Page:An alphabetic dictionary of the Chinese language in the Foochow dialect.djvu/13

 INTRODUCTION.

The design of this Dictionary is to assist the student in the acquisition both of the classic or written, and the vernacular or spoken, forms of the Foochow dialect. The former in style, idiom, and usage often differs widely from the latter. In orthography however all the tables of initials, finals, and words are precisely the same in both forms; and many single words and phrases that are strictly classic or common book-phrases are also used in the spoken language. A considerable part of such phrases are however confined to the literary class of the people. This has led some to style the more reﬁned terms teachers' or scholars' patois. The common use of some phrases in the reading and colloquial styles appears in the plan of the work. It is farther evident that a fair proportion of the phrases in Chinese character at the foot of the page, as also the definitions of the leading classic or lexicographic characters are the common property of the mandarin and local dialects of the empire. It is hoped therefore that this volume will be of general use to students of the Chinese language.

The work contains 928 different syllabic divisions or sections, as written in Roman letters and numbered in the text. This of course does not include all the distinctions arising from difference in tone. The number of leading classic and colloquial characters, including the abbreviated and duplicate or alternate forms, and those repeated under different sounds is 9390. The number of paragraphs with one or more leading characters is 8311, and the number introduced by Romanized colloquial words, without Chinese characters to represent them, is 1242, making the whole number of paragraphs in the Chinese and English text 9553. Besides these two classes, some characters are found in the phrases at the foot of the page, which do not appear in the main text as leading characters. In such cases the meaning of the character appears in the definition of the phrase where its Romanized equivalent occurs, and this is often the only, or the most important, meaning it ever has in the language. There are also occasional instances of unimportant colloquial words or particles, in combination' with other words in the Romanized phrases, which do not appear independently as leading words.

The arrangement of the work is alphabetic, excepting that the aspirate and composite initials are treated as single and independent letters. The order then is a, ch, chʻ, e, h, i, k, kʻ, l, m, n, ng, o, p, pʻ, s, t, tʻ, u, w, y. The Chinese characters are arranged in the order of the tones, when the Romanized spelling for their sounds is the same. The mandarin sounds are in general according to Wade's system,