Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1914-06-03
PAPERS FROM DISTANT LANDS.
Oddities of the Foreign Press--Amer-
lean Advertisers Numerous.

try, but in foreign lands. A copy Of
each issue of every newspaper con-
tanning their advertisements is sent
to the office of the Chamberlain Med
icine Company as a proof Of the in
sertion Of the advertisement. Some
of the papers bear names Of places
which require one to recall forgotten
geography or refer to the atlas to
locate. Some of them are particu-
larly curious, as they are published
in the vernacular or native languages
which might be likened to the care
fully written notes of a shorthand
writer.
Here are the well known Chinese
characters arranged in vertical lines
reading from top to bottom, the lines
arranged from right to left.
The Burmese language, as printed,
is composed principally of q combi-
nation of circles. Some one wittily
suggested hat for this reason cir
culars would be properly printed in
this language.
Cingalese, the language OF Ceylon,
hOAf
is also .c~urvilinear. Javanese and
Siamese are composed largely of YER
tical lines connected by loops at Ell
Their top or bottom, but rarely at
both. These languages bear some re-
semblance to the vertical writing now
practiced in IL public schools.
The four hundred million people of
India have nearly SO different dia-
lects or vernaculars. The Chamber
lain Medicine Company advertises in
10 OF the principal onc as follows:
Bengal, Gujurathi, Hindi, Kanarese,
M~alayalam, Marathi, Sindhi, Helegu
and Urdu. The Sindhi and Urdu are
written from right to left in the He
brew fashion. The Urdu is a 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
first written out by hand and a plate
made by the Autograph process. The
'Oudh Akhbar," a 16-page daily
published at Lucknow in this Ian
""S i'iili IL tilCuldllOl Vi ABOUT
5000. 1t is said that in order TO
handle this circulation it requires an
office force OF about 200. Fortu-
nately for the managers, the wages
paid to natives are only a few cents
a day.
The Chamberlain Medicine Com
pany advertises in newspapers print
ed in 80 languages. Besides the YER
naculars and the well-known Euro
pean languages, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch, German, ETC., the
list embraces a number of languages
which until comparatively recent
times possessed no alphabet, but for
which the Roman alphabet has been
adopted. Among these are the ma
tive Hawaiian. Samoan, Tagalog
philippine Islands), Kafir, Zulu and
Basuto, of South Africa. There is
also a modern form Of the Malay lam
guage using Roman characters,
known as RomaniZed Malay. This
is used in Java and the East Indies.
1t is difficult TO conceive how the
readers of some OF the papers man.
age to handle them. Imagine a man
on a crowded street cary trying to
read a paper whose pages are SO
inches ding and % inches wide. This
Is the size of the "~Hitadabi," a Ben
gal weekly published in Calcutta,
India. Some Of the English dailies,
published in South Africa. are almost
as unwieldy, the pages OF one meas
uring 27R inches in length and 25
inches in width.
To an American newspaper man it
is interesting to note the manner in
which the colonial English news
papers are made up. They still cling
to the methods which were practiced
in this country so years ago, the ad-
y~ertisements being upon the first few
pages, followed generally by the
heavy editorials, then a few meager
cable and telegraphic items, after
wards the local news. The local
news consists principally of the pro-
ceedings OF the legislative bodies,
town council, school board, etc. Con-
tributions by the readers are numer-
GUS and lengthy. Humor is not so
noticeable, and cartoons are used
more rarely than with us.
With few exceptions the advertise
ing pages would give our "ad" writ
ers the nightmare. They seem to
have little of the valua NJ