| Transliteration of Chinese |
|---|
| Mandarin |
| Wu |
| Yue |
| Min |
| Gan |
| Hakka |
| Xiang |
| Polylectal |
| See also |
Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterateChinese. Chinese uses alogographic script and itscharacters do not representphonemes directly. There have been many systems usingRoman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. LinguistDaniel Kane wrote, "It used to be said thatsinologists had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys."[1] The dominant international standard forStandard Mandarin since about 1982 has beenHanyu Pinyin, invented by a group of Chinese linguists, includingZhou Youguang, in the 1950s. Other well-known systems includeWade–Giles (Beijing Mandarin) and Yale romanization (Beijing Mandarin andCantonese).
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 facilitatesentering characters on standardkeyboards. Chinese dictionaries have complex and competing sorting rules for characters: romanization systems simplify the problem by listing characters in their Latin form alphabetically.
The IndianSanskrit grammarians, who went to China two thousand years ago to work on thetranslation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese and thetranscription of Buddhist terms into Chinese, discovered the "initial sound", "final sound", and "suprasegmental tone" structure of spoken Chinese syllables.[citation needed] This understanding is reflected in the preciseFanqie 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 writtenClassical Chinese literature, it was unworkable for the pronunciation of essentially polysyllabic, colloquial spoken Chinese dialects, such as Mandarin.[citation needed]
Aside from syllable structure, it is also necessary to indicatetones in Chinese romanization. Tones distinguish the definition of allmorphemes 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 withdiacritics:mā,má,mǎ,mà. Still, the system ofGwoyeu Romatzyh (National Romanization) bypasses the issue of introducing non-letter symbols by changing the letters within the syllable, as inmha, ma, maa, mah, each of which contains the same vowel, but a different tone.
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 ChineseHanyu Pinyin system (usually without tone marks) since 1979 as it was adopted by thePeople's Republic of China.[b]
The first consistent system for transcribing Chinese words in Latin alphabet is thought to have been designed in 1583–1588 byMatteo Ricci andMichele Ruggieri for their Portuguese–Chinese dictionary—the first ever European–Chinese dictionary. The manuscript was misplaced in theJesuit Archives in Rome, and not re-discovered until 1934. The dictionary was finally published in 2001.[2][3] During the winter of 1598, Ricci, with the help of his Jesuit colleagueLazzaro 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.[2]
Cattaneo's system, with its accounting for the tones, was not lost, however. It was used e.g. byMichał Boym and his two Chinese assistants in the first publication of the original and romanized text of theXi'an Stele, which appeared inChina Illustrata (1667)—an encyclopedic-scope work compiled byAthanasius Kircher.[4]
In 1626 the Jesuit missionaryNicolas Trigault devised a romanization system in hisXiru Ermu Zi (西儒耳目资;西儒耳目資;Xīrú ěrmù zī; 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati').[5]
In the 1670 Portuguese-languageVocabulario da lingoa mandarina, the Dominican missionaryFrancisco Varo expanded on Trigault's system. His Spanish-languageVocabulario de la lengua Mandarina was published in 1682 and hisArte de la lengua mandarina, published in 1703, is the earliest known published Chinese grammar.[6]
Later on, many linguistically comprehensive systems were made by the Protestants, such as that used forRobert Morrison'sdictionary and theLegge 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.[citation needed]
The first system to be widely accepted was the (1859) system of the British diplomatThomas Wade,[c] revised and improved byHerbert Giles into the (1892) Wade–Giles (威翟式拼音;wēidíshì pīnyīn) 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 thespiritus asper for aspirated consonants,diacritical marks to mark some vowels, and superscript digits to indicate the four tones.
The system devised in 1902 bySéraphin Couvreur of theÉcole 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.
Postal romanization, 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 byHerbert 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.
The Yale romanization system was created atYale University duringWorld War II 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.[d]
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.
| New Culture Movement |
|---|
Background |
Practice
|
Major publications |
The first modern indigenous Chinese romanization system, the Qieyin Xinzi (切音新字; 'New Phonetic Alphabet') was developed in 1892 byLu Zhuangzhang (1854–1928). It was used to write the sounds of theXiamen dialect ofSouthern Min.[7] Some people also invented other phoneme systems.[8][9][10]
In 1923, theKuomintang 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.[11]
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 ofZhao Yuanren,Lin Yutang,Qian Xuantong, Li Jinxi (黎錦熙), and one Wang Yi.[12] They developed theGwoyeu Romatzyh (國語羅馬字;Guóyǔ Luómǎzì; 'National Language Romanization') 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.
...the call to abolish [the written] characters in favor of a romanized alphabet reached a peak around 1923. As almost all of the designers of [Gwoyeu Romatzyh] were ardent supporters of this radical view, it is only natural that, aside from serving the immediate auxiliary role of sound annotation, etc., their scheme was designed in such a way that it would be capable of serving all functions expected of a bona fide writing system, and supersede [the written Chinese] characters in due course.[13]
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.[e] The complexity of its tonal system was such that it was never popular.[f]
Work towards designingLatinxua Sin Wenz 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.[16] The Latin alphabet was chosen over theCyrillic alphabet because the former was thought to better serve their purposes.[17] 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.[18]
The eminent Moscow-based Chinese scholarQu 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 Sovietsinologists B. M. Alekseev, A. A. Dragunov, and A. G. Shprintsin, with the Chinese scholars Qu Qiubai, Wu Yuzhang, Lin Boqu (林伯渠), 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 asGuo Moruo andLu Xun, and trials were conducted among 100,000 Chinese immigrant workers for about four years[g] and later, from 1940 to 1942, in the communist-controlled regions ofShaanxi,Gansu, andNingxia.[19] 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.[20]
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.[16] 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 [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.[21]
In 2002, Zhou Youguang claimed thatJoseph Stalin persuadedMao Zedong against the complete romanization of Chinese during Mao's visit to Moscow in December 1949.[22]
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 (倪海曙), Lin Handa (林汉达), etc.) or the Gwoyeu Romatzyh movement (Li Jinxi (黎锦熙),Luo Changpei, 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 [their] research";[23] linguistZhou Youguang was put in charge of this branch of the committee.[24][25]
In a speech delivered on 10 January 1958,[h]Zhou Enlai observed that the committee had spent three years attempting to create a non-Latin Chinese phonetic alphabet (they had also attempted to adaptZhuyin Fuhao) but "no satisfactory result could be obtained" and "the Latin alphabet was then adopted".[26] He also emphatically stated:
In future, we shall adopt the Latin alphabet for the Chinese phonetic alphabet. Being in wide use in scientific and technological fields and in constant day-to-day usage, it will be easily remembered. The adoption of such an alphabet will, therefore, greatly facilitate the popularization of the common speech [i.e.Putonghua (Standard Chinese)].[27]
The development of thePinyin (Chinese:汉语拼音;pinyin:hànyǔ pīnyīn;lit. 'Chinese Phonetic Writing') system was a complex process involving decisions on many difficult issues, such as:
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 movement for language reform came to a standstill during theCultural Revolution and nothing was published on language reform or linguistics from 1966 to 1972.[31] The Pinyin subtitles that had first appeared on the masthead of thePeople's Daily newspaper and theRed Flag journal in 1958 did not appear at all between July 1966 and January 1977.[32]
In its final form Hanyu Pinyin:
Hanyu Pinyin has developed from Mao's 1951 directive, through the promulgation on 1 November 1957 of a draft version by the State Council,[l] to its final form being approved by the State Council in September 1978,[m] to being accepted in 1982 by theInternational Organization for Standardization as the standard for transcribing Chinese.[35]
John DeFrancis 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.[36]
Tongyong Pinyin is a system with some usage in Taiwan. It was introduced by the linguist Yu Bor-chuan in 1998 and was the officialromanization of Mandarin inTaiwan 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.[37][38]
"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:
"Those who know anything of the rude and unwritten languages of the other parts of the world will have no difficulty in imagining the state of the spoken dialects of China. The most various shades of pronunciation are common, arising from the want of the analytic process of writing by means of an alphabet. A Chinaman has no conception of the number or character of the sounds which he utters when he says mau-ping; indeed one man will call it maw (mor)-bing, and another mo-piang, without the first man perceiving the difference. By the people themselves these changes are considered to be simple variations, which are of no consequence. And if we look into the English of Chaucer's or of Wickliffe's time, or the French of Marco Polo's age, we shall find a similar looseness and inattention to correct spelling, because these languages were written by few, and when the orthography was unsettled. Times are changed. Every poor man may now learn to read and write his own language in less than a month, and with a little pains he may do it correctly with practice. The consequence is that a higher degree of comfort and happiness is reached by many who could never have risen above the level of the serf and the slave without this intellectual lever. The poor may read the gospel as well as hear it preached, and the cottage library becomes a never-failing treasury of profit to the labouring classes."[39]
Those who know anything of the rude and unwritten languages of the other parts of the world will have no difficulty in imagining the state of the spoken dialects of China. The most various shades of pronunciation are common, arising from the want of the analytic process of writing by means of an alphabet. A Chinaman has no conception of the number or character of the sounds which he utters when he says mau-ping; indeed one man will call it maw (mor)-bing, and another mo-piang, without the first man perceiving the difference. By the people themselves these changes are considered to be simple variations, which are of no consequence. And if we look into the English of Chaucer's or of Wickliffe's time, or the French of Marco Polo's age, we shall find a similar looseness and inattention to correct spelling, because these languages were written by few, and when the orthography was unsettled. Times are changed. Every poor man may now learn to read and write his own language in less than a month, and with a little pains he may do it correctly with practice. The consequence is that a higher degree of comfort and happiness is reached by many who could never have risen above the level of the serf and the slave without this intellectual lever. The poor may read the gospel as well as hear it preached, and the cottage library becomes a never-failing treasury of profit to the labouring classes.(Princeton University)LONDON:W. H. ALLEN And CO.Waterloo Place;PARIS:BENJ. DUPRAT,Rue du Cloltre-Saint-Benoit;AND AT THEOFFICE OF THE CHINESE AND JAPANESE REPOSITORY,31, King Street, Cheapside, London.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
