Chapter VII: Part 1: {on Sound} (3)

81. Out of 63 finals, there are twenty that vary their sound in reading. In all these, there is an approach to the mandarin pronunciation, and they are therefore employed, by those born within the limits of the dialect, when they wish to make themselves intelligible to strangers. In such cases, they are usually under the delusive impression that it is mandarin they speak. Such is the advantage of the alphabetic system, with its all-versatile and exhaustive applicability, that a foreigner can pass from one dialect to another so far as sound is concerned, with much greater quickness than a native. The latter has no ready method of writing new sounds down, nor is he practised in the art of separating them into their alphabetical elements. No thing but a long residence in the region of another pronunciation, and some natural flexibility of organs, can give him a different set of tones, and a new arrangement of vowels and consonants. The sight of a character suggests to him the sound, that he learnt in his childhood, and having always regarded each, sound as a unity not separable into alphabetic parts, any variation is too confusing and difficult of appreciation to be readily adopted.

The total number of sounds in our dialect independent of tones, is about 570. Morrison counts those of mandarin at 411, The difference is due to the broad initials B, G, D, V, Z.

82. {Irregularities of Pronunciation}. Words that do not conform in sound to the rules given in this section are few.

十五 só‘ ’{ng}, (for seh ng), {fifteen}.
錢 dzíe{n}, R. is pronounced díe{n}‘, C.
逐軸 dióh, R. They should be dzóh.
打 ’tá, to {strike}, in reading and colloquial is ’táng.[1]
那 R. ná, C. {á} in {á lí}, {where.}
所在 R. ’sú ’dzé, C. ’sû zé, {a house}.

To these may be added the tendency of the initial K to be pronounced, when standing before I, like T in the upper series, and like D or DJ in the lower.

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1. The sound tang is the older. The phonetic 丁 ting points to a
final ng as having formerly existed,
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