possibly arouse some interest in, a subject which will occupy a larger
space in the future than in the present or in the past.

HERBERT A. GILES.

Cambridge, England,
April 15, 1902.







CONTENTS


LECTURE I

THE CHINESE LANGUAGE

Its Importance—Its Difficulty—The Colloquial—Dialects—"Mandarin"—Absence
of Grammar—Illustrations—Pidgin-English—Scarcity of Vocables—The
Tones—Coupled Words—The Written Language—The Indicators—Picture
Characters—Pictures of Ideas—The Phonetics—Some Faulty Analyses ... 3


LECTURE II

A CHINESE LIBRARY