The Benson signal., 1918-03-23

in the vernacular or native
languages which might be hkened
to the carefully written notes of a.
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 COM
bination of circles. Some one wit
+;lv suggested that for this reason
circulars would be properly printed
in this language.
Cdngalese, the language of Cey1on'
;s also curvilinear. Japanese ana
siamese are composed largely OF
vertical lines connected by loops at
either top or bottom but rarely at
both.
The four hundred million people
of India have nearly fifty different
dialects or vernaculars. The Cham
herlain Medicine Company advertises
in ten of the principal ones as fol-
lows: Bengal, Gujurathi, Hindi,
Kanarese, Malayalam, Marathi, Sind
hi, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. The
Sindhi and Urdu are written from
right to left in the Hebrew fashion.
The Urdu is sort of script and Is
81 chaotic in shape that it is impossd-
BILE to reduce it to the movable type
form. Papers printed in the Urdu
language are therefore first written
out by hand and plate made by the
lithograph process. The "Oudh Akh-
bar" a sixteen page daily published
at Lucknow in this language, claims
a circulation of about 5000. 1t is
said that in order to handle this cir
culation it requires an office force OF
about 200. Fortunately for the man
ayers, the wages paid to natives are
only few cents a day.
The Chamberlain Medicine Com
pany advertises in newspapers print
ed in thirty-two languages. Besides
the vernaculars and the we'll known
European 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. There is also a modern
form of the Malay language using
Roman characters, known as Roman
4 lied Malay. This lis used in Java
and the East Indies.
It is difficult to coceive how the
readers of some of the papers man.
age to handle them. Imagine a
man on a crowded street car trying
to read a paper whose pages are
thirty-eight inches long and twen-
ty-nine inches wide. This is the
size of the "Hitadabi," Bengal
weekly published in Calcutta, India.
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 fifty years
ago, the advertisements being upon
the first few pages, followed gener-
ally by the heavy editorial, then a
| low uCdSCl CdU1S anu
items, afterward the local news.
The local news consisted principal
ly of the proceedings of the legis-
lative 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 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
noticeable and cartoons are used
more rarely than with us.
Very few, If any, of the colonial