A Fantasy of Far Japan; Or, Summer Dream DialoguesSuematsu, Kencho
Philosophy
A Fantasy of Far Japan; Or, Summer Dream Dialogues
Suematsu, Kencho
Japan -- Civilization
From what I have stated above, it would appear that Chinese is very
simple as far as the analysis of the words is concerned, for they have
no declension and conjugation. The difficulty of the students of Chinese
does not lie in remembering different forms of declensions and
conjugations, but first in remembering so many ideographs, one by one,
and secondly to make head and tail of the agglomeration of ideographs,
for one can never tell from their form which is a noun and which is a
verb, or which is an objective or which is a possessive case. Definite
meaning of Chinese sentences could only be appreciated by those who have
accustomed themselves by long experience. But even such people often
differ in their interpretation of some phrases, by giving different
attributive to one or other particular ideograph in a sentence, not only
in its meaning but in its position as regards the part of speech. This
often occurs in interpretation of classical books. All this, however,
does not signify that Chinese is a poor language, because its literal
standard is really very highly developed.
The Japanese language is also simple enough as far as the analysis of
words is concerned. Nouns never change their forms under any
circumstances, except that their cases are made by the use of _ga_,
_no_, _ni_, or _wo_, which is only an addition. Verbs are conjugated,
but it is done simply to denote time and voice, and for no other reason.
In a word, we may say that Japanese grammar is very easy. The real
difficulty of Japanese is in the proper construction of phrases, for it
is by it that many shades of meaning are suggested. True it is that this
is more or less so with all languages. Difference of the degree of
politeness or gracefulness is manipulated by difference of construction
everywhere, but the variety of this difference is more complicated in
Japanese than in any other language, and it can only be acquired by long
practice and observation. This is why all foreigners who study Japanese
think it is so easy at the commencement and so difficult after they have
made a little progress. Nevertheless, colloquial Japanese is on the
whole easy, because one can learn it easily so long as he is not
sensitive of nicety or grace. There is in open ports even a new Japanese
spoken between foreigners and natives, in which no _ga--no--ni--wo_ is
used, or no conjugation of verbs employed, and yet it is perfectly
intelligible.
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