Culture

The father of pinyin

by Heritage | May 11, 2008 at 07:30 am

543 views | 5 Recommendations | 1 comment

Zhou's life story is fascinating. He was an economist who could speak English in the the 1940s. Because of his language skills he was asked to assist with developing pinyin. He says he was lucky to have changed professions at that time. Shortly after Chairman Mao took a disliking to economists.

Pinyin is a phonetic alphabet that was developed to make it easier to learn Mandarin.

"The results are remarkable. Over the last half-century, the illiteracy rate in China has slumped from 80% to as little as 10% (the precise figure is disputed) thanks to a combination of mass education, simplified characters and pinyin."

Here's some pinyin:

現在 xiàn zài Now

公共 gōng gong Public

There is a 5 minute video interview available here.

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...