at the same words may be both
active and passive.

Thus, [diu] _tiu_ is the root-idea of "loss," "to lose," and [liao] puts
it into the past tense.

Now [wo diu liao] means, and can only mean, "I have lost"--something
understood, or to be expressed. Strike out [wo] and substitute [shiu] "a
book." No Chinaman would think that the new sentence meant "The book has
lost"--something understood, or to be expressed, as for instance its
cover; but he would grasp at once the real sense, "The book is or has
been lost."

In the case of such, a phrase as "The book has lost" its cover, quite a
different word would be used for "lost."

We have the same phenomenon in English. In the _New York Times_ of
February 13, I read, "Mr. So-and-so dined," meaning not that Mr.
So-and-so took his dinner, but had been entertained at dinner by a party
of friends,--a neuter verb transformed into a passive verb by the logic
of circumstances.

By a like process the word [su] _ssu_ "to die" may also mean "to make to
die" = "to kill."

The word [jin] _chin_ which stands for "gold" as a substantive may also
stand, as in English, for an adjective, and for a verb, "to gold,"
_i.e._ to regard as gold, to value highly.

There is nothing in Chinese like love, loving, lovely, as noun
substantive, verb, and adverb. The word, written or spoken, remains
invariably, so far as its own economy is concerned, the same. Its
function in a sentence is governed entirely by position and by the
influence of other words upon it, coupled with the inexorable logic
of attendant circumstances.

When a Chinaman comes up to you and says, "You wantchee my, no
wantchee," he is doing no foolish thing, at any rate from his own point
of view. To save himself the trouble of learning grammatical English, he
is taking the language and divesting it of all troublesome inflections,
until he has at his control a set of root-ideas, with which he can
juggle as in his own tongue. In other words, "you wantchee my, no
wantchee," is nothing more nor less than literally rendered Chinese:--

[ni yao wo u yao] _ni yao wo, pu yao_ = do you want me or not?

In this "pidgin" English he can express himself as in Chinese by merely
changing the positions of the words:--

"He wantchee my." "My wantchee he."

"My belong Englishman."

"That knife belong my."

Some years back, when I was leaving China for England with young
children, their faithful Chinese nurse kept on repeating to the l