Page:Chinese Local Dialects Reduced to Writing- An Outline of the System Adopted for Romanizing the Dialect of Amoy (IA jstor-592283).pdf/3

Rh four thousand characters, but have learned the meaning of only a few hundreds. The difficulty of the task, and the pressure of poverty, with the hurry of business, prevent multitudes from ever acquiring much additional knowledge of the written language. Hence we find thousands of the poorer classes, who, as has been mentioned, while they can read with considerable fluency, know little or nothing of the meaning of what they read.

Missionaries have often and anxiously inquired by what means the Scriptures could be prepared in a form calculated to benefit this class of the people. It has been suggested that the spoken dialects might be reduced to writing by means of the Roman alphabet, in the same manner as in other countries where no written language is found. This plan has been partially adopted for some of the dialects. At Ningpo, primary books for schools have been prepared with the English alphabet, and some of the Gospels are already in progress, or probably even now completed. Some are very sanguine in this undertaking, and even hope that this alphabetic system may be made so attractive and easy, explained in the ordinary classical character, that, with such explanations in the form of a preface attached to the Gospels, many will, without any other guide, learn the system and read the books with profit. At Amoy, also, successful efforts have been made to romanize the colloquial dialect. The Gospel of John has already been published, and primary books have been prepared for schools in that city. It is believed that six months, or a year, will be sufficient for intelligent youths to learn to read in the Roman character any books that may be prepared for them. They may thus be taught to read and write their own colloquial, and by means of suitable books acquire a much greater amount of knowledge, in a given time, than they could acquire from books written in the ideographic language of the Chinese.

It is feared, however, by some, that the great prejudice which the Chinese entertain against anything of foreign origin, will prevent this system from being adopted by any not instructed in Mission schools.

Another method has been suggested for reducing the spoken dialects to writing, which, though intrinsically of equal difficulty, would probably meet with less prejudice on the part of the people, as it would exhibit less appearance of foreign origin.