There are still two other syllabaries, one called _Manyo-kana_, and the other _Yamato-kana_, both of which are formed of still more complicated Chinese characters, also used phonetically. Neither of these syllabaries is generally used entirely alone, but the three are joined together or interchanged somewhat according to the fancy of the writer, in a manner similar to Archdeacon Wrangham's famous echo poem. Such a complicated mode of writing has this unfortunate result, however, of so seriously obstructing the avenues to the temple of science, that the greatest part of the common people are unable to enter, and must be content with admiring the structure afar off. Most of them content themselves with learning to write and read in the _hirakana_, and get as much knowledge of Chinese as will enable them to read the names of places, signs, people, &c., for which those characters are universally used. Besides the phonetic use of Chinese characters in these syllabaries, they are employed very extensively as words, with their own meanings, partly because they are more nervous and expressive in the estimation of the writer than the vernacular, and partly to show his learning and shorten his labor. Commonly, characters so used are called by their Japanese meanings, but sometimes too by their Chinese names.[110] The connection between the Chinese and Japanese, therefore, is very intimate, and presents a curious instance of assimilation between a symbolic and syllabic language, though at the cost of much hard study and labor to acquire the mongrel compound. It is another example of Asiatic toil upon the media of thought, rather than investigations in the world of thought and science itself; for no people who possessed invention, research, or science, would ever have encumbered themselves with so burdensome a vehicle of communication. The Chinese do not attend to the Japanese language, and have no knowledge of its structure, or the principles on which it has combined with their own. Their intercourse with Japan is entirely commercial; that of the Japanese with them, chiefly literary.