And _yao kuo_ might mean either "I want fruit" or "I want to wrap." No
one, however, says _kuo_ for "fruit," but _kuo tzÅ­_. The suffix _tzÅ­_
renders confusion impossible.

Of course there is no confusion in reading a book, where each thing or
idea, although of the same sound and tone, is represented by a different
symbol.

On the whole, it may be said that misconceptions in the colloquial are
not altogether due to the fact that the Chinese language is poorly
provided with sounds. Many persons, otherwise gifted, are quite unable
to learn any foreign tongue.

Let us now turn to the machinery by means of which the Chinese arrest
the winged words of speech, and give to mere thought and utterance a
more concrete and a more lasting form.

The written language has one advantage over the colloquial: it is
uniformly the same all over China; and the same document is equally
intelligible to natives of Peking and Canton, just as the Arabic and
Roman numerals are understood all over Europe, although pronounced
differently by various nations.

To this fact some have attributed the stability of the Chinese Empire
and the permanence of her political and social institutions.

If we take the written language of to-day, which is to all intents and
purposes the written language of twenty-five hundred years ago, we gaze
at first on what seems to be a confused mass of separate signs, each
sign being apparently a fortuitous concourse of dots and dashes.