|
.gif) Neela Sakaria: Thank you for joining us. Please tell us about your background. Did you study linguistics?
Chang P. Liu: I was born in China and had an education in Taiwan and the U.S., I have a Ph. D. degree from a U.S. school. I studied German for my doctoral degree language requirement. My long career in advanced mechanism design work made me aware of the requirements of true science and engineering evelopment. My technical accomplishments include published papers in technical journals, citations, and U.S. patents.
Linguists dealing with grammars do not know that they are working with equivalent words of Chinese origin. For example, the verbs "to be" in English, and "ser, esta" in Spanish are just the "schi (meaning the same as si, is, es, son, are, were, etc.) group of verbs in Chinese. Most of those Chinese words had been discarded long ago. Linguists in the West are making complicated rules to agrandize the method of writing in the name of "literary correctness" as dictated by "tense, person, active, passive, etc.". Linguists did not know for example that to add "have" to a verb already with an "-ed" added is a redundancy according to the original phonetic rule in Chinese mother tone. Few people know in using the root expression "-est" for a maximum extent description for adjectives was derived from Chinese language with phonetic order reversed. Readers can find these rules in Appendix 3 near the end of this book.
I am proud to be a sel-taught linguist. There are two writings that helped me significantly in my study of languages:
1. "Sign, Symbol and Script", by Hans Jensen and translated into English by George Unwin.
2. "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language", William Morris, editor.
From ref. # 1, I found that Jean Champollion dismissed two symbols as useless in his famous deciphering work for the "cartouche" inscription of Cleopatra. The mis-interpretation of those two essential symbols negated most later Egyptological research results. One of the symbol happens to be "the verb, to be". Also, Prof. Gelb was one of only a few scholars had the correct prediction on the "syllable representation" of Egyptian hieoglyphic symbols as I have learned from that book.
Ref. # 2 explained the origin of English words. But very few words could be traced beyond ancient Greek writings. Many words correspond to essential machine elements were not contested. I found those were genuine ancient
Chinese words of more than 3,000 years ago.
Linguistics rules are subject to change constantly as people discover the pros and cons of their usefulness. The essential roots of words have better longivity. Most word stems of the world are Chinese words of perhaps 7,000 years old.
Neela: Please tell our readers about the main premise of your book, The Way it Began.
CPL: Con mucho gusto. I believe that history study should be treated like a genuine science subject from points of view of actual causes and results instead of the old-fashioned story telling approach. Every thing that happened in the past had real cause. Every word we speak today has a real reason for its being in existence. To know clearly the true past will help us to gain perspective for ourselves. We will all realize that the present state of world's madness is "much ado for nothing'. We accepted that the Earth is round after Columbus and other great voyagers sailed around the globe 500 years ago, but many of human's concept regarding nature and our past remain unchanged since the Earth was still flat. To be honest to ourselves is good for humanity.
NS: How much research has gone into the creation of this book? How long did it take ?
CPL: I noticed the phonetic similarity in numerous cases between English and Chinese words since I was in junior middle school. Later I learned from writings by some most respectful scholars in the U.S. that the first anti-friction device was invented in ancient China. To engineers the wheel is the greatest invention of modern man. From the 1970's I had further recognized that practically every fundamental technical advancement in ancient time was first achieved in China. The beginning of Chinese culture could not be only 5,000 years. The long asserted technological evolution of three stages for man from stone age through bronze into the iron age was flawed. The pottery manufacturing age that lasted at least for 5,000 years befor bronze smelting is very important and must be added as a most essential stage in human development.
In studying history, I tried to see the events that impacted a region measured in a thousand miles of distance and a time span of no less than one hundred years. My view of cultural progression was based on the evolution of fundamental production methods that work in conjunction with human nature.
A rough draft of a human history book existed in my mind for a long time. But I was not sure about the order of the most important pieces of human activities until I found the connection between ancient Egyptian language and that of Chinese. The fit of the oldest and greatest manmade hardware pieces and the greatest software man ever created assured me the basic conclusion that I have presented in this book.
Neela: Why is it important to study the origins of the heiroglyphic characters? What motivated you to write this book?
CPL: Egyptian hieoglyphics were among the oldest writings of humankind. To verify its authenticity is to trace the true beginning of human history. The goal of studying history itself is of course, for avoiding to follow the same tracks that lead to the disasterous finishes of many previous "wise men".
It was estimated by Greek scholars that some forty thousand English words were originated from ancient Greek. The evolution of Greek from Egyptian hieroglyphics was demonstrated by the Rossetta Stone. I do not understand Hindi directly. But from what I have learned from the English phonetic translation, the dialogue of some most common conversational Hindi were practically native Chinese talking going back in time.
As to the motivation for writing this book, it happened that this writing was not my original first goal. I was looking for a way to Latinize the writing of Chinese words for improved efficiency in word and data processing for Chinese type languages using computers. After realizing that all the world languages were derived from ancient Chinese, it made it much easier for the task of linking English, Spanish, and Chinese with regard to both meaning and phonetics. The aim of this study is to compile a dictionary of these three most popular world languages into a unique relation. The congruency in meaning and phonetics made it possible for people to acquire these three languages much faster. This is particularly of interest to business decision makers. It made nearly possible to show the transparency specifically between English and Chinese documents. To this end, I have copyrighted such a dictionary called TRILAN "TM" of no less than 10,000 words in English and Spanish that were neatly related to Chinese, and I have applied patent protection for a class of business machine that can process documents of words or data involving these three languages so that the translation can be made in a snap.
Neela: What kind of opposition, if any, have you received in regard to the arguments you make in your book? Have any historians commented on your arguments?
CPL: Two years ago, I had a nice communication with linguists of a prestigeous university in New England. That discussion prompted my decision in the writing of this book. Thus far favorable comments were recieved from the highest level of learning institutions in China and Taiwan. One major university in California had also given recognition and copies of this book are in circulation at their reaearch library. Although I have presented the most recognizeable pictures of museum quality of ancient artifacts with the best known interpretations to the inscribed messages, it is natural to expect comments of negativity. That probably is the only way to arrive at a consensus about the beginning of human civilization. Which is a word from Latin "civicus". Which was a word botched by Romans from Greek "ce-neia", which was a genuine Chinese word meaning "curtsey" in reverse.
Neela: Who was your intended audience for the book?CPL: The intended audience is any one with an open mind; anyone who thinks that he or she is a linguist; as well as anyone who thinks he or she is facinated about ancient Egyptian civilization. A person with basic science or engineering background will be able to judge my assessment regarding manufacturing and agriculture. Of course one needs some training in Chinese language to really appreciate the full meaning of the software (language) portion.
Neela: Are you working on any future projects?
CPL: I am working on an expanded version of a book about Egptian hieroglyphics at a slow pace. My priority is set to develop commercial software packages for language transltion and automation of processing data of Chinese type languages using the proprietary methods that I just described.
Neela: Good luck and thank you for your time.
CPL: I thank you too very much.
|
