Except for the tone mark, the Romanized gives no clue to such a change of vowel sounds. Here again it is important that the student should obtain his knowledge of these changes by careful attention to the sounds as spoken by the Chinese themselves. Much practice is necessary to perfection. Frequent reading with the teacher of the Table of Tones in Combination will give much help.
The Use of Romanized
The student should constantly practise writing sentences and phrases in the Romanized. By so doing, the necessary habit of thinking in Chinese as a preliminary to correct speaking of Chinese will be successfully cultivated.
Methods of Study
The student is recommended to first read through the whole of this Primer, so as to arrive at some idea of its scope and aim, then to read carefully through all the Lessons with the teacher, but not the Excercises, finally to study both Lessons and Exercises together. Please remember that this Primer does not claim to impart complete knowledge of the Foochow Colloquial Dialect, but only endeavors to put the student in the way of acquiring such a knowledge. Success in this direction will be the outcome of the student's own perseverance. Primers rather fulfil the functions of Signposts than those of Stage coaches.
No Primer can ever supply the knowledge of a language that is obtained by constant intercourse with the people.
The great art of studying Chinese is to learn as many ways as possible of expressing the same idea. This Primer supplies the student with over a thousand colloquial words and phrases, but the student must not be content with knowing these. They are given here in order that he may learn many more, from the lips of the Chinese people themselves.
A most painful experience is to listen to missionaries reading off sentences culled from a Primer, under the impression that they are preaching the Gospel to the Chinese. Effective preaching is preaching that is alive, and the mere recitation of sentences from a Primer does not constitute lively preaching.
