Zhou Youguang, Architect Of A Bridge Between Languages, Dies At 111

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/14/509820277/zhou-youguang-architect-of-a-bridge-between-languages-dies-at-111 ^ | January 14, 2017 | COLIN DWYER

[ifinnegan]

“inventor of a system to convert Chinese characters into words with the Roman alphabet...”

Huh?

Writers can’t write anymore.

(Interesting topic, thnx FR post by the way)

[ifinnegan]

“While it was not the first system to Romanize Chinese,”

That’s right, even though the article sets the premise to make it seem that it was.

Pinyin is probably the best. Others rely a lot of apostrophes so it gets messy.

And this article has some propaganda it, eg how the literacy rate has gone way up. That has nothing to do with pinyin. Literacy rate has been high in Hong Kong and Taiwan without pinyin.

[Chauncey Gardiner]

And the key to his longevity is...

[elcid1970]

The account leaves out a more sinister motive for the PRC regime adopting Pinyin - it would allow those who could still read traditional Chinese to die off, thus cutting off future generations from centuries of Chinese literature, philosophy, and even art, leaving only Maoist doctrine as the basis of all knowledge. Confucian thought was a main target.

Didn’t work out that way, but during the Cultural Revolution eradicating the pre-communist past was a primary goal.

Look up the “Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius” movement of the last days of Mao Tse-tung. The past was the class enemy.

[CondorFlight]

I actually think it is more difficult to use than the older Wade-Giles (which wasn’t perfect, either).

[Olog-hai]

Beyond China’s borders, Pinyin allowed the standardization of Chinese names. For instance, it’s a big reason why the name Westerners commonly use for the Chinese capital shifted from “Peking” to “Beijing.” …

Peking is the older Postal Romanization, based on although not exactly like Wade-Giles (in which China’s capital is spelled Pei-ching) which the West was using prior to CPC-approved Pinyin.

I still prefer Wade-Giles in spite of Pinyin’s advantages (such as using diacritical marks versus number superscripts to indicate tones) because Pinyin is a sign of the CPC’s influence moving unduly beyond its borders and infiltrating other cultures, not to mention Wade-Giles still holding strong in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. I will still use “Mao Tse-tung” instead of “Mao Zedong” (the Z is pronounced ts like in pizza) and even turn “Xi Jinping” into “Hsi Chin-p’ing”. (BTW, Zhou’s name would be rendered Chou You-kuang in Wade-Giles.)

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting article.

[ifinnegan]

Interesting.

I have thought Pinyin better, mainly due to not using apostrophes.

Zhuyin (mopobofo) is said to be best, but I never memorized the phonetic symbols.

[ifinnegan]

It’s a shame that they changed to only simplified characters.

Chinese people now don’t even know Chinese.

[ifinnegan]

“Pinyin is a sign of the CPC’s influence moving unduly beyond its borders and infiltrating other cultures”

That is what I’ve found worst about it. I like pinyin, but didn’t like that aspect of it.

But simplified characters is worse.

[ifinnegan]

“Hsi Chin-p’ing”

Yeah. I used to like doing stuff like that. Just to bug the early 50 centers.

For example Chiang tse-min for Jiang Zemin.

As far as Wades Pinyin and other romanizations. To some degree they romanization also reflects slight regional accent variations.

[fruser1]

And in the US, public schools are now teaching “sight words” instead of the alphabet.

[untenured]

My first year studying Chinese, my teacher was from Taiwan. In addition to teaching us traditional characters, she used the GR system, in which words with the same sound but different tones are spelled with slightly different Latin characters instead of using diacritical marks on top. I found it much easier to remember proper tones with that system, maybe because English uses relatively few diacritical marks, while if there are only the basic 26 letters I have always been a good speller. But no Chinese teacher of mine has ever used it since.

These days when I learn a new character I often render it into GR, a very underrated system.

Mr. Zhou, someone who liked economics and philology, was a man after my own heart.

[Olog-hai]

The character simplification sure does lead to confusion, due to the new style of “radicals”; you have to relearn the composition. Japan’s “shinjitai” is similar but less unorthodox; but now you have three versions of the character in many cases and they don’t look identical, e.g. the character for dragon (traditional 龍, shinjitai 竜, simplified 龙).

[ifinnegan]

Thanks.

I never learned much about GR, it sounds interesting.

Mr Zhou does sound like a good fellow.

[ifinnegan]

Interesting. I did not know the Japanese dragon. I know little about Japanese, other than what I see. I have seen this used In Taiwan の for 的。

[Olog-hai]

Time Magazine sure was fond of Wade-Giles throughout the late 1970s.

  

[ifinnegan]

Yeah.

It changed overnight with pinyin implementation.

[Unam Sanctam]

It’s an improvement over Wade Giles with its apostrophes and where everything is spelled with “ch”. The “q”s and “x”s are weird at first, but one gets used to them.