Romanization of Chinese
Still, the system of Gwoyeu Romatzyh (National Romanization) bypasses the issue of introducing non-letter symbols by changing the letters within the syllable, as in mha, ma, maa, mah, each of which contains the same vowel, but a different tone.
Most European language texts use the Chinese Hanyu Pinyin system (usually without tone marks) since 1979 as it was adopted by the People'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 by Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri for their Portuguese–Chinese dictionary—the first ever European–Chinese dictionary.
[2][3] During the winter of 1598, Ricci, with the help of his Jesuit colleague Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640), compiled a Chinese–Portuguese dictionary as well, in which tones of the romanized Chinese syllables were indicated with diacritical marks.
It was used e.g. by Michał Boym and his two Chinese assistants in the first publication of the original and romanized text of the Xi'an Stele, which appeared in China Illustrata (1667)—an encyclopedic-scope work compiled by Athanasius Kircher.
[4] In 1626 the Jesuit missionary Nicolas Trigault devised a romanization system in his Xiru Ermu Zi (西儒耳目资; 西儒耳目資; Xīrú ěrmù zī; 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati').
The system devised in 1902 by Séraphin Couvreur of the École 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.
The first modern indigenous Chinese romanization system, the Qieyin Xinzi (切音新字; 'New Phonetic Alphabet') was developed in 1892 by Lu Zhuangzhang (1854–1928).
[8][9][10] In 1923, the Kuomintang Ministry of Education instituted a National Language Unification Commission which, in turn, formed an eleven-member romanization unit.
The committee, which met twenty-two times over a twelve-month period (1925–1926), consisted of Zhao Yuanren, Lin Yutang, Qian Xuantong, Li Jinxi (黎錦熙), and one Wang Yi.
[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.
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.
[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.
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.)
Their first directive (1949–1952) was to take "the phonetic project adopting the Latin alphabet" as "the main object of [their] research";[23] linguist Zhou Youguang was put in charge of this branch of the committee.
[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 the International 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.
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.
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.
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.
