Page:Easy sentences in the Hakka dialect.pdf/14

II the study of Chinese is due to the necessity of acquiring, not only a foreign language, but of acquiring it through the medium of an "orthography" composed of our own letters which have in their new combinations a stereotyped pronunciation, so different to the easy good-natured way in which the Englishman conducts himself in spelling, as in everything else. To a beginner this is a serious deterrent, and I have known men, who have lived many years in China, still continue a wrong pronunciation of certain words acquired at their first start, and due to the quantity of the vowels differing in their ordinary use in English to the use they have been put to in the representation of Chinese sounds. I am one of the last to condemn a uniform system of orthography for the Chinese dialects. I think it is a great desideratum, but I also think that, though there is no royal road to learning, the road to learning Chinese may be simplified considerably by "an attempt to express as far as possible the Chinese sounds in simple English," which I have followed Mr. Giles in attempting. The proof of anything is the best criterion of its merit. I have put Mr. Giles' Handbook of the Swatow Dialect to the test—it being the first book I used in my study of the Swatow Dialect, and I must say that the plan he has adopted, of putting the "sounds in simple English," is far better than the complicated arrangements of letters it has been my misfortune to discover in another guide to the study of the same dialect. Once having acquired a mastery of a number of sentences and words, one is better able to cope with the intricate renderings of Chinese sounds so delighted in by some book makers. One thing at a time—First learn your Chinese the simplest way you can, then you can devote time to systems which are better suited for students than tyros.

The reader will learn from the above remarks that he must not expect to find the same sounds expressed in the same way at all times; but when, in combination with some other sound, a certain sound produces a word in Chinese which has an exact equivalent in the pronunciation of an English word, that English word is given. It is, of course, impossible to find English words to represent all the sounds in Chinese, were it otherwise there would be little difficulty in learning Chinese, which would then consist, merely, of a number of English