Page:A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language commonly called the Mandarin Dialect (IA dli.granth.92779).pdf/16

4 self, tsi‘, limit, ’sï, die, ’si, to wash are written in his system incorrectly with the same vowels: thus, che, tsze, tse, sze, se. By adopting another symbol for the vowel sound contained in the first, second, and fourth of these words, this irregularity is avoided. Further ü‘, to meet, kü‘, a sentence, having the same vowel, are spelt by Morrison yu, keu. By using the diæresis, y and e may both be omitted with advantage. Morrison spells .hwei, to return and .wei, to do, two words which exactly rhyme in their sound, in two modes hwuy and wei. So also the former of these word rhymes according to the same author with ,sui and  ,chui which he spells suy, chuy. In fact, ei should follow kw, hw and w, while ui is preceded by t, s, ts, ch, j, n and l. The voice passes quickly over w as in "swerve," but rests on u as in "ruin." Two symbols w and u are therefore necessary, a vowel and a consonant.

The symbols, , will be observed to have two sounds, according as their position is at the end or in the middle of a word. The medial i is always short in mandarin; the final, except with the short intonation is always long. Final, which will be used indicate the short tone, does not count as anything but a tone-.

For the short of Sanscrit, represented in sun and son by u and o, e is here employed. This agrees with the usage of PremárePrémare [sic] and other French writers. If or  were taken as a the symbol of this sound, it would be necessary to introduce the accent for long quantities, in a large number of words. The same symbol e, will be appropriated to express the final vowel in .she, a snake, and similar words, and the grave accent will be used to distinguish the vowel in chèh, from that in  keh, the former being pronounced as e in "there," and the latter as o in "son."

The vowels a and o are in mandarin both long, whether as medial or final, and are never shortened into the a and o of the English words hat, hot. The accent therefore is unnecessary for these vowels, except for provincial dialects.

When e follows i in words ending with n, the sound represented is that heard in the English words "men," "mend," e. g. ’tien a point. This e is pronounced a, in many parts of North China.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in framing an orthography for Chinese sounds, is in finding a representative for the vowel part