ON THE AMOY COLLOQUIAL DIALECT. 85 



There are not more than seven hundred monosyllables in the Amoy 

 dialect. An Orthoepist trained in Europe \yould recognize only seven 

 hundred vjords. 



It is evident that conversation cannot be maintained with so small 

 a number of vpords. The truth is, that there are several thousand 

 monosyllabic words in this dialect. 



Under the initial " B," it has been stated that there are twenty-nine 

 monosyllables, and yet there are at least 181 distinct, separate, intelli- 

 gible monosyllabic words beginning with "B." Of these 7Q are 

 nouns, 43 verbs, 22 adjectives, and 40 others. 



Under the initial " T," there are 43 monosyllables, and yet there 

 are at least 448 words, viz. : 186 nouns, 175 verbs, 46 adjectives, 18 

 adverbs, and 10 others. 



Under the initial «Th," (aspirated "T"), .there are only 39 mono- 

 syllables recognizable by a European ear, yet there are 223 distinct, 

 monosyllabic words, viz. : QQ nouns, 117 verbs, 18 adjectives, &c. 



Under these three initials (B, T, Th,) then, there are only 111 mono- 

 syllables orthographically indicated, and yet there are 852 distinct 

 monosyllabic words, i.e. about^eight words to each monosyllable.* If 

 this proportion be maintained through the whole number of initials, it 

 will give more than 5000 distinct monosyllabic words in the language 

 with only 700 monosyllables. There are probably more than 7000 

 words. 



Let us proceed to show how these numerous monosyllables are 

 uttered, so that they may be readily distinguished from each other. 



** Stay here ;" Stay here ?" are similar combinations of precisely the 

 same letters. They may even be said to be jpronounced alike, but 

 when properly uttered, they arefperceived to be very different. The 

 one is a command, "Stay here;" the other is a remonstrance against 

 the command. They are at once distinguished not by a difference of 

 pro7i,unciation (in the usual acceptation of that word), but by a differ- 



ence of modulation. The command is modulated thus, — ^ — j- 



-^ 



Stay here. 



the other is — gj |* The word "Go" may be uttered with 



Stay here. 



* These numbers are taken from an impublished vocabulary of the Amoy 

 dialect. The number of words is probably much greater than here given. The 

 number of syllables is exact. 



