Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1909-04-30
NEWSPAPERS FROM
DISTANT LANDS
Odditi c sof the Foreign i ress

We extend cordial invitation to
the public to examine a collection of
newspapers from the most Iem ote parts
of the world now on exhibit at our
office. These papers we're sent to us
by the Chamberlain Medicine Com
pany of Des Moines, Iowa, manufac-
tnrers Of Cham berlain's cough rem
edy, and one of the heaviest adver-
Users not only in this country bnt In
foreign lands. copy of each issue of
every newspaper containing their ad
vertiseme nts is sent to the Office OF
the Cham berlain Medicine Company
as a proof of the insertion of the ad
vertisement. The package sent to us
is selected from these voucher copies.
Some of the papers bear names OF
places which require us to recall for
gotten geography or refer to the atlas
to locate. Some of them are particu-
larly curious. as they are published
ia the vernacuar or native languages
which might be lkened to the care
fully written notes of a Shorthand
writer.
We find the we'll known Chinese
characters arranged in vertical lines
reading from top to bottom, the lines
arranged from right to left. "Sin
Wan Pao," published daily at Shang-
hal, is printed on strip of tissue pa
per fifty inches long and two feet
wide. The paper is extremely thin,
and is printed on one side only. 1t is
ore of the most 'readable'' papers
published, as ore can read the entire
paper by sort of unrolling process
without having to turn page or fold
and unfold the sheet.
The Burmese language, as printed,
is composed principally of com ina'
tion of circles. Some one wittIly sug-
gested that for this reason circulars
would be properly printed in this Ian
guage.
Cingalese, the language of Celou, is
also curvIlinear. Javanese and Siam
ese are composed largely of vertical
lines connected by loops at either top
or bottom but rarely at both.
These languages hear some resem
blance to the vertical writing now
practiced in our public schools.
The four hundred million people of
India have nearly fifty different dia
lects or vernaculars. The Cham berlain
Med icine Company advertises in ten
of the principal ones as follows: Ben
gall, Gujurathi, Hindu, KaIarese. Ma
layalam, MaIathi, Sindhi, Tamil, Tele
gui, and Urdu. The Sindhi and Urdu
are written from right to left in the
Hebrew fashion. The Urdu is sort of
script, and Is so chaotic in shape that
it is impossible to reduce it to the
movable type form. Papers printed
in the Urdu language are therefore
written out by hand and plate made
by the photographic process. The
"Oudh Akhbar" sixteen page daily
guage, claims a circulation of about
5000. 1t is said that in order to handle
this circulation it requires an office
force of about 200. Fortunately for
the managers, the wages paid to ma
tives are only few cents day. The
"Chahya Pulau" is an Arabic paper
published weekly at Georgetown on
the islanI of Penang, Straits Settle
ments. The Arabic is also a "back-
ward" language.
We are informed that the Cham ber
lain Medicine Company advertises in
thirty-two languages. Besides the
vernaculars and the well known Euro
pean languages, French, Spanish, Por-
tuguese, Dutch, German, ETC., the list
embraces number Of languages which
until comparatively recent times pos
sessed no alphabet, bnt for which the
Roman alphabet has been adopted.
Among these are the native Hawaiian,
Samoan, Tagalog philippine Islands)
Kattir, Zulu, and Basuto, Of South
Africa. There is also a modern form
of the Malay language using Roman
characters, known as RomaniZed Ma
lay. This is used in Java and the
East Indies.
1t is difficult to conceive how the
readers of some of these papers man
age to handle them. Imagine a man
on crowded street Car trying TO read
a paper whose pages are thirty eight
inches long and twenty-nine inches
wide. This the size of the "Hitabadi"
| a RanpaIi Weakly nnhIishad in CalCnt.