Page:Manual of the Foochow dialect.pdf/31

17 1. ARTICLE.

There is properly no article in this dialect, and nouns are often used without any adjunct corresponding to it.


 * 伊是好𠆧 i se hó nëng, he is (a) good man.
 * 厝野高 ch‘io yă keng, (the) house (is) very high.

The nearest equivalent for the indefinite article, a or an, is the numeral sioh, one, or the same numeral with a classifier.


 * 一日 sioh nik one day or a day.
 * 一點鐘 sioh teng chüng, one hour or an hour.
 * 一隻𠆧 sioh chiăh nëng, one man or a man.

The coll. word la–probably a corruption of chiă–also stands for the article a, 務喇𠆧 o la nëng, there was a man, or a certain man.

The nearest equivalent for the definite article, the, is the pronominal adjective or demonstrative pronoun chiă, this, that.


 * 啫馬 chiă ma, this horse or the horse.
 * 啫筆 chiă pek, this pencil or the pencil.

It is apparent, from the examples given above, that the Chinese equivalents for the English articles a, an, the, correspond in meaning to the Saxon ane and thät from which the latter are derived.

2. NOUN.

Proper nouns or names. There is no mode of capitalizing these, as in western languages. The names of persons, however, are sometimes marked–as in christian books–by a perpendicular line on the right, and the names of places by two such marks or by four inclosing lines. When, in writing, the Chinese wish to mention a person with honor, his name is made to begin a new column, or is raised a space or two above, or has a blank left before it. These honorary distinctions may serve to indicate names of persons to the English student, when the perpendicular stroke is not used.

Patronymics or surnames. These invariably precede the proper or given name, as 林發祥 Ling hwak siong, instead of 發祥林 Hwak siong ling. In the name of a married woman, the full, written form includes both her husband's and her father's surnames,