succeeded; and the rewards of success in the study are great. Still less let any one think that to acquire the spoken language of China is a Herculean task. I used to be ashamed of my own slowness in learning it when I heard Lascars and Negroes, and the class of lowest Portuguese, talking with great freedom in the market place. I used to be ashamed of that slowness also when I heard my own children chattering away in Chinese before they could frame a good sentence of English. The speech of China is really of easy acquisition, if one will go the right way about it. My Chinese students used to say to me, "You say that Chinese is difficult because it is not grammatical. That is its beauty. It is the grammar of your English, its orthography, its etymology, its syntax, that are continually bringing us up sharp, and nearly drive us mad.” A great Chinese scholar once put it on record that a parliament was impossible in China, because it was impossible to make speeches in the language. But I have witnessed triumphs of oratory in Chinese greater than ever I witnessed in England;-in the House of Commons, on the platform, or in the pulpit. I have heard some It is strange how perverse men are. in China say that no good could be done with the Chinese till we had got them to give up their own language, and adopt an alphabetic one instead. I knew one missionary who devised an alphabet for the special purpose of writing Chinese. Mr. Graham Bell told me, in Oxford, the other day, that there was another missionary in the North of China who was writing Chinese by means of his father's scientific alphabet, and labouring to bring that into vogue. These are two cases of "go-a-head" men, full of notions; but there are many who contend for the introduction of a Romanized phonetic writing to supersede Chinese. But this also is, in my opinion, a vain dream. Possibly the people of China may yet exchange their characters for words made up of letters. I hope they will, but they will not do so soon. Their characters and their speech have served them for at least 5000 years. By the end of another 5000 years they may have changed them for something better, and be preserving the memory of them by means of chairs in their universities. Then we or rather our descendants-will see what they shall see. Meanwhile the more that we make ourselves masters both of the written characters and of the speech of China, the better shall we do our work in our day and generation, and prepare the way for the better future that is coming. 278 ART. XI.-A Specimen of the Zoongee (or Zurngee) Dialect of a Tribe of Nagas, bordering on the Valley of Assam, between the Dikho and Desoi Rivers, embracing over Forty Villages. By the Rev. Mr. CLARK, Missionary at Sibsagar. IN romanizing this Naga language, a has the sound of a in 'far,' 'ah'; à has the sound of a in 'fate,' 'rate'; c has only a soft sound, never that of k; e (single) has the sound of e in 'met,' 'net'; g has only a hard sound as in 'give'; i has the sound of i in 'pin,' 'sin'; u has only the sound of u in 'but,' 'nut.' One object of this style of romanizing is to reserve this mark (') for accent only. The accent mark is needed to distinguish some words spelt alike, but with different meanings, indicated by accentuation, as ázu, first syllable accented, means 'a dog,' but azu, without special accent, means 'blood.' Of me, of us, of you, of him, of them. No preposition in Naga corresponding to 'of' occurs. Mine, ke, koo, ozo. 1 Metsu maben terauk is literally 'twenty not brought six,' meaning the six before twenty, i.e. sixteen. The same principle of enumerating prevails between 25 and 30, between 45 and 50, etc., etc., Iron, renzang, rensang. Steel, sensu. Lead (metal), rangen. Silver, tareebee. Man, neesang. Father, tuboo, oba, ova, ovala. Mother, letzu, oza, ozala. Brethren, odeeanootun. Sister, tenoo, tenu. Wife, tegeenoongtsu, keenoogtsu. Husband, tegeenoongpo, keenoongpo. Child, techeer, cheer, tanoor. Son, zabaso, zapacheer. Daughter, zalacheer. Woman, letzur. Slave, alar. Cultivator, aloo, imur. Shepherd, molo, nabong, anukur. God, Loongkeezungba, Tsoongram. Devil, mozing, mevutsing, leezaba. Sun, anu. |