14 



root-forms must be excluded from any comparison with the Chinese, 

 unless we can find in that language some tolerably uniform laws of 

 alphabetic permutation that will indicate probable substitutes for those 

 forms. 



Among the well-recognized consonant changes are the following : 



In the Pe-king dialect.* 



^' c before e or i is changed into ts or tf. 



h before e or i is turned into s or f. 



f, tf, and ts are used for each other. 



W is often inserted, as in Man, Mwan 5 Pan, Pwan. 



f and p are occasionally interchanged. ''f 



"Initial 1, m, and n, are often interchanged in all the dialects. 



Words having no initial consonant, are very liable to have a nasal 

 ,g or an h prefixed, or to have the vowel altered. 



The people along the coast, and south of Canton, often alter the 

 initial f into h or w in some words, and retain it in others. 



The initial f is called s along the coast."J 



From the analogy of other languages, we infer the probability of 

 the following changes. 



The French liquid 11, and the Italian use of i for 1 in such words 

 as piacere, as well as the various interchange by children and others 

 of the 1, r, w, and y sounds, naturally point to i', u', v, and the semi- 

 vowel y as probable substitutes in Chinese for either I or r when pre- 

 ceded by a mute. 



The spirit of the ancient Greek language, which required a labial 

 or a guttural breathing before all words beginning with a vowel 

 sound, or with the letter /?, was precisely in accordance with the Chi- 

 nese, which has few, if any,§ proper vowel roots, or roots beginning 

 with a vowel. This disposition, in the early use of speech, to employ 

 a prosthetic breathing as a quasi herald of what was to follow, accounts 

 for many of the double initial consonants in other languages. 



Double consonants are also often produced by a prosthetic letter, 

 which is the relic of an old root, or by dropping the vowel from a 

 root that ends in a liquid. 



* The dialect adopted by most of the Dictionaries is that of Nan-king, which 

 is probably older than those of Pe-king and Canton. 



t See Morrison's Dictionary, vol. i, p. xviii. 



J S. Wells "Williams. Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in the 

 Canton dialect, p. xx. 



§ I think there are none ; the few apparent vowel syllables being either modi- 

 fied consonants, or the debris of words that originally commenced with a conso- 

 nant. 



