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From the Introduction: IN my work Phonologie Chinoise, I have among other things given a systematic survey (pp. 248 - 336) of the speech-sounds existing in a number of Chinese dialects. To give a picture of connected speech in these dialects was not the object of the above-mentioned work; this had to be reserved for a series of separate studies. The following is to be considered as a first attempt to supply the need of such a picture. The dialect I have chosen to reproduce in this study is that of Peking, one of the many closely related dialects that are spoken in pretty much the whole of China north of the Yang-tsi-kiang and also in a large part south of that river and which, if we leave out of consideration a number of less important differences and only pay regard to the most striking characteristics common to all may suitably be grouped together under the name of Mandarin 'dialects.' Among these numerous Mandarin dialects that of Peking is nowadays beyond comparison the most fashionable, being the speech of the court and the capital. And generally there is a marked tendency for those educated Chinese who speak a Mandarin dialect to adopt the Peking pronunciation. As a consequence it is to Pekinese, among the spoken languages of China, that Europeans have paid most attention. Numerous text books have been issued to give instruction in Pekinese, and the most important transcriptions to be found in dictionaries, in books of reference and in scientific literature are based upon this dialect. It may appear superfluous to publish plionetic texts in a dialect about which so much has been written. In my opinion, however, earlier researches on the Peking pronunciation have been carried out in a way which is far from satisfactory and current transcriptions only give an extremely primitive idea of the sounds they pretend to represent. For that reason I have thought it advisable, as a practical complement to the above mentioned theoretical exposition of mine, to publish a number of phonetic texts illustrating this dialect as it appears in connected speech. These texts are intended partly for European scientists who have no opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the Peking pronunciation by listening to the natives. In order to make them as useful as possible for private study of the spoken language ot North China, I have made my selection of texts in such a way that anyone interested in the matter will readily find good translations of the texts given in one or other of the European languages. On the other hand, these texts may also prove useful in the elementary teaching of Pekinese. I nead not expatiate upon the great value of phonetic texts for instruction of this kind; it is too well known and has already been thoroughly discussed in pedagogic literature. It may seem a matter of indifference which symbols are used, in rendering the Chinese sounds, and if any one of the current transcriptions was sufficiently exact, it might be conveniently adopted without further ado. As a matter of fact, what is needed in order to be able te read a transcribed text is above all a thorough knowledge of the sounds themselves and plenty of practice in rendering them orally, which can never be acquired merely through symbols, however elaborate. Still a phonetic transcription may be in itself more or less convenient, according as it satisfies more or less thoroughly the technical demands on a good script, such as: one character for each sound, characters readily distinguished one from another and easy to read.....

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