Talk:General Chinese

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s importance scale.

	This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale. (add comments)
More information about this article... Mid This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Middle Chinese

How does this project of romanised "General Chinese" compare to attemts to reconstruct Middle Chinese? There are hints at historical phonology:

"The difference between the yin and yang tones is indicated by the voicing of the initial consonant, which is possible because the original voicing distinctions are retained." (my emphasis)

But it's that easy. — Babelfisch 01:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History

赵元任早在1967 年就在美国发表了《通字方案》，1983被翻译为中文在北京出版。“所谓通字（general Chinese）是为了研究和写作的方便，取中国语言当中的一部分作全部的代表”。通字以官话、吴语、闽语为基础，从常用字中挑出来的2085字。我们挑出的“西方汉语学习者写认读汉字表”主要是为西方部分汉语学习者学习汉语阅读写作用的字，我们提出区分“写读认汉字”与“读认汉字”与赵元任先生的《通用字表》有很多差别。(excerpt from 丁崇明: 西方汉语学习者汉字教学策略)

If that's correct, the reference given in the article (1983) is a bit misleading. There is also a lack of historical context: How was this project received? Was it ever used by anyone except Chao himself? There are have been hundreds of projects like this, and they were all ignored by Chinese linguists as well as by Chinese speakers - they're all one-man pet projects. Isn't that true for this one as well? — Babelfisch 01:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if that's the case or not. But Chao is a significant figure in this area, and I think that alone makes it notable. kwami 02:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not a popular project,but the spelling scheme and the phonological system shown in it are often used for reference.No government support nor powerful organisation promotion, it doesn't work in contemporary China.It's not an one-man pet,there are few people they do like this work, and got inspiration from it.Blankego 05:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)