Page:Western Mandarin.pdf/11

 INTRODUCTION.

The need of a thorough knowledge of the every-day language of the people among whom the writer's work lay, and the lack of adequate helps to the attainment of that knowledge, led to the preparation of this vocabulary. Being assured that it would prove of use to his fellow-labourers in Western China, he has arranged it for publication.

Scope:&mdash;The name of the book, "The Spoken Language Western China," indicates pretty clearly the scope of the work. It is difficult to draw a line between what is spoken and what is written only. Many phrases used by scholars have been rejected as too "bookish," but, on the other hand, nothing has been regarded as too common for insertion. The work contains 3,786 characters, 112 duplicate characters, 191 words without characters, and 13,484 examples, including 401 proverbs. The examples have been taken in every case from the lips of the natives. No phrases of foreign origin&mdash;religious or otherwise&mdash;have been collected, as students can easily obtain such from other sources.

Arrangement:&mdash;The first and chief part of the work is arranged according to the radicals. The second part, which consists of words without characters, is arranged alphabetically. A syllabic index enables the student to find any word from the sound, and an English index gives the advantages of a very full English-Chinese dictionary. An appendix on relationships, is an attempt to clear up what many have found to be a somewhat perplexing subject.

Romanization:&mdash;The Romanization used is a modification of the China Inland Mission system. The principal alterations are as follows:&mdash;k, before i or ü, is changed to ch, as in 江 chiang, or 去 chʻü; hs, before i or ü, is changed to sh, as in 下 shia, or 玄 shüen; ae, i, ei, and eh, are uniformly written e, as in 這 che, 雷 lue, 背 pe, or 白 pe.

Definitions:&mdash;As the meanings of a word are often modified by association with other words, no list of definitions can give a true