[
    {
        "id": 205206,
        "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-1966",
        "page_number": 162,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "156\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIf this romanization was a written language with a large corpus of literature which would be impractical to rewrite, there might be some argument for the conservative attitude which says it is easier to have new students learn a few orthographic inconsistencies rather than revise everything which has been printed. However, here we would not be wiping out past efforts but merely simplifying what is yet to come and we would be giving the student all possible assistance in the quite prodigious task of learning a foreign language. The polemics are quick to appear concerning the relative merits of one romanization over another, and the results will often be essentially a statement of the aesthetic values of the two discussants. In my opinion these discussions are generally pointless and it is not my intention to talk in such terms here. One romanization is as good as another as long as they both use a minimum number of symbols and reflect all the necessary features of the given language; i.e., they must be neither redundant nor ambiguous. The point here is simply that the romanization used in this dictionary is in part both redundant and ambiguous. To this extent one might wish that Rev. Cowles had either used one of the more satisfactory existing systems such as that of Yale, or that he had taken the initiative and revised his present romanization in order to reflect more accurately present-day Standard Cantonese. The student would probably have benefited more from this rationalization of the orthography than from the tie-in with other grammars and dictionaries mentioned above.\n\nThese comments are, of course, based on the assumption that by Cantonese is meant Standard Cantonese. If this dictionary is in fact designed to record a local variety, a minority speech form, or an elegant but dated pronunciation, then that fact should be made clear.\n\nAnother problem is created in this dictionary by the decision to exclude the variant or changed tones. There are a good number of very common terms which will never be heard in any but a changed tone. For example, this dictionary lists l'ong (p. 1073) glossed as 'sugar, sweets', but among speakers of Standard Cantonese the meaning for 'sugar' will appear in this tone while the meaning 'sweets' will appear in the high rising changed tone. Examples of this type are almost unlimited. If the decision has been made to strive for completeness, then the changed tone",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205207,
        "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-1966",
        "page_number": 163,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n157\n\nforms should be included or the student is going to be left in the dark on numerous items which are often heard in everyday speech. K. P. K. Whitaker (\"A Study of the Modified Tones in Spoken Cantonese\", Asia Major, New Series, Vol. V, Parts 1 and 2) has treated this subject intensively and a glance at her long lists of words normally appearing in changed tone will convince anyone that a student of Cantonese will certainly need some way to handle unknown items showing this phenomenon.\n\nAdmittedly, as Rev. Cowles points out in defending his decision to ignore the changed tones, they vary considerably from area to area; it would indeed be impractical to attempt to record all the local variants. The point here should be that there is no practical way to design a dictionary to cover all the great multitude of regional varieties of the Cantonese dialects. A choice will have to be made concerning just which dialect form will be treated and the most likely selection would seem to be Standard Cantonese. I believe that this choice should have been made and that this dictionary should have included as many as possible of the common changed tone forms used by the speakers in Hong Kong and Canton. Furthermore, these forms should not be listed under the basic tone of the character but in such a way that the student can look them up in the dictionary on the basis of what he hears. Thus, since the high rising changed tone is often confused with basic tone of similar contour, it might be best to list these under the high rising basic tone and indicate in the symbolization that historically such forms are members of other basic tone categories.\n\nRev. Cowles has indeed made a very important contribution and I do not mean to detract from this by quibbling over minor points. Nevertheless, in striving for totality in a single dictionary the compiler necessarily takes on an impossible task. Obviously decisions to include and exclude face him at every turn, and no two compilers could be expected to make the same decisions. A lexicographer should define his area and depth of concentration then be as thorough as possible within these limitations. One should not in one paragraph (p. vii) defend the size of a dictionary on the grounds that the forms included ‘are in the language, and being there, call for a record and interpretation into English' then three paragraphs later argue against inclusion of the changed tone forms because they \"are simply multitudinous, and usage differs widely in many localities\". It would seem wise to skip local",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205208,
        "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-1966",
        "page_number": 164,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "158\n\n \nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n \nvarieties, to choose the Hong Kong - Canton dialect as standard and then be as thorough as possible in recording the speech phenomena of that area. To cover all the Cantonese dialects would be a gargantuan task; to cover Standard Cantonese would be a more reasonable goal and one would not be forced to exclude features on the grounds of diverse local usage.\n\n \nThe dialects and subdialects then call for dictionaries of their own. In addition to dialect dictionaries as possible depositories of the multitudinous local varieties, a compiler might consider the possibility of separate dictionaries for technical or specialized terms before eliminating basic language features on the grounds of space limitations. A check of even a few pages of the present dictionary would suggest religious and biblical terms or botanical and zoological names as likely categories for such separate treatment.\n\n \nWhat is needed now is a pocket dictionary of romanized Cantonese, perhaps compiled as an abridgement of Rev. Cowles' dictionary, and printed on india paper to conserve space.\n\n \nCornell University\n\n \nJOHN MCCOY",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    }
]