A glossary of reference on subjects connected with the Far East / by Herbert A. Giles.
- Herbert Giles
- Date:
- 1886
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A glossary of reference on subjects connected with the Far East / by Herbert A. Giles. Source: Wellcome Collection.
266/302 page 254
![These night watchmen, with their small gongs (q-v.) and tom-toms, remind us very much of what we have ‘^read of the watchmen who by night guarded the streets of ancient Rome/’—Walks in the City of Canton. TONES. The modulations of the voice by which Chinese words of different meaning but of the same phonetic value are distinguished one from the other. Thus, in the Pekingese dialect, a corpse, time, to send, and business are all pronounced sliih; but with the aid of the four tones, these words are as unlike to the native ear as if they were shah, shih, shoh, and shuh. The number of tones varies with the dialect j some dialects possess as many as eight or nine; but Pekingese has only four. Even thus there are a great number of words pronounced exactly alike both in tone and otherwise, though written differently ; and it is often only by the requirements of the subject, that is, the context, that the hearer is enabled to judge of the sense. The tones have given rise to a still-unsettled contro¬ versy ; many declaring that it is possible to speak Chinese ^thoroughly well without any knowledge of these tones, while others hold an exactly contrary opinion. The fallacy here involved is obvious. A person need have no mnemonic knowledge of the tones, i.e,, he need not know a word to be of any special tone ; but unless in speaking he utters the word in its proper tone, or approximately so, he will almost infallibly be misunderstood. [See Mao4zu.'] It is a common error to believe that a musical ear is an aid towards distinguishing and reproducing the tones of the various dialects, for many of the best speakers are very deficient in that respect, and vice versa. With regard to Cantonese, Dr. Eitel says, ‘‘scarcely any of the tones used in speaking can be called musical tones.”](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30093120_0266.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
