Mandarin Scholarship Taiwan » China http://mandarinscholarship.com Studying Chinese in Taipei, Taiwan Sun, 03 Jan 2010 07:56:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 The father of pinyin…. http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/05/11/the-inventor-of-pinyin/ http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/05/11/the-inventor-of-pinyin/#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 07:01:22 +0000 kang-wei http://mandarinscholarship.wordpress.com/?p=29 Zhou YouguangThe 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.

guardian.co.uk

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!

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