Romanization of Chinese
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Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Chinese. Chinese uses a
logographic In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese c ...
script and its characters do not represent
phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s directly. There have been many systems using Roman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane wrote, "It used to be said that
sinologists Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization ...
had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys." The dominant international standard for
Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern Standard language, standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republic of ...
since about 1982 has been
Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally ...
, invented by a group of Chinese linguists, including
Zhou Youguang Zhou Youguang (; 13 January 190614 January 2017), also known as Chou Yu-kuang or Chou Yao-ping, was a Chinese economist, linguist, sinologist, and supercentenarian. He has been credited as the father of pinyin, the most popular Romanization of ...
, in the 1950s. Other well-known systems include
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles ( ) is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's '' A Chinese–English Dictionary'' ...
(Beijing Mandarin) and Yale romanization ( Beijing Mandarin and
Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
). There are many uses for Chinese romanization. Most broadly, it is used to provide a useful way for foreigners who are not skilled at recognizing Chinese script to read and recognize Chinese. It can also be helpful for clarifying pronunciation among Chinese speakers who speak mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects. Romanization facilitates entering characters on standard keyboards. Chinese dictionaries have complex and competing sorting rules for characters: romanization systems simplify the problem by listing characters in their Latin form alphabetically.


Background

The Indian
Sanskrit grammarians Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, who went to China two thousand years ago to work on the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese and the transcription of Buddhist terms into Chinese, discovered the "initial sound", "final sound", and "suprasegmental tone" structure of spoken Chinese syllables. This understanding is reflected in the precise Fanqie system and is the core principle of all modern systems. While the Fanqie system was ideal for indicating the conventional pronunciation of single, isolated characters in written
Classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...
literature, it was unworkable for the pronunciation of essentially polysyllabic, colloquial spoken Chinese dialects, such as Mandarin. Aside from syllable structure, it is also necessary to indicate tones in Chinese romanization. Tones distinguish the definition of all
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
s in Chinese, and the definition of a word is often ambiguous in the absence of tones. Certain systems such as Wade–Giles indicate tone with a number following the syllable: ''ma1'', ''ma2'', ''ma3'', ''ma4''. Others, like Pinyin, indicate the tone with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s: ''mā'', ''má'', ''mǎ'', ''mà''. Still, the system of
Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh ( ; GR) is a system for writing Standard Chinese using the Latin alphabet. It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system betwe ...
(National Romanization) bypasses the issue of introducing non-letter symbols by changing the letters within the syllable, as in ''mha, ma, maa, mah'', each of which contains the same vowel, but a different tone.


Uses


Non-Chinese

* Teaching spoken and written Chinese to foreigners. * Making the actual pronunciation conventions of spoken Chinese intelligible to non-Chinese-speaking students, especially those with no experience of a
tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...
. * Making the
syntactic In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...
structure of Chinese intelligible to those only familiar with Latin grammar. * Transcribing the citation pronunciation of specific
Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...
s according to the pronunciation conventions of a specific European language, to allow the insertion of that Chinese pronunciation into a Western text. * Allowing instant communication in "colloquial Chinese" between Chinese and non-Chinese speakers via a phrase-book.


Chinese

* Identifying the specific pronunciation of a character within a specific context (e.g. as xíng (to walk; behaviour, conduct) or háng (a store)). * Recitation of Chinese text in one Chinese variety by literate speakers of another mutually unintelligible one, e.g. Mandarin and
Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
. * Learning Classical or Modern Chinese. * Use with a standard QWERTY or Dvorak keyboard. * Replacing Chinese characters to bring functional literacy to illiterate Chinese speakers. * Book indexing, dictionary entry sorting, and cataloguing in general.


Non-Chinese systems

The Wade, Wade–Giles, and Postal systems still appear in the European literature, but generally only within a passage cited from an earlier work. Most European language texts use the Chinese
Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally ...
system (usually without tone marks) since 1979 as it was adopted by the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
.


Missionary systems

The first consistent system for transcribing Chinese words in Latin alphabet is thought to have been designed in 1583–1588 by
Matteo Ricci Matteo Ricci (; ; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the , a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. In 2022, the Apostolic See decl ...
and
Michele Ruggieri Michele Ruggieri, SJ (born Pompilio Ruggieri and known in China as Luo Mingjian; 1543 – 11 May 1607) was an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary. A founding father of the Jesuit China missions, co-author of the first European–Chinese dictiona ...
for their Portuguese–Chinese dictionary—the first ever European–Chinese dictionary. The manuscript was misplaced in the
Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
Archives in Rome, and not re-discovered until 1934. The dictionary was finally published in 2001.Yves Camus
"Jesuits' Journeys in Chinese Studies"
"Dicionário Português-Chinês : Pu Han ci dian : Portuguese-Chinese dictionary", by Michele Ruggieri, Matteo Ricci; edited by John W. Witek. Published 2001, Biblioteca Nacional.
Partial preview
available on
Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
During the winter of 1598, Ricci, with the help of his Jesuit colleague Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640), compiled a Chinese–Portuguese dictionary as well, in which tones of the romanized Chinese syllables were indicated with diacritical marks. This work has also been lost but not rediscovered. Cattaneo's system, with its accounting for the tones, was not lost, however. It was used e.g. by Michał Boym and his two Chinese assistants in the first publication of the original and romanized text of the Xi'an Stele, which appeared in ''China Illustrata'' (1667)—an encyclopedic-scope work compiled by
Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Society of Jesus, Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jes ...
. The transcription of the Nestorian Stele can be found in pp. 13-28 of ''China Illustrata'', which i
available online on Google Books
The same book also has a
catechism A catechism (; from , "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of Catholic theology, doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult co ...
in Romanized Chinese, using apparently the same transcription with tone marks (pp. 121-127).
In 1626 the Jesuit missionary Nicolas Trigault devised a romanization system in his ''Xiru Ermu Zi'' (). In the 1670 Portuguese-language ', the Dominican missionary Francisco Varo expanded on Trigault's system. His Spanish-language ' was published in 1682 and his ', published in 1703, is the earliest known published Chinese grammar. Later on, many linguistically comprehensive systems were made by the Protestants, such as that used for Robert Morrison's
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...
and the Legge romanization. In their missionary activities they had contact with many languages in Southeast Asia, and they created systems that could be used consistently across all of the languages with which they were concerned.


Wade–Giles

The first system to be widely accepted was the (1859) system of the British diplomat Thomas Wade, revised and improved by Herbert Giles into the (1892) Wade–Giles () system. Apart from the correction of a number of ambiguities and inconsistencies within the Wade system, the innovation of the Wade–Giles system was that it also indicated tones. The Wade–Giles system used the
spiritus asper In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( or ; ) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even afte ...
for aspirated consonants,
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
al marks to mark some vowels, and superscript digits to indicate the four tones.


French EFEO system

The system devised in 1902 by
Séraphin Couvreur Séraphin Couvreur (; EFEO Chinese transcription: kóu sái fēn; 14 January 1835 – 19 November 1919) was a French Jesuit missionary to China, sinologist, and creator of the EFEO Chinese transcription. The system devised by Couvreur of the ...
of the École française d'Extrême-Orient was used in most of the French-speaking world to transliterate Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, then gradually replaced by Hanyu pinyin.


Lessing-Othmer


Postal romanization

Postal romanization Postal romanization was a system of transliterating place names in China developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language fo ...
, standardized in 1906, combined traditional spellings, local dialect, and "Nanking syllabary." Nanking syllabary is one of various romanization systems given in a popular Chinese-English dictionary by Herbert Giles. It is based on Nanjing pronunciation. The French administered the post office at this time. The system resembles traditional romanizations used in France. Many of these traditional spellings were created by French missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries when Nanjing dialect was China's standard. Postal romanization was used only for place names.


Barnett–Chao


Meyer–Wempe


Yale system

The Yale romanization system was created at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
to facilitate communication between American military personnel and their Chinese counterparts. It uses a more regular spelling of Mandarin phonemes than other systems of its day. This system was used for a long time, because it was used for phrase-books and part of the Yale system of teaching Chinese. The Yale system taught Mandarin using spoken, colloquial Chinese patterns. The Yale system of Mandarin has since been superseded by the Chinese Hanyu Pinyin system.


Chinese systems


Qieyin Xinzi

The first modern indigenous Chinese romanization system, the Qieyin Xinzi () was developed in 1892 by Lu Zhuangzhang (1854–1928). It was used to write the sounds of the Xiamen dialect of
Southern Min Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwa ...
. Some people also invented other phoneme systems.


Gwoyeu Romatzyh

In 1923, the
Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...
Ministry of Education instituted a National Language Unification Commission which, in turn, formed an eleven-member romanization unit. The political circumstances of the time prevented any positive outcome from the formation of this unit. A new voluntary working subcommittee was independently formed by a group of five scholars who strongly advocated romanization. The committee, which met twenty-two times over a twelve-month period (1925–1926), consisted of Zhao Yuanren, Lin Yutang, Qian Xuantong, Li Jinxi (), and one Wang Yi. They developed the
Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh ( ; GR) is a system for writing Standard Chinese using the Latin alphabet. It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system betwe ...
() system, proclaimed on 26 September 1928. The most distinctive aspect of this new system was that, rather than relying upon marks or numbers, it indicated the tonal variations of the "root syllable" by a systematic variation within the spelling of the syllable itself. The entire system could be written with a standard QWERTY keyboard. Despite the fact that it was created to eventually replace Chinese characters, and that it was constructed by linguists, Gwoyeu Romatzyh was never extensively used for any purpose other than delivering the pronunciation of specific Chinese characters in dictionaries. The complexity of its tonal system was such that it was never popular.


Latinxua Sin Wenz

Work towards designing
Latinxua Sin Wenz Latinxua Sin Wenz () is a historical set of romanizations for Chinese language, Chinese. Promoted as a revolutionary reform to combat illiteracy and replace Chinese characters, Sin Wenz distinctively does not indicate Tone (linguistics), tones, ...
began in Moscow as early as 1928, when the Soviet Scientific Research Institute on China sought to create a means through which the large Chinese population living in the Far East of the Soviet Union could be made literate, facilitating their further education. From the very outset, it was intended that the Latinxua Sin Wenz system, once established, would supersede the Chinese characters.Chen (1999), p.186. The Latin alphabet was chosen over the
Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Easte ...
because the former was thought to better serve their purposes. Unlike Gwoyeu Romatzyh, with its complex spelling rules to indicate tones, Latinxua Sin Wenz does not indicate tones at all: while GR could in principle write many different tonal systems, it had been pegged to the national standard language also promoted by the Republican government, while Latinxua Sin Wenz was simply adapted to create new systems fit for various varieties of Chinese varieties. The eminent Moscow-based Chinese scholar Qu Qiubai (1899–1935) and the Russian linguist V. S. Kolokolov (1896–1979) devised a prototype romanization in 1929. In 1931, a coordinated effort between the Soviet
sinologist Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilizatio ...
s B. M. Alekseev, A. A. Dragunov, and A. G. Shprintsin, with the Chinese scholars Qu Qiubai, Wu Yuzhang, Lin Boqu (), Xiao San, Wang Xiangbao, and Xu Teli based in Moscow established Latinxua Sin Wenz. The system was supported by a number of Chinese intellectuals such as
Guo Moruo Guo Moruo (November 16, 1892 – June 12, 1978), courtesy name Dingtang, was a Chinese author, poet, historian, archaeologist, and government official. Biography Family history Guo Moruo, originally named Guo Kaizhen, was born on November 10 or ...
and Lu Xun, and trials were conducted among 100,000 Chinese immigrant workers for about four years and later, from 1940 to 1942, in the communist-controlled regions of
Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...
,
Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...
, and
Ningxia Ningxia, officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in Northwestern China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1954 but was later separated from Gansu in 1958 and reconstituted as an autonomous ...
. The ROC government meanwhile felt compelled to ban its use between 1936 and 1938. In November 1949, the railways in northeastern China adopted Latinxua Sin Wenz for all telecommunications. For a time, the system was very important in spreading literacy in northern China, and more than 300 publications, totaling 500,000 issues, were printed in Latinxua Sin Wenz. Ultimately, promotion of the system ceased, because of its proposed target of superseding logographic Chinese characters altogether, which was deemed too radical:
In 1944 the latinization movement was officially curtailed in the communist-controlled areas f Chinaon the pretext that there were insufficient trained cadres capable of teaching the system. It is more likely that, as the communists prepared to take power in a much wider territory, they had second thoughts about the rhetoric that surrounded the latinization movement; in order to obtain the maximum popular support, they withdrew support from a movement that deeply offended many supporters of the traditional writing system.
In 2002, Zhou Youguang claimed that
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
persuaded
Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
against the complete romanization of Chinese during Mao's visit to Moscow in December 1949.


Hanyu Pinyin

In October 1949, the Association for Reforming the Chinese Written Language was established. Wu Yuzhang (one of the creators of Latinxua Sinwenz) was appointed chairman. All of the members of its initial governing body belonged to either the Latinxua Sinwenz movement (Ni Haishu (), Lin Handa (), etc.) or the Gwoyeu Romatzyh movement (Li Jinxi (),
Luo Changpei Luo Changpei (; 9 August 1899 – 13 December 1958) was a Chinese linguist. He made important contributions to the study of historical Chinese phonology. He was also a pioneer of the modern studies of Chinese dialects and of non-Chinese language ...
, etc.). For the most part, they were also highly trained linguists. Their first directive (1949–1952) was to take "the phonetic project adopting the Latin alphabet" as "the main object of
heir Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offi ...
research"; linguist
Zhou Youguang Zhou Youguang (; 13 January 190614 January 2017), also known as Chou Yu-kuang or Chou Yao-ping, was a Chinese economist, linguist, sinologist, and supercentenarian. He has been credited as the father of pinyin, the most popular Romanization of ...
was put in charge of this branch of the committee. In a speech delivered on 10 January 1958,
Zhou Enlai Zhou Enlai ( zh, s=周恩来, p=Zhōu Ēnlái, w=Chou1 Ên1-lai2; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China from September 1954 unti ...
observed that the committee had spent three years attempting to create a non-Latin Chinese phonetic alphabet (they had also attempted to adapt Zhuyin Fuhao) but "no satisfactory result could be obtained" and "the Latin alphabet was then adopted". He also emphatically stated: The development of the
Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
() system was a complex process involving decisions on many difficult issues, such as: * Should Hanyu Pinyin's pronunciation be based on that of Beijing? * Was Hanyu Pinyin going to supersede Chinese written characters altogether, or would it simply provide a guide to pronunciation? * Should the traditional Chinese writing system be simplified? * Should Hanyu Pinyin use the Latin alphabet? * Should Hanyu Pinyin indicate tones in all cases (as with Gwoyeu Romatzyh)? * Should Hanyu Pinyin be Mandarin-specific, or adaptable to other dialects and other Chinese varieties? * Was Hanyu Pinyin to be created solely to facilitate the spread of Putonghua throughout China? Despite the fact that the "Draft Scheme for a Chinese Phonetic Alphabet" published in "People's China" on 16 March 1956 contained certain unusual and peculiar characters, the Committee for Research into Language Reform soon reverted to the Latin Alphabet, citing the following reasons: * The Latin alphabet is extensively used by scientists regardless of their native tongue, and technical terms are frequently written in Latin. * The Latin alphabet is simple to write and easy to read. It has been used for centuries all over the world. It is easily adaptable to the task of recording Chinese pronunciation. * While the use of the Cyrillic alphabet would strengthen ties with the U.S.S.R., the Latin alphabet is familiar to most Russian students, and its use would strengthen the ties between China and many of its Southeast Asian neighbours who are already familiar with the Latin alphabet. * As a response to Mao Zedong's remark that "cultural patriotism" should be a "weighty factor" in the choice of an alphabet: despite the fact that the Latin alphabet is "foreign" it will serve as a strong tool for economic and industrial expansion; and, moreover, the fact that two of the most patriotic Chinese, Qu Qiubai and Lu Xun, were such strong advocates of the Latin alphabet indicates that the choice does not indicate any lack of patriotism. * On the basis that the British, French, Germans, Spanish, Polish and Czechoslovakians have all modified the Latin alphabet for their own usage, and because the Latin alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, which, in turn came from Phoenician and Egyptian, there is as much shame attached to using the Latin alphabet as there is in using Arabic numerals and the conventional mathematical symbols, regardless of their point of origin. The movement for language reform came to a standstill during the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
and nothing was published on language reform or linguistics from 1966 to 1972. The Pinyin subtitles that had first appeared on the masthead of the ''
People's Daily The ''People's Daily'' ( zh, s=人民日报, p=Rénmín Rìbào) is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the CCP in multiple lan ...
'' newspaper and the '' Red Flag'' journal in 1958 did not appear at all between July 1966 and January 1977.Chappell (1980), p.116. In its final form Hanyu Pinyin: * was used to indicate pronunciation only * was exclusively based on the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect * included tone marks * embodied the traditional "initial sound", "final sound", and "suprasegmental tone" model * was written in the Latin alphabet Hanyu Pinyin has developed from Mao's 1951 directive, through the promulgation on 1 November 1957 of a draft version by the State Council, to its final form being approved by the State Council in September 1978, to being accepted in 1982 by the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...
as the standard for transcribing Chinese.
John DeFrancis John DeFrancis (August 31, 1911January 2, 2009) was an American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and professor emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa ...
has described Mao Zedong's belief that pinyin would eventually replace Chinese characters, but this has not come to pass, and in fact such a plan had already ceased together with the end of Latinxua Sinwenz movement.


Jyutping


Tongyong Pinyin

Tongyong Pinyin Tongyong Pinyin was the official romanization of Taiwanese Mandarin, Mandarin in Taiwan between 2002 and 2008. The system was unofficially used between 2000 and 2002, when a new romanization system for Taiwan was being evaluated for adoption. ...
is a system with some usage in Taiwan. It was introduced by the linguist Yu Bor-chuan in 1998 and was the official
romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
of Mandarin in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
between 2002 and 2008. The system was developed in part to make the Taiwanese identity more distinct from China's, the latter of which uses Hanyu Pinyin. Whether to use this system is considered a political issue in Taiwan.


Variations in pronunciation

"The Chinese and Japanese repository" stated that romanization would standardize the different pronunciations Chinese often had for one word, which was common for all mostly unwritten languages. Contributor Rev James Summers wrote, in 1863:


See also

* Comparison of Standard Chinese transcription systems * Transliteration of Chinese *
Transcription into Chinese characters Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to '' phonetically'' transcribe the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language. Transcription is distinct from translatio ...
* Romanization of Japanese


Notes


References


Citations


Sources

* Anon, ''Reform of the Chinese Written Language'', Foreign Languages Press, (Peking), 1958. * * * * * * * * * Lin, Y., ''Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage'', The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1972. * * * * * * * Simon, W., ''A Beginners' Chinese-English Dictionary Of The National Language (Gwoyeu): Fourth Revised Edition'', Lund Humphries, (London), 1975. * Stalin, J. V., "Concerning Marxism in Linguistics", ''Pravda'', Moscow, (20 June 1950), simultaneously published in Chinese in ''Renmin Ribao'' ** English translation: Stalin, J. V., ''Marxism and Problems of Linguistics'', Foreign Languages Press, (Peking), 1972. * Wu, Y., "Report on the Current Tasks of Reforming the Written Language and the Draft Scheme for a Chinese Phonetic Alphabet", pp. 30–54 in Anon, ''Reform of the Chinese Written Language'', Foreign Languages Press, (Peking), 1958. * * *


External links


Chinese Phonetic Conversion Tool
onverts between pinyin, zhuyin, and other formats {{Portal bar, Language, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore