This practice of mixing the characters of the two languages leads to some variety in pronunciation. That is to say, a word written with Chinese ideographs may be read with the Japonicized Chinese pronunciation or with that of the pure Japanese word of which it is the equivalent. For instance, the Chinese characters which make up the word meaning “Japan” are usually pronounced _Nippon_, or _Nihon_, by the Japanese, but may also be read, in pure Japanese, as _Hi-no-moto_. It is practically the same as when we are allowed to read “etc.” either as “_et cetera_” or as “and-so-forth” (or “_i. e._,” either as “_id est_” or as “that is”). In connection with this topic of reading, we may as well touch on the elocutionary element in reading by Japanese. Their style of reading, as amusing to us as ours is to them, may be called “sing-song”: they rise and fall by monotones, and, going very rapidly without attention to the beginning or the end of a sentence, catch breath now and then by a peculiar sucking sound. They seem to make no attempt to read “with expression,” as we call it; and, when they come to study English, are a great trial for a while to the foreign teacher! The peculiarities of Japanese syntax have been so attractively discussed by Mr. Percival Lowell,[133] that any other writer on that subject must at the outset acknowledge his indebtedness to that author. It will be unnecessary in this chapter to go into details; it will be sufficient to mention several of the points in which Japanese and English syntax are different. For instance, a Japanese noun knows no distinction (in form) of gender and number; a Japanese adjective or adverb has no terminational comparison; a Japanese verb is proof to the distinctions of number and person. In the Japanese language the connectives which correspond to our prepositions are placed after their nouns; the verbs always come last; our personal and possessive pronouns are supplanted by honorific expressions; and the definite article, the relative pronoun, and the pure temporal conjunction are lacking. To illustrate the first point, it is enough to say that a teacher once asked a young Japanese pupil, “Have you any brothers?” and received this answer: “There are four men; but they are all women.” In the question, the generic term _kyōdai_, which may be applied to both sexes, although strictly it should be limited to the male sex, was employed; in the reply, the generic term for “man” was used in the first clause, and the proper specification was added in the second clause. What he literally replied was this: “There are [=I have] four [such] persons; but they are all women.” And, in Japanese, “man,” whether singular, dual, or plural, whether single or married, may be simply _hito_; and yet the idea of “men” may also be expressed by doubling the word into _hito-bito_; while that of “women” is expressed by suffixing domo or _tachi_ to _onna_ and making _onna-tachi_, _onna-domo_.