4
51
168
50
THE CHINA REVIEW,
lines and turn at once"-suiting the action to the word; but here occurred a pause, and with a smile, "Oh, I see I must have taken the wrong radical. Yes! this must be the one, and so many strokes, here we shall have it," but no, the oracle was again "You see it is sometimes difficult wrong. to tell which is the radical," said he grimly. A third attempt failed likewise; the book was closed and hurled into a corner with the remark, "There, Sir, you see the use of the radicals; I have been at Chinese for twenty years and can't find a simple character when I want it; good morning!" Let not any young student who has followed me so far be disheartened by such a story. All who have achieved a position as Sinologists have ex- perienced something of the same sort, and that not once or twice only,
The Bishop is to be complimented on his selection and arrangement of the studies for the sounds and tones of the dialect, only remarking that it is one thing to be ablo to give the correct tone of every individual word and quite another to con- pect and use them in sentenees as a native does. Power to do the latter may be 90- quired long before the memory will enable the former to be done. The daily repetition of sentences after a teacher is of far more importance than that of single words. Children speak correctly long before they can analyse the sentences they make use of, The remaining 30 pages of the Primer are to my wind most mystifying. If anything is worth learning in Chinese it is worth learn- ing thoroughly. Why then should we have here put before us fragments of weights and measures, a defective list of classifiers, and a mere sprinkling of the numerical categories. Take for instance weights and measures; under the head "length" is inserted a very useful fragment of information that the Chi- nese mile is a little more than a third of an English mile. But why does Dr. Bardon put in the hero, omitting the necessary links to show what constitutes a mile or fi and without reference also to the
number of forming a league or 塘汎
tong-sun which so often occurs in conver- sation under the form
Yat-po-
? From land measure the Fan and Kok are both omitted (the former occur. ring in books, the latter more frequently in Tank-wa), whilst no mention whatever is made of Dry Measure. It must puzzle a beginner also to be told on one page that
une
Lereng is an ounce and on the next that 16 of these make 1 English lbs. The student must constantly feel when ac- quiring knowledge in this irregular way the uncomfortable conviction that he will have to go over it all again and seek elsewhere for a text book on which he can rely.
Let us now proceed to examine the classi- fers or numeratives of which Dr. Burdon only gives 60, whilst Dr. Dennys for in- stance enumeratea 72, Lobscheid 75, and Dr. Devan 81. It is very difficult to un- derstand on what principle any should have been left out, or if any are deemed super- fluous what has governed the selection.
These surely: 札塲重欵行頁 嚿羣片部本雙啖笪點 團隊,段,席餐圓層 are as important as some which duly appear. Why, again, are some translated, whilst others are not? auch want of system is very irritating to the earnest student, sending him again and again to the very dictionary whence these are said in the Preface to have been extracted to be put into more con- venient form. In one place Chung is wrongly given as the numerative of affairs, it should be Teung according to Dr. Williams, AstoTV, Dr. Bardon makes a mistake when he places it as the classifier of bridges, rivers, doors &c. It is un- doubtedly right as the classifier for an Imperial decree, but in the other cases the correct character is undoubtedly, a
* Things in handles, heavy showers, a series, sections, things in rows, strips, lumps, Rocks, alices, volumes, acts of plays, couples, month- ful, spots, dots, cloda, groups, sentences, feasts, meals, circles, stories of houses.
A CHINESE PRIMER.
measure, to pass etc. in accordance with Canton usage, malgré the Syllabic Diction- ary. The anaerous examples given under many of the best known classifiers will no doubt be very useful, but hore again we miss any indication of the various values of the several examples. Man l expressions and Tsuk wa, common and uncommon, are mixed up in the same group, the student being left to pick his way as best he cau without a note to guide bim. We miss, for instance,
對對 yal, tai hái, a pair
of scrolls, a most common expression; whilst to in connection with house and pa- godse would not generally be understood; - Zyat, shi man táp, would be recognised everywhere, which would not be the case were yat, two2 ráp ̧ used. Under
ting it is marked that the colloquial pronunciation of mo' is 'mò, the ha hữ sking being changed to sheung sheung, but it should also be remarked that at Canton the sheung sheung shing is used for the little round summer-cap, whilst the ha hü shing is always used for the massive rain-hat.
After the classifiers Dr. Burdon gives the "Groups or families of words," or as Mr. Nayers calls them in his most valuable Manual, "Numerical Categories," and re- commends the learner to be ever on the watch for them. Let the reader try to pin- ture if he can his feeling of disgust if, after some months of laboriously collecting what he could of these according to advice so given, he were to discover that a magni- ficent collection already existed of over 300 in an easily accessible form, with references also to the authorities to be consulted for information about them. I can hardly
think that Dr. Burdon is really unaware of
the existence of the Chinese Reader's Manual, or he would surely not have con- tented himself with so poor a collection, between filty and sixty only, when hundreds were at hand. Amongst these which he gives some are introduced which only occur in tauk tea, which would by no means be re- cognised by natives as belonging to the
authorized Categories; these ought to be kept by themselves, e.g. the knowledges," p. 42,
moral diseases,"
or "four
or "four "four miser- able classes." These groups are not known by these titles, and it is calculated to mislead the student rather than help him, fo place them in the midst of other well-
known entegories: 西民四業 are given as titles for the four classes of people; the first character, I believe, is quite erroneous, it should be 庶士為庶 Rwhilst the second title is not
used as it stands but is an unauthorized
sa' young
contraction for 四樣事業:
ip, by which are indicated four popular pictures called the 漁樵 ţsis 耕
kang tuk, that is to say the fisherman, woodcutter, farmer, and student.
'The
六合 should road 東南、西、北、 ET, and be termed the six cardinal
points, whilst those the Bishop gives with zenith and nadir instead of
, should be named luk, kik or six Limita of Space. (Mayers, p. 322 and 323). It should also be pointed out that both of these titles have other and different groups under them, as have several other of the titles given in the Primer., e.g. 帝 the Bishop calls 卷, and舜, w
and shun. But most people would under- stand the reference to and the gods of literature and war,
The or five grades of mourning present one of the most hopeless muddles I have ever seen in an educational work, the Bishop giving them as
三年期大功
(which he gives as 5 months); (which he calls 3 months) and
j
light mourning. Dr. Williams, p. 461, under gives the correct period for ★ and 小 as 9 months and 5 months respectively, and p. 834 the fifth grade as 3 months mourning for the fourth generation; whilst legge's Classics, Vol. I, p. 83 note, give us the proper names for the first and second