Page:An alphabetic dictionary of the Chinese language in the Foochow dialect.djvu/16



The native standard of pronunciation is a work called 戚林八音合訂 Ch‘ek Ling Paik Ing Hak Teng or more simply the Paik Ing, or Eight Tone Book. As seen from the full title it is a compilation of the works of two authors, Ch‘ek and Ling. The page is divided by a horizontal line. The lower section is by Ling, and the characters are arranged by a system of 20 initials and 35 finals. As a dictionary, it is somewhat more comprehensive than the upper part, but it is not used as a standard of pronunciation. The upper section is ascribed originally to Ch‘ek (a military chieftain of the Ming dynasty, known familiarly as 戚𠫵將 Ch‘ek ch‘ang chiong), and is the only standard of pronunciationfor the Foochow dialect. It is a dictiionarydictionary [sic] in which all the characters are systematically arranged according to their sounds. Each simple word has three elements, an nitialinitial [sic] sound, a final sound, and a tone. The initials are termed che t‘au, word-heads. The finals are termed che mó, word-mothers, or fundamental generic sounds. To represent the former, 15 characters, having the 15 different initial sounds, are used. To represent the latter, 33 characters are in like manner employed. The original number was 36, but three of these became obsolete on account of identity in sound with other three in the list. This sys-