THE ESE LANGUAGE
All fners who have tried to learn ese say that ese is a very difficult language. But is ese a difficult language? Before, however, we ahis questio us uand what we mean by the ese language. There are, as everybody knows, two languages_I do not mean dialects,_in a, the spoken and the written language. Now, by the way, does anybody know the reason why the ese insist upon having these two distinct, spoken and written languages? I will here give you the reason. In a, as it was at oime in Europe when Latin was the learned or written language, the people are properly divided into two distinct classes, the educated and the uneducated. The colloquial or spoken language is the language for the use of the uneducated, and the written language is the language for the use of the really educated. In this way half educated people do in this try. That is the reason, I say, why the ese insist upon having two languages. Now think of the sequences of having half educated people in a try. Look at Europe and America to-day. In Europe and America since, from the disuse of Latin, the sharp distin between the spoken and the written language has disappeared, there has arisen a class of half educated people who are allowed to use the same language as the really educated people, who talk of civilisation, liberty, rality, militarism and panslavinism without in the least uanding what these words really mean. People say that Prussian Militarism is a dao civilisation. But to me it seems, the half educated man, the mob of half educated men in the world to-day, is the real dao civilisation. But that is her here nor there.
Now to e to the question: is ese a difficult language? My answer is, yes and no. Let us first take the spoken language. The ese spoken language, I say, is not only not difficult, but as pared with the half dozen languages that I know, _the easiest language in the world except, _Malay. Spoken ese is easy because it is aremely simple language. It is a language without case, without tense, withular and irregular verbs; in fact without grammar, or any rule whatever. But people have said to me that ese is difficult even because of its simplicity; even because it has no rule rammar. That, however, ot be true. Malay like ese, is also a simple language without grammar or rules; a Europeans who learn it, do not find it difficult. Thus in itself and for the ese colloquial or spoken ese at least is not a difficult language. But for educated Europeans and especially for half educated Europeans who e to a, even colloquial or spoken ese is a very difficult language: and why? Because spoken or colloquial ese is, as I said, the language of uneducated men, of thhly uneducated men;
in fact the language of a child. Now as a proof of this, we all know how easily European children learn colloquial or spoken ese, while learned philogues and sinologues insist in saying that ese is so difficult. ese, colloquial ese, I say again is the language of a child. My first advice therefore to my fn friends who want to leam ese is "Be ye like little children, you will then not oer into the Kingdom of Heaven, but you will also be able to learn ese."
We now e to the written or book language, written ese. But here before I go further, let me say there are also different kinds of written ese. The Missionaries class these uwo categories and call them easy wen li and difficult wen li. But that, in my opinion, is not a satisfactory classification.