UOWCHK academic leads worthy research into language

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UOW College Hong Kong is poised to contribute to the body of knowledge for the Chinese language as Dr Abraham Chan, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, embarks on his research into Samuel W. Williams’ historical work of A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect.

Published in 1856, the Tonic Dictionary (with a Chinese title 英華分韻撮要) was the first dictionary written for the Cantonese dialect. Now classified as a rare book in university libraries, its Cantonese romanization system was the precursor to many of the later attempts such as that of James D. Ball. Earlier contributions, such as Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect by Robert Morrison, suffered from the lack of tone signs that would enable foreigners to learn this tonal language.

Samuel Williams (1812–1884) was a U.S. missionary who later became the first Professor of Chinese in Yale University. At the age of 21 he sailed for China to take charge of the printing press of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Guangdong province, China. He learnt the Chinese language through intermediaries while doing missionary work in 19th century China. In 1855, Williams was appointed Secretary of the United States Legation to China. During his stay he published the 900-page dictionary after spending 6 years compiling and typesetting it alone.

“As a historical linguist, I have always been fascinated by these tools and their historical significance,” said Dr Chan. “I hope my research and the creation of a database comprising words and phrases from this dictionary will contribute to the body of knowledge about this important Chinese dialect, resulting in a fuller understanding of the language as a whole,” he added. Dr Chan’s research project was entitled “A Study of the Corpus included in Samuel W. Williams’ A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect,” which has been granted a total of $795,900 from the Research Grants Council.