The Blackfoot optimist. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1907-1918, 1915-09-23
FROM DIS
TANT LANDS-ODDITIES OF
THE FOREIGN PRESS


lands. A copy of each issue of every
newspaper containing their advertise
ments is sent to the office of the Cham
berlain Medicine company as proof Of
the insertion 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 particularly curious as
they are published in the vernacular or
native languages which might be hken-
to the carefully written notes Of short
hand writer.
= Here are the we'll 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 combination
of circles. Some one wittily suggested
that for this reason circulars would be
properly printed in this language.
Cingalese, the language Of Ceylon, is
also curvilinear. Javanese and Siamese
are composed largely Of vertical lines
connected BY loops at either top or bot
tom but rarely at both. These languages
bear some resemblance 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 Chamberlain
Medicine company advertises in ten of
the principal ones As follows: Bengali,
Gujurathi, Hindu, Kanarese, Malayalam
Marathi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telegu and
Urdu. The Sindhi and Urdu are writ
ten from right to left in the Hebrew
fashion. The Urdu is sort of script
and is SO chaotic in shape that it is i'm
possible 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 litho
graph process. The "Oudh Akhbar," a
sixteen page daily published at Luck
now in this language claims a circula-
ton of about 5000. 1t is said that in
order to handle this circulation it re-
quires an office force of about 200. For
tunately for the management, the
wages paid to natives are only few
cents a day.
The Chamberlain Medicine company
advertises in papers printed in thirty
two languages. Besides the vernaculars
and the well known European languages,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch,
German etc, the list embraces a num-
Der Of languages which until compare
lively recent times possessed no alpha
bet but for which the Roman alphabet
has been adopted. Among these arc
the native Hawaiian, Samoan. Tagalog
philippine Islands,, Kaffr. Zulu and
Basuto, of South Africa. There is also
a modern form of the Malay language
:. using Roman characters, known as Ro-
manized Malay. This is used in Java
and the East Indies
1t is difficult to conceive how the
readers of some of the papers manage
to handle them. Imagine man on a
crowded street ear trying to read a
paper whose pages are thirty eight in
ches long and twentynine inches wide
This is the size of the "Hitadabi,' a
j Bengal weekly published in Calcutta
India. Some of the English dailies pub
lished in South Africa, are almost as
unwieldy, the pages of one measuring
twenty-seven and one-half inches in
length and twenty five inches in width
To an American newspaper man it is
interesting to note the manner in which
the colonial English newspapers are
made up. They still cling to the me
thods which were practiced in this
country fifty years ago, the advertise
ments being upon the first few pages
followed generally by the heavy editor
ials, then a few meager cable and tele
graphic items, afterwards the loca
lhCNS. 4uc lOCdl news consists DflnclO
Tally of the proceedings of the legisla
tive bodies, town council, school board
etc. Contributions by the readers are
numerous and lengthy.
The editorials are generally of more
dignified and serious nature than Amer
lean productions. The daily newspaper.
devote more space to book reviews aut
detailed reports of scientific progress
than American newspapers do. Humol
is not so noticeable and cartoons are
used more rarely than with us.
Very few, if any, of the colonial pa
pers issue "pink sheet" but they
supply this omission by devoting a
large proportion of every issue to the
sporting news. This is especially no
ticeable in the African papers.
With few exceptions the advertising
pages would give our "ad' writer's the
nightmare. They seem to have little