It probably seems odd that the sounds of a language could be of any import in explicating the philosophies of its speakers: French certainly sounds different than German, but it is highly doubtful the differences are of any philosophical import. The links between spoken and written Chinese in the past, however, are more tenuous than between French or German, contributing to the written language developing a grammar that is sui generis, requiring semantic material on a much larger scale than is common in other languages. And if the grammars of the spoken and written languages differ, one must be very careful when considering the relation of language to thought in ancient (and to some extent modern) China.