At three o’clock we set sail towards W.S.W., yet soon again
S.S.W., and at four o’clock S.E. by S.
One mile rapidity. Five o’clock. To W. On the right thirteen tokuls,
which, like the four on the opposite side, near our landing-place, are
partly new, partly restored, for the high-water rises above these new
shores. There are neither human beings nor anything else living to
be seen near the poor, badly built huts. The river navigated by us
has here a breadth of some four hundred paces. To the N. we at last
observed the vessels which had remained behind, and from yonder
the Haba shews itself, with groups of trees jutting out in a circle to
some distance; in N.W. smoke ascends in different places: as on the
left, to the E., in the far distance over the trees, although no villages
can be seen even from the mast.
These pillars of smoke are considered by the crew not as aerial
angels of peace and friendship, but rather as a general signal against
us. It seems more probable to me, however, judging from analogy
with the people, dwelling in Taka, that this kindling of high grasses
and pines is done by the tribes of the place to free their territory
from insects, snakes, and other noxious animals, or to give air and
nourishment to the sprouting grass, in order to make it fit for
pasture. In these forest-burnings we must seek for the cause of the
bad and stunted condition of the wood.
I thought that the river made a bend to the S., because I saw
water there; but they tell me from the mast, that this water is a
broad gohr, or Birke, (land-lake). It shews itself a gun-shot distance
from the river, and quite parallel to it from E. to W., and is, at this
moment, only divided from it by the reeds under water, and an
ambak-thicket. A water-course meandered through the rushes to the
eastern end of the lake. The crew affirmed that the lake receives its
water from the river by this road (sikka): this, indeed, is not
impossible, but it is improbable, for the river must propel its current
against the water from W. to E. I believe rather that the lake feeds
itself from S.W., where incisions are remarked in the reeds, and
behind, a long and broad marsh-land. The lake and the river have
now an equal level, and there is neither an influx nor outflux to be
seen in the so-called little water-road. If it be not an outlet of the
lake, discharging its higher surface of water through the reeds, it is a
road for crocodiles and river-buffaloes. The broken rushes and the
scattered borders of the lower vegetation, &c. make me believe the
latter supposition. I have also remarked, at this moment, a large
hippopotamus wallowing about there.
There can scarcely be a doubt that this waterpath serves the
fishing-boats as a channel. The lake is from E. to W. about an hour
long. There may be numbers of such collective lakes and tributaries
which the reeds hide from us; for these waters, when the Nile is at
its height, do not rush into it, and cannot force a road through the
luxuriant and strongly articulated world of plants. These plants
perhaps allow a conjunction of water; but no open tributary stream
for the rise and fall of the waters takes place at the same time. Fadl
tells me that the lake is only twice as broad as the Nile, which is
here three hundred paces; and the head of the lake is said to draw
towards the south, thereby shewing itself to be an old bed of the
river.
No large fish are found here; for if there were any we must have
heard them at times in the evening splashing up; that is, supposing
they were very abundant in these lakes. However, in the land of the
Shilluks several fish of uncommon size, such as are seen in the
markets at Kàhira and Khartùm, floated towards us, dead. The crew
eat them, although they stank. Standing at the helm, above the
cabin, I noticed, before sun-set, seven elephants, with two young
ones, feeding on the right in the reed-grass, and, for this once,
unmolested by their feathered friends. We halt on account of the
faint breeze, towards the west, in order to wait for the vessels, the
sun going down before us and throwing all its charms on the
limitless watery expanse. Throughout the whole day it had never
shone through those misty veils, which appeared so lightly floating.
Feïzulla Capitan has found a new consolation, by establishing a
small brandy distillery. For this purpose he used dates, a great
quantity of which fruit we carried with us. One burma forms the
boiler, and another, with a reed in it, the head of the still. As,
however, he only once draws off this araki, there remain too many
lees in it to be pleasant; but this does not offend the taste and smell
of the bold captain. The thermometer before sunrise 19°, from noon
to afternoon 25-26°; after sunset 24°. The hygrometer had fallen
from 80° to 30°.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARNAUD’S IGNORANCE AND SELIM CAPITAN’S CUNNING. — HATRED OF THE
THREE FRENCHMEN TO EACH OTHER. — THE ENDERÀB TREE. — THE POISON
TREE HARMLESS. — REMARKS ON THE LAKES IN CONNEXION WITH THE
WHITE NILE. — THE WOOD OF THE AMBAK TREE. — FONDNESS OF THE
ARABS FOR NICK-NAMES. — THE AUTHOR DEFENDED FROM GNATS BY A CAT.
— INTERVIEW WITH A KÈK. — HUSSEÏN AGA’S DRINKING BOUTS WITH
FEÏZULLA CAPITAN. — DESCRIPTION OF A SUN-RISE. — VISIT OF THE KÈKS.
— SOLIMAN KASHEF AND THE LOOKING-GLASS.
25th December.—We are still waiting for the Kawàss and Sandal. A
man had been given to each of these ships to assist them; but we
have gained nothing by it; and therefore Selim Capitan intends to
tow both of them. Thibaut and I visited the invalid, Sabatier, who
scarcely knew how to keep himself from laughing when Selim-
Capitan took upon himself to give lessons anew to the learned
Arnaud, who very boldly asserted in our presence, that the
“altitudine” and “amplitudine” of the sun were one and the same
thing. As we then well understood, Selim Capitan wants Arnaud and
he to agree in their calculations, and grudges no instruction to the
latter for that purpose. He tells us, that such a coincidence with the
French engineer is the more necessary, because the Viceroy would
sooner credit the reckonings of a scientific Frenchman than of a
Turk, who had never seen Frankestàn. According to Sabatier, Arnaud
has not made yet a single calculation, because he is not capable of
doing so, but loads his back with these burdens, notwithstanding
Sabatier’s feverish state of health. Unfortunately, this appears to be
exactly the case, for Arnaud always agrees with Selim-Capitan, who
is exceedingly reserved in speech; and therefore it is really fortunate
that the Turk, being a naval officer, understands something at least
of these matters.
The three French gentlemen mutually conceal their journals, in
which one abuses the other; but they each fetch them out from their
hiding-places, in order to read them to me, and I am obliged to

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Analyzing Linguistic Data A Practical Introduction to

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C h a o f e n S u n is Associate Professor of Chinese in the Department of

Romani: A Linguistic Introduction Yaron Matras

Cambridge University Press

© Chaofen Sun 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

First published in print format 2006

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List of maps viii

2 Phonetics of standard Chinese 34

5 Chinese writing 101

6 Chinese language and culture 115

7 Chinese syntax 1 147

7.2 Other lexical categories 153

8 Chinese syntax 2 184

Appendix 1 Phonetic symbols 220

1 Languages spoken in China page 3

1 Tonal variation in Chinese dialects page 7

2.1 Chinese initial consonants page 36

Xia dynasty – twenty-first to sixteenth centuries BCE

Oracle and Bronze inscriptions sixteenth century to 771 BCE

1 China and Chinese in the world

in 1949, the Nationalists under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-

Therefore, at that time, zhōngguó was already used as a term to distinguish

Dialect City Tones (with tonal values)

Mandarin Beijing four tones: 55, 35, 214, 51

Table 2 Pronunciation of some Chinese cognates in different dialects.

City “mouth” “gold” “male” “province”

Beijing kou jin nan sheng

The examples in Table 2 show the diversified pronunciation of cognates

Of course, these similarities do not mean that learning the grammar of

Table 3 A comparison of the languages used in the speech communities in

Domain Hong Kong Shanghai Guangzhou

Family Cantonese Shanghainese Cantonese

a phenomenon that can be considered a colonial legacy. Table 3 is taken with

5 Structure and aims

1.1 Prehistoric time

Table 1.1 Sino-Tibetan comparisons, adapted from Norman

Middle Old Written Written

I wo ngo nguo ngag nga aŋ

cannot be an accident. The Middle Chinese, Old Chinese, Written Tibetan

1.2 Oracle-bone and bronze scripts

1.3 Old Chinese (771 BCE–220 CE)

Map 2 The Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE)

However, in spite of the existence of the more prestigious common language

1.4 Middle Chinese (220 CE to 960)

Map 3 The Han Dynasty (206 BCE–CE 220)

as dictionaries that could be used by scholars from different regions of the