The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1917-03-02
NEWSPAPERS FROM DIS
TANT LANDS-ODDITIES
OF THE FOREIGN PRESS


Moines, Iowa, advertise not only il
this country but in foreign lands.
copy of each issue of every newspa
per containing their advertisement i.
sent to the Office of the Chamberlain
Medicine Co. as proof of the inser
ton of the advertisement. Some Of
the papers bear names of places, which
require one to recall forgotten geog
raphy or refer to the atlas to locate
Some of them are particularly curious
as they are published in the vernacu.
lar or native languages which NIGH
be likened to the carefully writer
notes of shorthand 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 combina
ton of circles. Someone wittily sug.
gested that for this reason circular
letters would be properly printed il
this language.
Cingalese, the language of Ceylon
is also curvilinear. javanese and 81.
amese are composed large of vertical
lines connected by loops at either tol
or bottom but rarely at both.
The four hundred million people OF
India have nearly fifty different dia,
lects or vernaculars. The Chamber.
lain Medicine Co. advertises in ten OF
the principal ones as follows: Ben.
gall, Gujurathi, Hindi, Kanarese, Ma.
layalam, Marathi, Sindhi, Tamil, Tele.
gu and Urdu. The Sindhi and Urdu
are written from right to left in the
Hebrew fashion. The Urdu is a sort
Of script and is so chaotic in shape
that it is impossible to reduce it to
movable type forms. Papers printed
in the Urdu language are therefore
first written out by hand and a plate
made by the Autograph process. The
"Oudh Akhbar," sixteen page daily
published at lucknow in this language
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 natives
are only few cents day.
This Company advertises in news
papers printed in thirty-two Language
es. Besides the vernaculars and the
well known European languages
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch
German, etc., the list embraces num-
Der of languages which until COM
paratively recent times possessed nc
alphabet but for which the Roman al
phabet has been adopted. There is
also modern form of the Malay Ian
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 man
on crowded street car trying to read
a paper whose pages are thirty-eight
inches long and twenty-nine inches
wide. This is the size of the "Hita-
dabi", Bengali weekly published in
Calcutta, India.
To an American newspaper man ii
is interesting to note the manner in
which the colonial English newspapers
are made up. They still claim to the
methods which were practiced in this
country fifty years ago, the adver-
tisements being on the first few pag-
es. followed generally by the heavy
editorials, then a few meager cable
and telegraphic items, afterwards the
local news. The local news consists
principally of the proceedings of the
legislative bodies, town council, school
board, etc. Contributions by the read
crs are numerous and lengthy.
The editorials are generally of a
more dignifed and serious nature
than American productions. The
daily papers devote more space to
book reviews and detailed reports Of
scientific progress than American
newspapers do. Humor is not so no
ticeable and cartoons are used more
rarely than with US.
Very few, if any, of the colonial
papers issue "pink sheet, but they
supply this omission by devoting 9
large proportion of every issue to the
sporting news.
With few exceptions the advertis.
ing pages would give our "a' writers
the nightmare. They seem to have
little conception of the value of space
or of attractive methods of presenting
either the text or the illustrations. A
pleasing relief to this motony is af-
forded by the "ads" of American adj
vertisers which are rather numerous
on their pages.
The Chamberlain people have sent
to The Times Office a number of such
foreign papers, which are on display
in this Office, and all who may be in
terested are invited TO call end look
them over. They also state in let
ter that on request they will send
similar packages of papers to the
high school or public library on re-
quest.
IMPORTANT TO TRAVELLERS