Page:A Chinese and English vocabulary, in the Tie-chiu dialect.djvu/13

Rh vowel will of course be correct. Hence, except in the case of e and i mentioned in the table as shortened before consonants, the length of the vowels may be said to be governed by the tones. This may easily be seen by pronouncing such words as cham, che, kan, kiàng, in each of the different tones.

The Tie Chiu dialect never exhibits the following initials, viz; a, à, d, f, r, v, x, and z; c is used only in ch, and q is supplanted by k. The following terminations are never found; à, b, d, f, g except in ng, h, j; r, s, v, x and z; c, g, w and y are not used as finals, their sounds being otherwise represented. With these exceptions all the vowel sounds exhibited in the table, and all the consonants with their usual English sounds are found both as initials and finals.

3. Eight varieties of are marked in this work. This chief peculiarity is that the high and low, in the even going and entering are precisely the reverse of what they are called by the Chinese, and also of what thay have usually been marked by writers on other dialects. Yet the least observation will show that what the Chinese call the low is, in this dialect, really the high, and what they call the high is really the low tone. This peculiarity is, however, less manifest in the reading than in the common sound of the words, which often differ only in tone; the reading being more conformable to the tone as designated by the Chinese, whether high or low. But as the following work is designed to exhibit the common rather than the reading sounds, the really high is distinguished by a straight mark over the tonal semicircle as in the following table:—

The low, or chⁿie pⁿe, is strictly an even tone, being pronounced with a natural even voice and easy cadence at the close.