Obs. i. For óng and úng, Morrison writes úng; Prémare óng. It will be seen that in our dialect they are both in use. When a word is pronounced alone, or when last in order, ó is more common, while ú prefers the first place in combination; 松紅 Súng-kong, Súng-kiáng; 吳淞 Ng sóng, Wú-súng; 中國人 tsúng kóh niun, Chinaman; 勿拉當中 veh ’lá tong tsóng, not in the centre.
Obs. ii. Words in é from m. ái have two sounds. Some employ the Scotch ae in sae, nae, etc. nearly like e before r in the English words there, where. Others pronounce the English a in cake, same, i.e. in our orthography é. Ex. 來海 lé, ’hé, are constantly heard with both these sounds.
Obs. iii. Words in én, beyond 黃渡 Wong dú‘, and 朱家閣 Tsû ká koh, 25 and 30 miles to the west of Shánghái, change into ön.
Obs. iv. On án, wán. The second of these mandarin finals passes into én or ön. The former retains a for á. Ex. 滿洲 Mén tseu, Manchu; 五六萬 ’ng lóh man, 50,000 or 60,000.
78. If the old native tables of finals could be reduced to a fixed Roman orthography, our dialect would be found to bear more similarity to that pronunciation as its maternal stem, than to its northern relative the modern mandarin. The final k in the short tone was recognized, and many sub-divisions of a final into two or more branches agree with our usage; i.e. kwán into kwön and kwan. Some southern dialects preserve some parts and some others parts of this traditional pronunciation. The work before referred to, Lé‘ sh‘ yin kíen‘ says, in the 凡例 Fán lieh, Introductory Notes, 南音於剜彎, 官關, 般班, 分之甚細。 北或合面爲一, Nén yun ü wén wan, kwén kwan pén pan, fun tsz zun‘ sí‘. Poh wóh heh rh wé ih. “In the south (Kiáng-nán. etc.), the pronunciation of the words pén pan, etc. is carefully separated, while in the north, they combine in one (á) sound.”
Another instance there given, of difference between the north and south in the final, is in such words as 銀盈, 勤檠, 神繩, 林靈, 貧平, 金京, m. yin ying, k’in k’ing, shin shing, lin ling, p’in p’ing, kin king. These the author says, are carefully distinguished in the north, while in the south they are identical in sound.
The rule of Shánghái pronunciation is this. Those words that end in ng in mandarin keep it. Those words that end in un change n into ng, while such as terminate in un take n or ng indifferently. Thus the above examples are read niun (g) yung, kiun (g) kiung, zun (g) zung, ling ling, ping ping, kiun (g) kiung.
Both of this writer’s observations are exemplified in the table. It is there shewn how far precisely this coalescing and subdividing of rhymes extends. One rhyme in either of the dialects, may branch off in the other into four or even six independent finals.
79. The most curious fact deducible from the table is, the affinity of certain vowels for the terminating consonant k (g before words in the lower tones) found in the short tone; a peculiarity which disappears a little south-west of Shánghái, and is not noticed at Ningpo.
The principal forms of words in the short tone in mandarin, according to different systems of orthography in common use are as follow:—