For some reason, I keep on remembering a recent dinner when I was asked to discuss many aspects of Chinese language to an English speaker. I feel lacking that I talked about the introduction but not the most beautiful part, IMHO: the poetic nature. A single syllable language, I supposed, could be made to rhythm in each sentence. I don't find it possible to do so in, e.g., English.
I could list many many great Tang dynasty poems in here but just an example of the Dedicatory Verse of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā could illustrate the idea.
In English:
I salute the Fully Enlightened One, the best of orators,
who taught the doctrine of dependent origination,
according to which there is
neither cessation nor origination,
neither annihilation nor the eternal,
neither singularity nor plurality,
neither the coming nor the going [of any dharma, for the purpose of nirvāṇa characterized by]
the auspicious cessation of hypostatization.
In Chinese:
不生亦不滅 不常亦不斷
不一亦不異 不來亦不出
能說是因緣 善滅諸戲論
我稽首禮佛 諸說中第一
There are 3 syllables in cessation and 5 in origination but 生 and 滅, respectively, have 1. So, the translation could be much more organized and rhythm.
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