Excerpt from English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Swatow The vocabulary makes no pretension to completeness in any sense. Very many words and idiomatic phrases are omitted; comparatively few of the terms given have been strictly defined and discriminated; for which reason the contents must be used with cautious regard to distinctions of meaning and usage. Years of labour and a very complete knowledge of the unwrit ten speech of the country would be necessary to make a work of this kind what it ought to be; and the difficulty is immensely increased by the absolute non-existence of native books in the vernacular. The exception of two or three broadsheets of proverbs and ballads is not worth mentioning. But if it be clearly understood that the present vocabulary is merely a collection of useful words, tolerably correct (it may be hoped) so far as it goes, but not by any means a work judged ready for publica tion, it may escape undue severity of criticism and prove of some service to those who make use of it. When it is stated that the type-setting and printing have been done by two young men who do not know a word of English, and have not even been trained in the art of printing; and fur ther, that the work has sometimes been hampered by scarcity of type, a kind indulgence will be extended to any typographical shortcomings. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.