We have much pleasure in recommending to serious students of Chinese, a work ey Phonetics as applied to the Kuan-Hoo, which has been recently published by the Oriental Press, Shanghai: Votions Hlementaires de Lhonetique et Alphabet General, by Job Mullie ($1.75 for single copies.)
The publication of such a work at the present time is most opportune, as foreign students of Chinese, and Chinese educationists as well, are bent on finding some method or other of alphabetic transcription for the spoken Chinese language. Several systems have been proposed; the latest: "Dzuyin-dze-mu" is patronized by the Chinese Board of Education and taught in the schools of the Goyernment, at least in several provinees. Yet it is a great pity, to the mind of the author, that any of these systems should have been adopted, since they all suffer from the same basic defect: identical sounds are figured in different ways, and sounds really different are represented by identical signs!
No system should be termed scientific, which does not honour the principle: One sign to every sound; same sign, same sound and the reverse. The real crux, however, in the matter comes from the difficulty of properly identifying the different sounds and articular tions which make up the spoken language. The author very interest ingly proves how very common acoustical illusions are! Therefore anyone approaching the question how to transcribe scientifically any spoken language, should start with a most careful scrutiny of all the acoustical phenomena pertaining to the same. That is precisely what Mr. Mullie has with great ability done for the Kuan-Hoo, in the work under review. It well deserves the careful study of teachers, students, missionaries and all those interested in the study of the Chinese Janguage; it
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.