NOTE RESPECTING THE SYSTEM OF PRONUNCIATION ADOPTED IN THIS WORK.
In this the values of the vowels are as follows:
- 1. a as the italicized letters in father, far (never like a in hat); e.g., chang, hang—sounded almost as if written chahng, hahng, not flat as in the English words sang, bang, man, etc.
- 2. ă like the short u in but, or as any of the italicized vowels in American, summer, mother; the German ö approaches this sound, while Wade writes it ê; e.g., păn, tăng, to be pronounced as pun, tongue.
- 3. e as in men, dead, said; as teh, shen, yen.
- 4. é, the French é, as in they, neigh, pray; as ché, yé, pronounced chay, yay.
- 5. i as in pin, finish; as sing, lin, Chihlí.
- 6. í as in machine, believe, feel, me; as lí, Kíshen, Kanghí.
- 7. o as in long, lawn; never like no, crow; as to, soh, po.
- 8. u as in rule, too, fool; as Turk, Belur, ku, sung; pronounced Toork, Beloor, koo, soong. This sound is heard less full in fuh, tsun, and a few other words; this and the next may be considered as equivalent to the two u-sounds found in German.
- 9. ü nearly as in l’une (French), or union, rheum; as hü, tsü.
- 10. ai as in aisle, high, or longer than i in pine; as Shanghai, Hainan. The combination ei is more slender than ai, though the difference is slight; e.g., Kwei chau.
- 11. au and ao as in round, our, how; as Fuhchau, Macao, Taukwang.
- 12. éu as in the colloquial phrase say ’em; e.g., chéung. This diphthong is heard in the Canton dialect.
- 13. ia as in yard; e.g., hia, kiang; not to be sounded as if written high-a, kigh-ang, but like heä, keäng.
- 14. iau is made by joining Nos. 5 and 11; hiau, Liautung.
- 15. ie as in sierra (Spanish), Rienzi; e.g., hien, kien.
- 16. iu as in pew, pure, lengthened to a diphthong; kiu, siun.
- 17. iue is made by adding a short e to the preceding; kiuen, hiuen.
- 18. ui as in Louisiana, suicide; e.g., sui, chui.
The consonants are sounded generally as they are in the English alphabet. Ch as in church; hw as in when; j soft, as s in pleasure; kw as in awkward; ng, as an initial, as in singing, leaving off the first two letters; sz’ and tsz’ are to be sounded full with one breathing, but none of the English vowels are heard in it; the sound stops at the z; Dr. Morrison wrote these sounds tsze and sze, while Sir Thomas Wade, whose system bids fair to become the most widely employed, turns them into ssŭ and tzŭ. The hs of the latter, made by omitting the first vowel of hissing, is written simply as h by the author. Urh, or ’rh, is pronounced as the three last letters of purr.
All these, except No. 12, are heard in the court dialect, which has now become the most common mode of writing the names of places and persons in China. Though foreign authors have employed different letters, they have all intended to write the same sound; thus chan, shan, and xan, are only different ways of writing 閂; and tsse, tsze, tsz’, 𝔷h, tzŭ, and tzu, of 字. Such is not the case, however, with such names as Macao, Hongkong, Amoy, Whampoa, and others along the coast, which are sounded according to the local patois, and not the court pronunciation—Ma-ngau, Hiangkiang, Hiamun, Hwangpu, etc. Many of the discrepancies seen in the works of travellers and writers are owing to the fact that each is prone to follow his own fancy in transliterating foreign names; uniformity is almost unattainable in this matter. Even, too, in what is called the court dialect there is a great diversity among educated Chinese, owing to the traditional way all learn the sounds of the characters. In this work, and on the map, the sounds are written uniformly according to the pronunciation given in Morrison’s Dictionary, but not according to his orthography. Almost every writer upon the Chinese language seems disposed to propose a new system, and the result is a great confusion in writing the same name; for example, eull, olr, ul, ulh, lh, urh, ’rh, í, e, lur, nge, ngí, je, jí, are different ways of writing the sounds given to a single character. Amid these discrepancies, both among the Chinese themselves and those who endeavor to catch their pronunciation, it is almost impossible to settle upon one mode of writing the names of places. That which seems to offer the easiest pronunciation has been adopted in this work. It may, perhaps, be regarded as an unimportant matter, so long as the place is known, but to one living abroad, and unacquainted with the language, the discrepancy is a source of great confusion. He is unable to decide, for instance, whether Tung-ngan, Tungon hien, Tang-oune, and Tungao, refer to the same place or not.
In writing Chinese proper names, authors differ greatly as to the style of placing them; thus, Fuhchaufu, Fuh-chau-fu, Fuh Chau Fu, Fuh-Chau fu, etc., are all seen. Analogy affords little guide here, for New York, Philadelphia, and Cambridge are severally unlike in the principle of writing them: the first, being really formed of an adjective and a noun, is not in this case united to the latter, as it is in Newport, Newtown, etc.; the second is like the generality of Chinese towns, and while it is now written as one word, it would be written as two if the name were translated—as ‘Brotherly Love;’ but the third, Cambridge, despite its derivation, is never written in two words, and many Chinese names are like this in origin. Thus applying these rules, properly enough, to Chinese places, they have been written here as single words, Suchau, Peking, Hongkong; a hyphen has been inserted in some places only to avoid mispronunciation, as Hiau-í, Sí-ngan, etc. It is hardly supposed that this system will alter such names as are commonly written otherwise, nor, indeed, that it will be adhered to with absolute consistency in the following pages; but the principle of the arrangement is perhaps the simplest possible. The additions fu, chau, ting, and hien, being classifying terms, should form a separate word. In conclusion, it may be stated that this system could only be carried out approximately as regards the proper names in the colonies and outside of the Empire.