Ebook: A grammar of colloquial Chinese, as exhibited in the Shanghai dialect

Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1868. — viii; 225 p.Among works on Chinese Grammar that of Premare, written a century and a half ago, still stands preeminent. Besides a more extended knowledge, he possessed a better appreciation of the peculiar beauties of Chinese style, than any other writer on the subject. But it has been justly remarked that his work, abounding in good examples, is deficient in order, and the exhibition of principles. Remusat, in his accurate and learned work, has made great use of Premare, but he has given less attention than his predecessor, to those numerous groups, in which ideas or sounds are repeated, and he says nothing on propositions. The deficiency that the reader of these works feels in the treatment of groups of words, has been pointed out by Bazin in his clever Essay on Colloquial Mandarin. He quotes the section on words, in Gützlaffs' Notices on Chinese Grammar, containing a classification of compound words. Partly from the suggestion of that work, and more from his own researches, he has constructed a comprehensive system of grouped words (mots composés). The little work now in the hands of the reader, is an attempt to elucidate colloquial Chinese, by taking a limited field of enquiry, that of the dialect of a single district. By this means it has been hoped, something might be done to help the causes of Chinese philology, by collecting facts, which writers having a wider scope, have overlooked. There are aids for the study of the southern dialects of China, but no one has yet written on the speech of the rich and populous province of Kiang-nan. On Missionary and Commercial grounds, it is time that some attempt should be made to supply this want. The mandarin student will meet with scarcely any new idioms here. Of words, there are a few tens not used in the fashionable colloquial. It is in sounds that the greatest variation exists, and an attempt has therefore been made to form a correct nomenclature for tones, and for the alphabetic elements of spoken words. For the latter, Sir W. Jones' system, as introduced by J. K. Morrison in the Chinese Repository, has, with a few necessary modifications, been adopted as by far the best. For the tones, a new nomenclature is here proposed, based on their real character, as distinct from the arbitrary names, which, though they doubtless represented exactly the tones used by their author, are not applicable, except for convenience sake, to those of other dialects.