Page:Manual of the Foochow dialect.pdf/24

10 sioh pi (a stone tablet), siăh ta (to drink tea), pah t‘ak (the white pagoda), hok seng, (a pupil), hak e (agreeable), nik t‘au (the sun),

The nature and peculiarities of the tones are noticed above. But it is very important to learn and apply them correctly in practice. "In English, various tones or inflections of the voice are used to give force and animation to language; but in Chinese, the tone is an essential part of the word in all circumstances; while rhetorical effect is given to discourse by accentuation, rapidity or slowness of utterance, and peculiarities of manner, as well as varieties of pitch of the voice, and gesticulation". To a novice the Chinese tones may seem of no more importance than the accents or inflections of his own language, which never alter the meaning of single words, though they may affect the force and meaning of a sentence as a whole. Careful study and observation soon correct the misapprehension. He discovers that in the spoken language, words of the same spelling and tone constantly occur, whose meaning is determined by the connection and circumstances of discourse, as sang which may mean hill, coat, beget, or three: but that words of the same spelling and different tone are also very numerous, as sang, hill, sang, sparing, sang scatter, sang, clear, as weather, and sang silent; and kau, hook, kau, nine, kau doctrine, kau, a monkey, and kau thick. In these instances, the connection of the discourse will not always serve to convey one's meaning. Inadvertence or an effort to give a word a peculiar force or inflection in a foreign style of speaking may fail to imform the listener correctly; or produce very incongruous expressions, as saying the sky is sang, hill, instead of sang, fair or clear, or calling the number kau, nine, by the name kau, a monkey. A servant brings his master a bundle of wood instead of a fork for the table, the mistake being due to the master's saying ch‘a (wood) instead of ch‘a (fork). The incident furnishes an apt, practical illustration of the importance of the tones of Chinese words.

The following Tables exhibit the system of Romanized Orthography, as used in writing the words or vocables of this dialect. An approximate representation of the sounds is all that can be hoped for in this department. Some students prefer i and u to y and w where these occur in the system. Good arguments may be adduced for either set of letters. But it should be observed that such arguments are partial in their application and do not affect the system as a whole, when the tones and their combinations, as well as the vowel and consonant sounds, are considered. It is hoped that the system adopted in this work will be readily acquired and prove serviceable to the student.