The addition from Ramusio shows further
that he was aware of the unity of the written character throughout China,
but gives no indication of knowledge of its peculiar principles, nor of
the extent of difference in the spoken dialects. Even different districts
of Fo-kien, according to Martini, use dialects so different that they
understand each other with difficulty (108).
[Mendoza already said: "It is an admirable thing to consider how that in
that kingdome they doo speake manie languages, the one differing from the
other: yet generallie in writing they doo understand one the other, and in
speaking not." (Parke's Transl. p. 93.)]
Professor Kidd, speaking of his instructors in the Mandarin and Fo-kien
dialects respectively, says: "The teachers in both cases read the same
books, composed in the same style, and attached precisely the same ideas
to the written symbols, but could not understand each other in
conversation." Moreover, besides these sounds attaching to the Chinese
characters when read in the dialect of Fo-kien, thus discrepant from the
sounds used in reading the same characters in the Mandarin dialect, yet
another class of sounds is used to express the same ideas in the Fo-kien
dialect when it is used colloquially and without reference to written
symbols! (Kidd's China, etc., pp. 21-23.)
The term Fokien dialect in the preceding passage is ambiguous, as will
be seen from the following remarks, which have been derived from the
Preface and Appendices to the Rev.
