[Etymologies are offered for: Span, alarido, Port, atanar, Span. cinchar, Port. dettar, Span, dejar, Span. pinchar, and Span. Sancho.]

When we consult an etymological dictionary, particularly a dictionary of a living tongue, we should prefer not to find such broad statements as ‘stammt angeblich aus dem Chinesischen’ or ‘Emprunt du chinois’ with no effort made to record the precise etyma. It so happens that there are ten modern French words, no longer considered foreign by the French speaker, which are supposedly of Chinese origin. These are ailante, cangue, cannequin (or caniquis), ginseng, jonque, kao-ling, moxa, poussa, typhon, and thé. Except in the case of typhon Ernst Gamillscheg contents himself with the German phrase which I have quoted. His important source, the Dictionnaire général of Hatzfeld, Darmesteter, and Thomas, is more specific than this at times, but even there we often find no etymon cited or an occasional inaccurate statement such as ‘ailante, emprunté du chinois ailanto’, whereas ailanto cannot possibly be claimed as a native Chinese word. In Chinese this tree is called ch'u (2627) or ch'ou ch'un (2521 and 2856). Karl Lokotsch in his dictionary of European words of Oriental origin has used almost exclusively as his source for Chinese words an article by Hirth in Herrigs Archiv. The very recent etymological dictionary of the French language prepared by Oscar Bloch, with the collaboration of von Wartburg, is far superior in its treatment, but it omits some of the words in question, and in several other instances we are inclined to differ with it. Where any of these ten French words are also current in English the NED is certainly the best reference of all. It is our intention here to check these references, for the words in question, and to specify, where possible, the exact Chinese etyma.

As is shown in my paper, ‘The Phonemic Principle’, the only completely satisfactory method of treating the sounds of a language is to classify them according to the elemental types, or phonemes, recognized by the given language and to describe the types in terms of norms and ranges of deviation. The present paper presents such a description. The phonetic techniques employed in the course of the study were aural observation and reproductive experiment (attempting to pronounce words after the informant and getting his reaction to the reproduction). Now these are the techniques employed successfully by children in acquiring their native languages, but also employed without complete success by abnormal children and by most adult foreigners. However, a trained phonetician may ordinarily be expected to succeed if he takes sufficient pains. The only real deficiency in these techniques is that they do not provide a means of describing sounds with final accuracy and objectivity (such as is possible when laboratory instruments are used). In the present case, I am limited to a rough indication of the norms of the different phonemic types and sub-types; the normal deviation is practically nowhere sufficiently great to be measurable by my ear.

AÐELMOD ‘noble-minded, virtuous’. This compound appears not to be recorded in OE, and occurs only once in the Brut:-

In his review of Bloomfield's book Language, Kent (LANGUAGE 10.40-8) has dealt with what will seem to many a very objectionable feature of this volume, namely the system of transcription therein proposed. The purpose of all legitimate publication is, presumably, to make one's self understood, and there are features of Bloomfield's system which operate to defeat, or at any rate to make needlessly painful the achievement of that purpose.