ded farthest
from it. But although philologically and historically speaking Cantonese
and certain other dialects may be of greater interest, for all practical
purposes Mandarin, in the widest sense of the term, is by far the most
important. Not only can it claim to be the native speech of the majority
of Chinamen, but it is the recognized vehicle of oral communication
between all Chinese officials, even in cases where they come from the
same part of the country and speak the same _patois_. For these
reasons, all examples of phraseology in this article will be given in
Pekingese.

So far, stress has been laid chiefly on the dissimilarity of the
dialects. On the other hand, it must be remembered that they proceed
from the same parent stem, are spoken by members of the same race, and
are united by the bond of writing which is the common possession of all,
and cannot be regarded as derived from one more than from another. They
also share alike in the two most salient features of Chinese as a whole:
(1) they are all monosyllabic, that is, each individual word consists of
only one syllable; and (2) they are strikingly poor in vocables, or
separate sounds for the conveyance of speech. The number of these
vocables varies from between 800 and 900 in Cantonese to no more than
420 in the vernacular of Peking. This scanty number, however, is eked
out by interposing an aspirate between certain initial consonants and
the vowel, so that for instance _p'u_ is distinguished from _pu_. The
latter is pronounced with little or no emission of breath, the "p"
approximating the farther north one goes (e.g. at Niuchwang) more
closely to a "b." The aspirated _p'u_ is pronounced more like our
interjection "Pooh!" To the Chinese ear, the difference between the two
is very marked. It will be found, as a rule, that an Englishman imparts
a slight aspirate to his p's, t's, k's and ch's, and therefore has
greater difficulty with the unaspirated words in Chinese. The aspirates
are better learned by the ear than by the eye, but in one way or another
it is essential that they be mastered by any one who wishes to make
himself intelligible to the native.

The influence of the Mongolian population, assisted by the progress of
time, has slowly but surely diminished the number of vocables in
Pekingese. Thus the initials _ts_ and _k_, when followed by the vowel
_i_ (with its continental value) have gradually become softer and more
assimilated to each other,