A Curious Language

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 27, 1909

A Curious Language.

MRS. LIZZIE NELSON FRYER, wife of Dr. John Fryer, an expert in the Chinese languages, of the University of California, who with her husband is touring in China, speaks thus in the Sabbath Recorder of a meeting they attended:

One of the hymns written for this occasion is a very curious piece of Chinese composition; the stanzas were sung by reading the characters both forward and backward. As I have written this, my husband has translated one stanza for me which reads as follows:

“My love to God has the breadth of the earth, and the width of the sky; I will sing hymns and praise Him for His goodness, which extends from pole to pole.”

Reading the characters backward, it may mean:

“From pole to pole His goodness will I praise and sing; For as wide as the heavens and as broad as the earth is the Lord’s love for me.”

My husband says that only such an elastic language as the Chinese, without grammatical rules or inflections, could possibly be used in so curious a manner.