precise sound of the colloquial word or phrase, the meaning would often be sacrificed: if, on the other hand, such characters were chosen as would fairly express the meaning, the sound must often be disregarded. Again, no two teachers could be found, who would agree, as to the character which should be used to represent certain sounds; for example, in the word "na-hwun", which means infant, one teacher would write the hwun 歡 to like, another would write hwun 喚 to suck, another, hwô 花 a flower; and, as many such doubtful cases occur in the dialect, ambiguity and confusion would be the result, were this plan adhered to. The third and greatest difficulty lay in the fact, that there are no characters to represent a large number of colloquial sounds, as will be seen by the Syllabary following the preface.
No doubt one thoroughly acquainted with the dialect, and with the veng-li, could say absolutely that certain words must be expressed by certain characters. This field, interesting as it is, has as yet been quite unexplored in Ningpo, all our books excepting the Church Prayer-book having been written in the Romanized System. it would therefore be presumption on the part of the author, to lay down a system for writing the colloquial in the character; and this work, with the kindred one of the "tracing out the laws of gradual corruption," is left for those whose attainments better fit them for the task.
The method of giving the sense in the character, and sacrificing the sound where it could not be avoided, has been finally adopted as affording the most satisfactory solution of the many difficulties, at least so far as the present purpose is concerned. In cases, therefore, where there is no acknowledged character corresponding to the colloquial word, borrowed characters, i. e. those having the same sound but not the same meaning, are avoided, and current veng-li is given instead. (Borrowed ones may have slipped in, but not intentionally.) The example given above will illustrate this point: the characters, 嬭歡, 嬭喚, or
