[
    {
        "id": 209508,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 165,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "Shatou near Shumchun. Mr. Tang can speak SC, but his pronunciation is recognizable as non-native. In this, he differs from his father, who in his lifetime knew only the local dialect, and from his son, who is more fluent in SC than in KHW; even more so from his grandson, a child of 3 who, although he is being raised in KHW and understands the dialect, is acquiring SC.\n\nThe data consist primarily of the reading pronunciations of about 430 Chinese characters, for the most part those listed in the first pages of the Fangyan Diaocha Zibiao, a questionnaire commonly used in surveys on Chinese dialects. The characters in these lists are chosen so as to allow a quick characterization of the main phonological features of a Chinese dialect. Additional reading pronunciations were collected, as well as a few lexical items and samples of spoken dialect. The phonetic transcriptions were checked out for consistency with the informant, especially with respect to finals and tones.\n\nIt might be argued that reading pronunciations serve the purpose of reading aloud texts in classical Chinese, and do not necessarily coincide with the colloquial. However, the spoken forms within the data, and a short exposure to the dialect outside working sessions convinced me that the same phonological system underlies the reading pronunciations and the colloquial. In a few cases, a difference was found between reading and spoken forms. Such cases seem restricted to a phonologically well-defined category of words which show similar double readings in SC. There are undoubtedly a number of theoretical readings within the data, as a reading was obtained for each character, however unlikely to occur in spoken KHW. Still, no effort was made to find out which readings were theoretical, as phonology was the only concern of this survey.\n\nIn the following pages, the Meyer-Wempe (MW) system of romanisation will be used for transcribing SC sounds, and a system close to the International Phonetic Alphabet will be used for transcribing KHW sounds. An asterisk precedes reconstructed forms.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209720,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 377,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n355\n\nthat recording and analysis of the syntactic and semantic differences of Chinese dialects would indeed constitute a valuable and interesting field for additional research.\n\nSagart's bibliography must be supplemented with the more extensive listing found in Hashimoto plus a few more recent articles. Taken together Sagart and Hashimoto do a great deal toward furthering our knowledge of Hakka. Although I am generally quite positive toward these books, there are some parts of the format which I wish Sagart had not taken over in full. First, I see no reason for carrying the finer transcription in International Phonetic Alphabet throughout the work. This creates an unnecessary trouble and expense for later students without adding any real advantages. After the detailed transcription process has been used to establish clear phonetic values for the sound system, we would all profit from a switch to a phonemic transcription compatible with modern typewriter keyboards. All subsequent use and transmission of the materials would be simplified, and editing and printing costs would be considerably reduced.\n\nSecond, although the traditional categories of the Chinese lexicon have some good points, such a recording system should be supplemented or replaced by an alphabetized listing of Hakka words, ideally with an English cross-listing. Obviously, this is asking for a considerable amount of extra work and textual space; Hashimoto needed a second book to include such a lexicon. However, without it, each subsequent student of the dialect will simply find it necessary to do such lexical work for himself before starting any comparative or contrastive work with this material. The alternative is the intriguing but very time-consuming task of searching through pages of lexicon to find particular needed items. In this text of Sagart's, it entails additional work because one cannot be absolutely certain that all the examples used in the oral texts, the syllable study, and the phonology section are also included in the lexicon.\n\nSagart's lexicon was unnecessarily complicated by the need to put two columns of entries on each page. His present system is manageable when one figures it out, but the frequent and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213560,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1995",
        "page_number": 156,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "125\n\nFinally, for English sounds with no corresponding Chinese sound, diacritics are placed alongside the Chinese characters, based on the methods employed by Qian Long in his Manchu dictionaries of the Chinese minority languages.\n\nThe resulting transcription is as accurate and consistent as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Added to this, the translations of Chinese words and phrases are precise and accurate. The American source of Tong's English clearly shows through.\n\nMuch of the material is in the form of extended dialogues covering domestic and trade matters: thus the reader is in the position of being a \"fly on the wall\" during trade negotiations for teas and fabrics in the mid nineteenth century. This in itself is a valuable historical and linguistic resource. But in addition, obviously added as an afterthought, texts in small Chinese characters are included in whatever space is free on each page of dialogues. These texts are the Pidgin English equivalents.\n\nNow you can see what a goldmine this source is: we have extensive recordings of Pidgin dialogues set down by a rigorous and talented linguist, together with their colloquial English and Cantonese equivalents.\n\nThe Chinese Characters used to record the pidgin are not those used to transcribe the standard English. They are taken from a very limited stock of colloquial Cantonese characters: about one hundred are used altogether, as compared with well over five hundred characters and variants used in the main text. This reduced character stock may be the ones used in the original \"Devils' Talk\" pamphlets, which had attained the status of convention (which, as we shall illustrate they still do).\n\nThis is the source which we shall use for our general description of China Coast Pidgin.\n\nWe think it was the demise of employment of Chinese servants among European families which has made pidgin die out in Hong Kong. The Pacific war and the influx of Filipino immigrant labour have done for Pidgin what the mammals did for the dinosaurs. Reading the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]