58. Relation of Tones to Accents in other languages. So far as accent only means the distinction of loud and soft, there seems no analogy. For the Chinese tones may be pronounced as gently or sonorously as the speaker pleases, and loudness in this language also constitutes accent as distinct from tone. In the common accents of English conversation however, there is usually a difference in deflection, or as it is called by some writers, modulation. There is one tone (1) for assertion and determination, and another (2) for asking questions; and these differ not in time, or in loudness, but in the fact that they are deflected downwards and upwards respectively. Again, the tone of interrogation (2) is commonly quick, while that of sarcasm (3) is often slow. Those who read aloud, too often confine themselves almost exclusively to the monotone, a fourth variation (4). Now it is these very distinctions of deflection and time that form the essence of the Chinese tones, and they are in daily use in our own language, as aids in expressing the feelings, as marks of emphasis, and as a means of relieving the voice by interchange. All that a foreigner has to do then in imitating the Chinese tones is to apply forms of utterance, to which he is already accustomed, to those words in which the Chinese employ them, and to treat the tone thus individualized, whichever it may be, as a part of the word, to be learned contemporaneously with the vowels and consonants. With regard to the doubly deflected tones, and those that are less familiar to us, the ancient Greeks would have had an advantage we do not possess. Their circumflex was made up of two tones, the acute and grave combined. (Buttman Gr. Gram. Sect. 9.) Every syllable had a tone, and the tones were placed on either long or short vowels. There seem also to have been dialectic and secular varieties. These four facts are all suggestive of a similarity in their enunciation to that of China. Mr. Lay in the work alluded to above, has pointed out to what tones the Greek accents appeared to him to correspond. But our data are so scanty on the subject of classical pronunciation, that nothing certain can be said, when we attempt to detail their individual differences.

59. Examples are here annexed of words, which differing slightly, as in a tone or an aspirate, may be mistaken for each other if mispronounced.

Note. For some words of constant occurrence, the following contractions will in future be used. c. or s.c. Shánghái, colloquial form. m. Northern mandarin pronunciation, r. or s.r. Shánghái reading sound.

Section 4. Alphabetical form of the Shánghái sounds.

i. Initials.

60. In grammatical works on other languages, more or less is said on orthography, or orthography according as the alphabetical symbols are controlled by more or fewer laws. The Chinese sounds are few, and regulated by laws which are easily laid down. A section therefore may properly be devoted to the romanized form of the sounds.

From the time that the Buddhist priests introduced the Sanscrit system, and the initials and finals, the Chinese have had an imperfect method of spelling words. The division of each sound into two parts, represented by two characters, the initial 毋 ’mú, and the final 韻 yün‘, constitutes the method.

The 字彙 zz‘ we‘, a Dictionary of the Ming dynasty, says 韻學自沈 約始, 而釋神琪, 繼以等韻, 列爲三十六毋, 分爲平仄四聲, yün‘ yáh, zz‘ sun‘ yah ’sz, rh suh zun kóng, kí ’í ’tung yün‘, lih wé san seh lóh ’mú’, fun wé ping tsuh sz‘ sung. “The doctrine of arranging sounds by their rhymes began with Shin-yoh, and the Buddhist priests Shin-k’ong continued it, forming the rhymes into classes, and the initials into thirty six divisions, and placing them all under the four tones.”

61. From the sixth century of our era, the system whose origin is thus recorded, has been preserved in the Dictionaries successively made, with apparently few variations. The thirty six initials referred to are contained in the following table:—