| Transliteration of Chinese |
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| Mandarin |
| Wu |
| Yue |
| Min |
| Gan |
| Hakka |
| Xiang |
| Polylectal |
| See also |
Latinxua Sin Wenz (Chinese:拉丁化新文字;pinyin:Lādīnghuà Xīn Wénzì;lit. 'Latinized New Script'[a]) is a historical set ofromanizations forChinese. Promoted as a revolutionary reform to combatilliteracy and replaceChinese characters, Sin Wenz distinctively does not indicatetones, for pragmatic reasons and to encourage the use of everyday colloquial language.Beifangxua Latinxua Sin Wenz (Chinese:北方話拉丁化新文字), forMandarin Chinese, was the original iteration, and a number of variations for variousvarieties of Chinese were developed by regional Sin Wenz associations.
It was originally developed by groups of Chinese and Russian scholars in theSoviet Union and used byChinese expatriates there until the majority of them left the Soviet Union. Later, it was revived for some time inNorthern China where it was used in over 300 publications before its usage was ended by thePeople's Republic of China.
The work towards constructing the Beifangxua Latinxua Sin Wenz (北方話拉丁化新文字) system began in Moscow as early as 1928 when theSoviet Scientific Research Institute on China sought to create a means through which the large Chinese population living in the far eastern region of the USSR could be made literate,[b] facilitating their further education.
This was significantly different from all other romanization schemes in that, from the very outset, it was intended that the Latinxua Sin Wenz system, once established, would supersede the Chinese characters.[1] They decided to use theLatin alphabet because they thought that it would serve their purpose better thanCyrillic.[2] UnlikeGwoyeu Romatzyh, with its complex method of indicating tones, Latinxua Sin Wenz system does not indicate tones at all.
The eminent Moscow-based Chinese scholarQu Qiubai (1899–1935) and the Russian linguistV.S. Kolokolov (1896–1979) devised a prototype romanization system in 1929.
In 1931 a coordinated effort between the SovietsinologistsAlekseyev V.M.,Dragunov A.A. andShprintsin A. G., and the Moscow-based Chinese scholarsQu Qiubai,Wu Yuzhang,Lin Boqu,Xiao San,Wang Xiangbao, andXu Teli established the Latinxua Sin Wenz system.[3] The system was supported by a number of Chinese intellectuals such asGuo Moruo andLu Xun, and trials were conducted amongst 100,000 Chinese immigrant workers for about four years[4] and later, in 1940–1942, in the communist-controlledShaan-Gan-Ning Border Region of China.[5] In November 1949, the railways in China's north-east adopted the Latinxua Sin Wenz system for all their telecommunications.[6]
In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention.Mao Zedong andZhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal. Outside theCCP, other prominent supporters includedSun Yat-sen's son,Sun Fo;Cai Yuanpei, the country's most prestigious educator;Tao Xingzhi, a leading educational reformer; andLu Xun. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.[7]
For a time, the system was very important in spreading literacy in Northern China; and more than 300 publications totaling half a million issues appeared in Latinxua Sin Wenz.[1] However:
In 1944 the latinization movement was officially curtailed in the communist-controlled areas [of China] on 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.[8]
Sin Wenz was designed so that every dialect had its own form of the alphabet. The letters below represent only one of the thirteen possible schemes present, the below form beingBeifangxua Latinxua Sin Wenz: that forNorthern Mandarin.[9]
Much of Beifangxua Latinxua Sin Wenz is similar toPinyin in its orthography. However, it is based upon the pronunciation outlined by theCommission on the Unification of Pronunciation, rather than upon theBeijing pronunciation (as withHanyu Pinyin), hence the distinction between sounds such aspalatalized alveolars (zi–ci–si) and palatalized velars (gi–ki–xi), or spellings such asyo andung instead ofye oreng.[10] Thus,Beijing is written asBeiging andTianjin asTianzin in Sin Wenz, and the characters畫 (pinyin:huà) and下 (pinyin:xià) are written asxua andxia, with the same initial character.[11]
| Nucleus | a | ə | ∅ | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coda | ∅ | i | u | n | ŋ | ∅ | i | u | n | ŋ | ɻ | ||
| Medial | ∅ | a [a] ㄚ a | ai [ai̯] ㄞ ai | ao [au̯] ㄠ ao | an [an] ㄢ an | ang/ong [aŋ] ㄤ ang | o/e1 [ɤ] ㄜ e | ei [ei̯] ㄟ ei | ou [ou̯] ㄡ ou | en [ən] ㄣ en | eng [əŋ] ㄥ eng | r [aɚ̯] ㄦ er | -3 [ɨ] ㄭ (-i) |
| i | ia [ja] ㄧㄚ ia | iao [jau̯] ㄧㄠ iao | ian [jɛn] ㄧㄢ ian | iang [jaŋ] ㄧㄤ iang | ie [je] ㄧㄝ ie | iou, iu [jou̯] ㄧㄡ iu | in [in] ㄧㄣ in | ing [iŋ] ㄧㄥ ing | i [i] ㄧ i | ||||
| u | ua [wa] ㄨㄚ ua | uai [wai̯] ㄨㄞ uai | uan [wan] ㄨㄢ uan | uang [waŋ] ㄨㄤ uang | uo [wo] ㄨㄛ uo | ui2 [wei̯] ㄨㄟ ui | un2 [wən] ㄨㄣ un | ung2 [ʊŋ] ㄨㄥ ong | u [u] ㄨ u | ||||
| y | yan [ɥɛn] ㄩㄢ üan | ye/yo1 [ɥe] (üe) | yn [yn] ㄩㄣ (ün) | yng [jʊŋ] ㄩㄥ iong | y [y] ㄩ ü | ||||||||
1e andye is written aso andyo after initialsg,k andx. For example:gogo (Chinese:哥哥; pinyin:gēge;lit. 'elder brother'),xyosheng (Chinese:学生; pinyin:xuésheng;lit. 'student')
2Standaloneui,un andung are written aswei,wen andweng respectively.
3What is written asi (IPA[ɨ]) afterzh,ch,sh,r,z,c ands in pinyin is not written in Sin Wenz. This "null vowel" feature is identical toZhuyin.
As in pinyin, spacing in Sin Wenz is based on whole words, not single syllables. Except foru, others syllables starting withu is always written with aw replacing theu. The syllableu is only preceded by aw when it occurs in the middle of a word. For syllables starting withi, thei is replaced by aj (in case of the syllablesi,in anding, preceded by aj) only in the middle of a word. Syllables starting withy is preceded by aj only when preceded by a consonant in the middle of a word. These are unlike pinyin, which always usesw andy regardless of the positions of the syllables. As in pinyin, theapostrophe (') is used beforea,o, ande to separate syllables in a word where ambiguity could arise.
Because Sin Wenz is written without indicating tones, ambiguity could arise with certain words with the same sound but different tones. In order to circumvent this problem, Sin Wenz defined a list of exceptions: "characters with fixed spellings" (Chinese:定型字). For example,买 (pinyin:mǎi;lit. 'buy') and卖 (pinyin:mài;lit. 'sell') are of the same sound but different tones. The former is written asmaai and the latter is written asmai in Sin Wenz. The word有 (pinyin:yǒu;lit. 'to have') is also special; it is written asiou, as opposed toiu, which may be又 (pinyin:yòu;lit. 'once more').
Telegrams sent by workers for the railways in the northeast of China switched fromZhuyin to Sin Wenz in 1950, then from Sin Wenz toHanyu Pinyin in 1958;[12] the 5 irregular spellings of 买maai, 试shii, 板baan, 不bu, and 李lii, in use during the Hanyu Pinyin period, were inherited from Sin Wenz.[13]
In addition, Sin Wenz also calls for the use of thepostal romanization when writing place names in China, as well as preservation of foreign spellings (henceLatinxua rather than*Ladingxua).
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