A Handbook of the Canton Venacular of the Chinese Language

An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION: Under the belief that a few brief remarks upon the most striking characteristics of the Chinese language generally, and of the Canton dialect more particularly, will be of service to intending students, they are hereunder subjoined. THE SPOKEN LANGUAGES OF CHINA, which embrace four strongly marked divisions known as the Mandarin, Fuhkien, Cantonese and Hakka Vernaculars, are reputed to include some 360 dialects,...
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An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION:

Under the belief that a few brief remarks upon the most striking characteristics of the Chinese language generally, and of the Canton dialect more particularly, will be of service to intending students, they are hereunder subjoined.

THE SPOKEN LANGUAGES OF CHINA, which embrace four strongly marked divisions known as the Mandarin, Fuhkien, Cantonese and Hakka Vernaculars, are reputed to include some 360 dialects, many of which present but very slight differences of word or idiom. The Vernaculars, on the other hand, are to all intents and purposes, distinct languages, connected together only by the common use of the same written character and idiom. A popular, but very mistaken, notion is prevalent, on the part of those unacquainted with Chinese, that a sentence of Cantonese, written as it is spoken, is necessarily intelligible to a native of another part of the Empire. This is by no means the case, but as Cantonese and Tartars alike use a style of written composition understood by all, men who cannot understand a word of each others' speech can at once understand each others' letters or dispatches. They therefore possess a common literature, which justifies us in talking of "Chinese" as if the term referred to but one language, possessing only different dialects. It is here unnecessary to enter into any disquisition upon the genius of this written language, which must form the subject of a separate work. It will be sufficient to say that the characters used to represent words consist of various combinations of certain signs, a vast proportion of which, now-a-days arbitrary, can be traced to an original hieroglyphic or ideographic representation of the object alluded to. Under the system now in use 214 of these signs, usually termed "radicals," have been selected as the "keys" under which every character in the language is ranged. They therefore take the place of western alphabets, with the serious difference that they do not by any means necessarily indicate the sound of the characters found under them. The acquisition of the written or "book" language, as it is for convenience termed, hence becomes a very serious effort of memory to the majority of students.

The present work is intended primarily for those who desire in the first instance to acquire a knowledge of the vernacular only, the Chinese type being used, chiefly, to allow a native teacher to correct the student's pronunciation; and the author strongly recommends a preliminary six months oral study of the language before the written character is attacked. Many eminent scholars, however, recommend a contrary course, and maintain that no word should be deemed as learnt until the character expressing it is mastered also. The objections to this are, that as many characters have a different sense in the colloquial to that they possess in the " book" style, some confusion is therefore likely to arise in the student's mind; while the difficulties of mastering the characters will probably so retard him in his study of the colloquial, that the enthusiasm of a beginner is apt to become unduly damped. There is, however, nothing to prevent any one so minded from studying both simultaneously. The only necessary caution is that in Chinese every step must be thoroughly mastered. Superficial work is essentially wasted work.