Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3: containing a collection of curious travels, voyages, and natural histories of countries as they have been delivered in to the Royal SocietyRoyal Society (Great Britain)
History
Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3: containing a collection of curious travels, voyages, and natural histories of countries as they have been delivered in to the Royal Society
Royal Society (Great Britain)
Natural history; Science -- Early works to 1800; Voyages and travels -- Early works to 1800
In which Characters or ways of Writing a Vowel is always join'd with a
Consonant into one compound Character to make it effable. And then the
single Strokes may be taken for single ineffable Letters as are the
Consonants, and the composition of two or three (of which one at least
may be a Vowel) will make Syllables.
Of this kind, there are not so many in the whole _Chinese_ Character,
but that it will be easie enough to assign each a proper Monosyllable
which shall only have 1 or 2 Consonants, and one or two Vowels; that
is, the Consonants together, and not separate, either both behind the
Vowel or Vowels, if it be a Diphthong or both after it or them.
Of this kind, I understand there are about 500, probably 8×8×8, or 512.
I could enumerate a great many, and give you also the Name or Words
by which they are pronounced as also their signification, but (as I
said before) first, I conceive the present _Chinese_ Language to have
no affinity at all with the Character, the true primitive, or first
Language, or Pronunciation of it, having been lost. And secondly, I
want some further help to make a full and compleat Discovery: What I
have learn'd from the Book of _Fohi_ I shall give the next opportunity;
which will explain the reason of the multiplication of 8. and the order
and method of places in the Letter or Word square.
The third sort of Characters, is a decompounded sort being made
up of two, three or more of those of the second kind, diminish'd
proportionably in their size, either as to their length, or breadth,
or both, from what they have in the same Writing when they are single
and fill up the whole Letter square or Words square. For there being
several of them to be crouded together within the same square,
according as there are more in number, so they are always more squeezed
together. In this decompound sort, there is a regular Order observed in
the placing of the several Characters of the 2d sort; there being some
that are always on the left side, some always on the right, some at
the top, some at the bottom. Of which I doubt not but that they have a
certain regular Method, which had we Dictionaries explained, would be
easie enough to be discovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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