92 



ON THE AMOY COLLOQUIAL DIALECT. 



classifiers. Thus they do not say " si bi " (four fish), but " si he hi" 

 (four tails fish), not " chit ui " (one mast), but " chit ki ui " (one 

 stick mast). By this expedient many phrases are rendered readily 

 intelligible, which would otherwise be hopelessly confusing. These 

 classifiers are not only interposed between the numeral and the noun, 

 but they follow the numeral, where the noun is not expressed but 

 understood. Thus to the question " 11 a kiii cJiiah be ? " (how many 

 horses have you?) the answer is "si chiah^^ (four head), not "si" 

 alone. These classifiers sometimes marshal strange groups. The 

 same word is the classifier of chairs, tables, bedsteads, sails, wheel- 

 carriages, wheeled instruments, curtains, bows, letters, (epistles), &c. 

 Many of the groups, however, are quite natural. 



Relations of the Words in the Written and Spoken Languages to 



each other. 

 The characters of the written language have different names in 

 various parts of China. As the Arabic numerals, while conveying 

 the same meaning to men of different nations, are yet called by 

 entirely different names, so a Chinese character has different designa- 

 tions in various regions. The Nankin man calls certain two char- 

 acters " Shih fan." They mean " eat rice." The Amoy man, look- 

 ing at the same characters receives from them the same idea, " eat 



rice," but he names the characters "sit huan." The tones are diff- 

 erent, and so are the articulate elements. The Nankin spoken lan- 

 guage follows very closely the sounds of the characters. " Shih fan " 

 is not only the sound of the two characters, but it is the colloquial 



phrase for " eat rice." At Amoy, on the contrary, while the written 



t _ 

 expression is "sit huan," the colloquial phrase is " Chiah png." 



From the following list it will be seen that many of the words are 



very unlike in the two languages. 



