Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/187

Rh as the sound of each character is pronounced by a single emission of the voice, and is completed at one utterance: for though there are some Chinese words which appear to be disyllabic, and are written with a diaræsis, as këen, tëen, &c., yet they are as really monosyllabic, and sounded as much together, as our words "beer" and "fear." The joining of two monosyllables to form a phrase for certain words, as făh-too, for "rule," wang-ke, to express "forget," &c. does not militate against the assertion above made, for the two parts of the term are still distinct words, which are merely thrown together into a phrase, for the purpose of definiteness in conversation.

As the Chinese do not divide their words into elementary sounds, they know nothing of spelling; but they have a method of determining and describing particular enunciations, which nearly answers their purpose. The plan they adopt, is to divide each word into its initial and final, and then, taking two other well-known characters, one of which has the given initial, and the other the final, they unite them together, and form the sound required. This they call splitting the sounds: and though, from ignorance of the principles of orthography, they sometimes divide the sounds improperly, while from the various sounds attached to the characters adduced, the result is frequently undetermined; yet it is the best method they have, and is employed in all their dictionaries. A reference to the initials and finals of the mandarin dialect will enable the reader to see what sounds it contains, and what articulations the educated Chinese are capable of pronouncing.