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

[jobim]

Free Republic is always full of nice surprises, like this article & discussion.

I studies Chinese at Seton Hall in 1976 using the John DeFrancis texts from the U of Hawaii.

Then I went to Taiwan in 1977 and learned the bopomofo system popular in Taipei then, which I still regard as the best and most accurate system.

Lin Yutang at this time also created his own system & dictionary using Romanization but doubling letters to indicate tone.

[ifinnegan]

“Then I went to Taiwan in 1977 and learned the bopomofo system popular in Taipei then, which I still regard as the best and most accurate system.”

That’s what I heard but never memorized them.

I picked up the DeFrancis ABC Dictionary and like it a lot.

[hanamizu]

I think (and I’m not a linguist nor Chinese speaker) that WG was created by English speakers to help them with learning how to pronounce Chinese. Pinyin was created by and for Chinese speakers. “Q” is never used in western languages to produce the “ch” sound.

I don’t blame the Chinese for wanting a system that works better for them, after all it is their language. But the fact remains that Pinyin does create an extra hurdle for non-Chinese speakers. Peking or Beijing, the fact is, the name didn’t change, only the rendering of it in the Latin alphabet. “Tse” or “Ze” which is closer for an English speaker to get the middle of Mao’s name?

[PLMerite]

Mofo?

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[minnesota_bound]

你想要狗做什么？烤或烧烤？
Nǐ xiǎng yào gǒu zuò shénme? Kǎo huò shāokǎo?

Translate to; HOW you want dog cooked? Baked or barbecued?

[Olog-hai]

I know this reply is a year late, but Google has a doodle about the subject of this thread; he died a day after his 111^th birthday.

To answer your question, the sound of the first syllable of Mao’s given (first) name would actually be closest to “Tsuh” in English orthography, making the Wade-Giles transliteration more accurate for that syllable, but the second syllable in the first name sounds like “dung” actually, making Pinyin closer. Using the “Z” in Pinyin is confusing to English speakers, since it’s pronounced like Z is in German and Italian (e.g. “pizza”).