[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.

[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.

[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.

[fruser1]

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

[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.

[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?