Rev. Dr. Medhurst, called "Dictionary of the Hok-kien Dialect," gives the Chang-chew sound (or more accurately the sound of Chang-poo, i.e. Chiu"-phé) of the written characters. Some colloquial words are also given in Dr. Medhurst's Dictionary, but they are few, and entirely in the Chang-chew or Chang-poo dialect, and unhappily the colloquial forms given are often far from accurate. The only other publications that have anything of the form of a dictionary are the very brief vocabularies in the Manuals of Doty and Macgowan.
The basis of this Dictionary is the manuscript vocabulary prepared by the late Rev. J. Lloyd, Missionary of the American Presbyterian Church. When I arrived at Amoy in 1865 I copied it for my own use, adding the additional words in Doty's Manual, and have been constantly enlarging and re-arranging the collection of words and phrases ever since. A few years after copying Lloyd's Vocabulary I collated the manuscript dictionary written by the Rev. Alexander Stronach of the London Missionary Society. I also at a later date went over all the words in the native dictionaries of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew dialects, and in a native vocabulary which attempts to give the Mandarin words and phrases for the Amoy ones. Of these native works the only really good one is the Chang-chew or rather Chang-poo Dictionary, named the Sip-ngé-im, which is the basis of Medhurst's Dictionary. Having thus the original source to refer to, I have made but little use of Medhurst's work; for such colloquial phrases in it as are not drawn from the Sip-ngó-im are very questionable, while its valuable book-phrases do not serve my purpose. Macgowan's Manual, though very useful for a beginner, was of course published too late for my use. In looking over it I found very few words which I had not already in my manuscript.
No one can be more sensible of the defects of the work than I am myself. It was at first prepared for my own use alone; as it grew larger I hoped that it might be used in manuscript by beginners, or copied, abridged, or expanded by successive missionaries; and it was only after repeated solicitations, culminating in a formal request by all the members of the three Protestant missions at Amoy, that I consented to prepare it for the press. This is my apology for all its faults and imperfections. It attempts to fill a real blank and to supply an urgent want; and I shall only be too glad when it shall be superseded and forgotten, or remembered only as the foundation on which a far more complete and accurate work shall have been reared.
When the Amoy missionaries asked me to prepare for the press the manuscript which I had compiled, the Rev. John Stronach of the London Missionary Society, and the Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D., of the American Reformed Mission, were at the same time appointed to assist me in the revision of it. Mr. Stronach went over the whole from beginning to end, but Dr. Talmage was prevented by other duties from revising more than a few dozen pages. After their revision it was necessary for me to harmonize and recast the whole (with large additions and alterations which never came under their eyes), when writing out the copy for the printer. So that while a large share of what is good in the book should be put to the credit of my coadjutors, I must myself be held responsible for all its faults.
The most serious defect is the want of the Chinese character. This is due to two causes: (1) There are a very large number of the words for which we have not been able to find the corresponding character at all, perhaps a quarter or a third of the whole; and the time when it was necessary for me to take my furlough made it impossible to make the search for the missing characters, many of them rare, and many difficult to recognize from the great variations that take place between the written and spoken forms of the language. (2) Even if the characters had been found, it would have been very difficult or impossible for mo to use the Chinese character in printing at home. But it was necessary to print it during my furlough at home, because we have not the means of printing such a work at Amoy; and on my return to China I could not have been spared from the mission long enough to go to some other port to carry it through the press. I cherish the hope of publishing a Key or
