It appears plain from the Corean and Japanese transcriptions of Chinese sounds made contemporaneous with the dictionaries, that the north of China must then have had the same dialect as that now prevailing in the kiang provinces.
A. The circumflex tones in [page 9], may be further divided. The bend of the voice may be upward or downward. Perhaps the Sháng-hái fifth tone may be best described, as sometimes a low slow falling circumflex, (l.s.f.c.) and at other times as a low even tone (l.s.e.). There would with this extension of the natural tones mentioned in section 2. be seven starting from the same key, viz. The even, rising, falling, rising circumflex, falling circumflex, rising short, and falling short tones. If subdivided into an upper and lower key, they become fourteen, and if considered according to their time as quick or slow, we have in all (the short tones not admitting of this subdivision) 24 natural tones.
B. If Roman numerals i to viii be used for the eight tones, the changes of tone occurring in combination in our dialect may be represented as follows:—In the groups v—i, and viii—i, i become v. In ii—ii; ii—vi, vi—vi and vi—ii, the last tone often becomes i, or else former becomes iii or vii. In iii—iii, iii—vii, the former becomes ii. In v—v, iv—v, v does not change, but in other cases v becomes i.
[ [1] In Julien’s “Methode pour transcrire les noms Sanscrits dans les livres Chinois,” p. 2; he states that Remusat first published this discovery in 1811.
[ [2] For a general view of the changes undergone in vowels since the tables of sounds were made, for example changes from u to ú, o to ia, chi to ch, sí to sz, ui to ei, ü to ú, é to í, á to ó, ó to á, etc. v. Grammar of Mandarin Dialect, ch. 8, § 5.
Transcriber’s Notes.
- Footnotes have been numbered and placed at the end of the associated grammar article.
- Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text.
- Hyphenation variations are unchanged.
- The cover/title page image has been retouched to remove flaws.
- This book contains some rarely used forms of Chinese characters. Any eReader should contain as full a set of fonts as possible.
- The original book is available at the HathiTrust Digital Library.
Page [5]: The "Fifteen vowels" and "Thirty three consonants" were one table. They are split here for ease of layout.