Ex. 端, 短, 斷, 對, 答, 鬥, 躭, dön, ’dön, dön‘, dé‘, deh, deu‘, dén. 拉, 咯, lá, lóh. Yet 對 is heard té‘ in té‘ deu, adversary. This is caused by the accent falling on 頭 deu.

This furnishes the principle of the orthography adopted in the present work. The initial letter being an index to the tone, it is needless to employ distinct tonal marks for the upper and lower series. In the same way, the Fan t‘sieh or native syllabic spelling marks the series by the first word, and the particular tone by the sound. Thus 夫 fú is spelt with 方徒 fang dú. The initial F of the first word combined with the U final of the second, gives the sound fu in the first tone. We add an example or two from K’áng-hí:—

The first word tells us, whether the sound required is high or low, and the second to which of the four tones it belongs. The pronunciation of the words borrowed for this purpose is supposed known.

II. The orthography is in many instances not fixed. Words sometimes heard g, d, b, are at other times heard k, t, p. The sounds g, d, b, occur after a word in combination; while k, t, p occur when no word precedes. To indicate that they are always low in pitch, they are printed in italics. V, z, come partially under the same rule. The rest dz, dzz, are scarcely heard in the thin form at all, and are therefore spelt with d in this work. Another peculiarity is that z and dz are interchangeable. Z is more common in conversation; dz in reading.

III. There are many words having sibilants or mutes, or the weak aspirate for their initial consonants, of which the tone is uncertain, being sometimes in the second, and at other times in the third. The liquids and vowels have not this peculiarity, and it only belongs to words that were originally in the second tone.

IV. The first tone, when last in a binary combination, rises to the upper first, except when preceded by the first tone, upper or lower. The initial consonant remains broad as in other cases.

V. The other tones also frequently rise to the upper series when standing last, each to its corresponding tone, and the initial consonant is unaffected.

VI. The laws of accent are the same as in the upper tones. The last word of a combination being usually accented, affords the best opportunity for the discrimination of the tones.

57. Relation of Tones to Music. It is only when they are even, that a musical notation can fully and correctly represent the tones. For deflection, so essential to the latter, is not allowed in music, being destructive of harmony. The short and quick tones may however be described as staccato notes, and the violin may be made in passing from one note to another, to produce a continuous sound, which has been adduced in “The Chinese as they are,” to illustrate the deflections. In regard to time, so minutely subdivided in music, there do not appear be more than two classes of tones, the quick and the slow. Kircher supposed that the five tones were the first five notes in an octave do, re, mi, fa, sol; but in reality, differences of elevation are usually not more than two for one dialect. The interval between the two series varies, it being greater for example, in some parts of the north of China, than in Kiáng-nán, where it is about half an octave.