Page:Chinese spoken language.djvu/7

 THE CHINESE LANGUAGE SPOKEN AT FUH CHAU.

BY REV. M. C. WHITE, M. D.

The Chinese language is, in theory, a language of monosyllables; but, owing to the paucity of distinct syllables, two monosyllablic words having, in the language of books, the same signification, are often joined together in the spoken language to represent a single idea. Other varieties of compound words are used to express ideas which, in other languages, are represented by a simple word. Some words which are generally regarded as monosyllables, contain two or more vowel sounds, which are pronounced so distinct and separate as to constitute real dissyllables, as kiang, hiong, sieu, which are pronounced ki-ang, hi-ong, si-eu.

There are in the Fuh Chau dialect but ten vowel sounds, and they are generally reckoned as only nine, and the elementary consonant sounds are only ten, hence the number of syllables must also be small. Many combinations of consonants found in other languages are unknown to the Chinese, and the structure of their language is unfavourable to the formation of many polysyllabic words. To compensate for these restrictions upon the formation of words, they have adopted the use of a variety of tones to distinguish ideas expressed by what we should call the same word.

The tones used in different dialects vary both in their number and intonation.

In the court dialect, spoken at the Capital, and by public officers in all parts of the empire, there are five tones. In the Tiechu dialect there are said to be nine tones. In the several dialects spoken at Canton, Amoy, and Fuh Chau, there are reckoned eight tones; but in the Fuh Chau dialect there are really but seven tones, for the second and sixth are identical, and in their books, the words referred to these two tones are all arranged under the second.

In the Fuh Chau dialect there is a native work, called the Book of Eight Tones, and Thirty-six Mother Characters. In this book all the characters in common use are systematically arranged, according to their sounds. Three of the mother characters are mere duplicates, and are not used in the body of the work. All the syllabic sounds of this dialect are, therefore, arranged in thirty-three genera, under mother characters, having the same final sound as the