Page:Manual of the Foochow dialect.pdf/9

 ==Preface.==

This Manual is designed to facilitate the study of the Foochow Dialect in its construction, idioms, and some of its common terms and phrases. The aim has been to present the elementary rules and principles of the dialect in such simple forms and connections as to aid the student in the beginning of his task. Familiar examples and brief explanations are introduced under the various subjects treated in the work.

The plan and scope of the volume appear in the Index. Its extent and practical availability as a Manual are seen from the number of Chinese words and expressions introduced in various forms as single or compound names and terms, as examples, as set phrases, and as Chinese equivalents of English words. The number of such words and expressions is estimated to be in Part 1st, 800, Part 2d, 1130, Part 3d, 720, Part 4th, 730, Part 5th, 1220, Part 6th, 1150, Part 7th, 2850, giving an aggregate of 8600. Making a reduction of $1/4$ to $1/3$ from this aggregate on account of repetitions of the same word or expression, there will remain about 6000 different words, terms, and phrases. These may be memorized and employed as models by the learner in the prosecution of his studies.

The first sixteen pages of the Manual, comprising orthography and explanations, is taken&mdash;with slight modifications and additions&mdash; from the Introduction of the Alphabetic Dictionary in the Foochow Dialect. The orthography being the same, the Romanized Chinese words of the Manual, with rare exceptions as in case of a few commercial ondand [sic] other technical terms, may be readily found in the Dictionary, where discriminations in meaning are more fully developed. The two works may therefore be used together with advantage.

It should be observed, however, that some of the Romanized words have no Chinese characters to represent them in the Dic-