The phonetic alphabet developed by Zhou Youguang, pinyin, turns 50 this month, having helped up to a billion Chinese citizens to learn to read, write and in many cases speak the national language.
The 102-year-old linguist is renowned as the “father of pinyin”, the system for representing standard Mandarin in the Roman alphabet. The country is celebrating the anniversary with lectures, a TV series and educational programmes.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Bi_DVFecE]
On the 50th anniversary of the introduction of his alphabet, Tania Branigan meets 102-year-old Zhou Youguang, the man credited with helping millions of Chinese to read and write.
Some bloggers were critical of the pinyin used by the Guardian. And this, “if you want to get a look at the guy who rescued you from bopomofo, have a look.”
Personally, I think Bopomofo/Zhuyin is great!
admin
kang-wei
This beautiful old gentleman, Zhou Youguang, at a hundred and two, is an inspiration not only to the Chinese but also to many in the West like myself, today. He is self-effacing, good humoured and thoughtful: “I am the ’son’ of pin yin”, alluding to the previous inferiou Wade Giles and other systems as well as the influence that his invention had on his own life. That life traversed the cultural revolution and so much more. China owes, in large measure, its increassing literacy rate to him. Indeed, though I have studied Mandarin Chinese for twenty years now, I can’t imagine how I would have done it at the begining without Mr Zhou’s pinyin.
P.S. There is an error in the second character of Mr Zhou’s name on the Utube site. His name is “you” meaning ‘friend’ not “you” meaning ‘have’. I was a little disappointed that such a great man’s name could be misrepresented.
As this site did not interface with my Mandarin writing software, if have had to write it in English.
Mark
This beautiful old gentleman, Zhou Youguang, at a hundred and two, is an inspiration not only to the Chinese but also many in the West like myself, today. He is self-effacing, good humoured and thoughtful: “I am the ’son’ of pin yin”, alluding to the previous inferior Wade Giles and other systems as well as the influence that his invention had on his own life. That life traversed the Cultural Revolution and so much more. China owes, in large measure, its increasing literacy rate to him. Indeed, though I have studied Mandarin Chinese for twenty years now, I can’t imagine how I would have done it at the beginning without Mr Zhou’s pinyin.
P.S. There is an error in the second character of Mr Zhou’s name on the tube site. His name is “you” meaning ‘friend’ not “you” meaning ‘have’. I was a little disappointed that such a great man’s name could be misrepresented.
As this site did not interface with my Mandarin writing software, if have had to write it in English.
Mark
P.S. This has been resubmitted by me after seeing some typing errors: “typos”