Gwoyeu Romatzyh
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Traditional Chinese: | 國語羅馬字 | ||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese: | 国语罗马字 | ||||||||||||||||||
Literal meaning: | "National Language Romanization" | ||||||||||||||||||
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Gwoyeu Romatzyh (literally "National [Language] Romanization"),[1] abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Y.R. Chao (Zhao Yuanren) and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using GR. In addition a small number of other textbooks and dictionaries in GR were published in Hong Kong and overseas from 1942 to 2000.
GR is the better known of the two romanization systems which indicate the four tones of Mandarin by varying the spelling of syllables ("tonal spelling").[2] These tones are a fundamental part of the Chinese language: to a Chinese speaker they are no less a component of a word than vowels are to an English speaker.[3] Tones in Chinese allow speakers to discriminate between otherwise identical syllables—in other words they are phonemic. Other systems indicate the tones with either diacritics (for example Pinyin: āi, ái, ǎi and ài) or numbers (Wade-Giles: ai1, ai2, etc.). GR spells the same four tones ai, air, ae and ay.[4] These spellings, which follow specific rules, indicate the tones while retaining the pronunciation of the syllable ai. Because it embeds the tone of each syllable in its spelling,[5] GR may help students to master Chinese tones—though some academics dispute this claim.[6]
In 1928 China adopted GR as the nation's official romanization system.[7] GR was used to indicate pronunciations in dictionaries of the National (Mandarin-based) Language. Its proponents hoped one day to establish it as a writing system for a reformed Chinese script. But despite support from a small number of trained linguists in China and overseas, GR met with public indifference and even hostility due to its complexity.[8] Another obstacle preventing its widespread adoption was the fact that it was too narrowly based on the Beijing dialect, in a period lacking a strong centralized government to enforce its use. Eventually GR lost ground to Pinyin and other later romanization systems. However, its influence is still evident, as several of the principles introduced by its creators have been used in romanization systems that followed it. Its pattern of tone spelling remains in the standard spelling of the Chinese province of Shaanxi (shǎnxī), which cannot be distinguished from Shanxi (shānxī) when written in pinyin without diacritics.
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Tonal spelling, Gwoyeu Romatzyh's most distinctive feature, was first suggested to Y.R Chao by Lin Yutang.[9][10] By 1922 Chao had already established the main principles of GR.[11] The details of the system were developed in 1925–1926 by a group of five linguists, led by Chao and including Lin, under the auspices of the Preparatory Commission for the Unification of the National Language.[12] In 1928 GR was officially adopted by the government.[13] GR was intended to be used alongside the existing Juhin (Zhùyīn) phonetic symbols: hence the alternative name for GR, "Second Pattern of the National Alphabet."[14] Both systems were used to indicate the revised standard of pronunciation in the new official Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use of 1932.[15] The designers of GR had greater ambitions: their aim was complete reform of the script, using GR as a practical system of writing.[16]
In the 1930s two shortlived attempts were made to teach GR to railway workers and peasants in Hénán and Shāndōng provinces.[17] Support for GR, being confined to a small number of trained linguists and sinologists, "was distinguished more for its quality than its quantity."[18] During this period GR faced increasing hostility because of the complexity of its tonal spelling. Conversely, sinologist Bernhard Karlgren criticised GR for its lack of phonetic rigour.[19] Ultimately, like the rival (toneless) system Latinxua Sinwenz, GR failed to gain widespread support, principally because the "National" language was too narrowly based on Beijing speech:[20] "a sufficiently precise and strong language norm had not yet become a reality in China".[21]
A vestigial use of GR in mainland China can be seen in the official spelling of the first syllable of Shaanxi for Shǎnxī province, to distinguish it from Shānxī province, particularly in foreign-language text where the tone marks are often omitted.[22] Some prominent Chinese have used GR to transliterate their names: for example the mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern.[23] The romanization systema was changed by the government of the People's Republic of China in 1958 to the current system used now in the country, and other foreign and international institutions, like the United Nations, the Library of Congress, the International Organization for Standardization, and is widely used to teach Mandarin Chinese to foreign students: Hanyu Pinyin. Meanwhile, in the Republic of China (Taiwan), GR survived until the 1970s as a pronunciation aid in monolingual dictionaries such as Gwoyeu Tsyrdean [Guóyǔ Cídiǎn] and Tsyrhuey [Cíhuì],[24] but was officially replaced in 1986 by a modified form known as MPS II.[25]
An important GR innovation, later adopted by Pinyin, was to use contrasting unvoiced/voiced pairs of consonants from Latin to represent aspirated and unaspirated sounds in Chinese.[26] For example b and p represent /p/ and /pʰ/ (p and p‘ in Wade). A potentially confusing feature of GR is the use of j, ch, and sh to represent two different series of sounds. When followed by i these letters correspond to the alveolo-palatal sounds (Pinyin j, q, and x); otherwise they correspond to the retroflex sounds (Pinyin zh, ch, and sh). Readers used to Pinyin need to pay particular attention to these spellings: for example, GR ju, jiu, and jiou correspond to Pinyin zhu, ju, and jiu respectively.[27]
GR orthography has these additional notable features:
By default, the basic GR spelling described above is used for Tone1 syllables. The basic form is then modified to indicate tones 2, 3 and 4.[29] This is accomplished in one of three ways:
Wherever possible the concise first method is used. The following rules of thumb cover most cases.[30]
Tone 1 (basic form)
Tone 2: i/u → y/w; or add -r
Tone 3: i/u → e/o; or double vowel
Tone 4: change/double final letter; or add -h
Neutral tone: precede with a dot (full stop)
Exception Syllables with an initial sonorant (l-/m-/n-/r-) use the basic form for T2 rather than T1. In these syllables the (rarer) T1 is marked with -h- as the second letter. For example mha is T1 (mā), whereas ma is T2 (má).[31] T3 and T4 are regular: maa (mǎ) and mah (mà).
An important principle of GR is that syllables which form words should be written together. This strikes speakers of European languages as obvious; but in Chinese the concept of "word" is not easy to pin down. The basic unit of speech is popularly thought to be the monosyllable represented by a character (字 tzyh, zì), which in most cases represents a meaningful syllable or morpheme,[32] a smaller unit than the "linguistic word".[33] Characters are written and printed with no spaces between words; yet in practice most Chinese words consist of two-syllable compounds, and it was Chao's bold innovation in 1922 to reflect this in GR orthography by grouping the appropriate syllables together into words.[34] This represented a radical departure from hyphenated Wade-Giles forms such as Kuo2-yü3 Lo2-ma3-tzŭ4 (the Wade spelling of GR). This principle, illustrated in the extract below, was later adopted in Pinyin.[35]
Y.R. Chao used GR in four influential works:
Readings in Sayable Chinese was written "to supply the advanced student of spoken Chinese with reading matter which he can actually use in his speech."[41] It consists of three volumes of Chinese text with facing GR romanization.[42] They contain some lively recorded dialogues, "Fragments of an autobiography," two plays and a translation of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (Tzoou daw Jinqtz lii).[43] Two extracts from Tzoou daw Jinqtz lii with facing translations can be read online.[44]
In 1942 Walter Simon introduced GR to English-speaking sinologists in a special pamphlet, The New Official Chinese Latin Script. Over the remainder of the 1940s he published a series of textbooks and readers,[45] as well as a Chinese-English Dictionary, all using GR. His son Harry Simon later went on to use GR in scholarly papers on Chinese linguistics.[46]
In 1960 Y.C. Liu, a colleague of Walter Simon's at SOAS, published Fifty Chinese Stories. These selections from classical texts were presented in both classical and modern Chinese,[47] together with GR romanizations and romanized Japanese versions prepared by Simon (by that time Professor Emeritus of Chinese in the University of London).
Lin Yutang's Chinese-English dictionary (1972) incorporated a number of innovative features, one of which was a simplified version of GR.[48][49] Lin eliminated most of the spelling rules requiring substitution of vowels, as can be seen from his spelling Guoryuu Romatzyh,[48] in which the regular -r is used for T2 and a doubled vowel for T3.
Most learners of Chinese now start with Hanyu Pinyin, which is easier to learn than GR.[50] But GR has its advantages. According to Y.R. Chao:
“ | [GR] makes the spelling more complicated, but gives an individuality to the physiognomy of words, with which it is possible to associate meaning … [A]s an instrument of teaching, tonal spelling has proved in practice to be a most powerful aid in enabling the student to grasp the material with precision and clearness.[51] | ” |
For example, it may be easier to memorize the difference between GR Beeijing (the city) and beyjiing ("background") than the Pinyin versions Běijīng and bèijǐng, where the tones seem to be almost an afterthought.
Not all teachers are convinced of the superiority of GR as a means of teaching correct tones to learners. One study conducted at the University of Oregon in 1991–1993 compared the results of using Pinyin and GR in teaching elementary level Chinese to two matched groups of students. It concluded that "GR did not lead to significantly greater accuracy in tonal production."[52]
GR continues to be used by some teachers of Chinese. In 2000, the Princeton Chinese Primer series was published in both GR and Pinyin versions.[53] GR is used as the main romanization method in some university departments, for example the East Asian Studies Program at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.[54]
Here is an extract from Y.R. Chao's Sayable Chinese. The topic is scholarly ("What is Sinology?"), but the style colloquial. The tonal spelling markers or "clues" are again highlighted using the same colour-coding scheme as above. Versions in Chinese characters, Pinyin and English are given below the GR text.
Simplified Chinese characters: 汉学的名称对中国有一点不尊敬的意味。我们听说有印度学、埃及学、汉学,而没有听说有希腊学、罗马学,更没有听说有英国学、美国学。汉学这个名称完全表示欧美学者对那些已经沉沦的古老国家的文化的一种轻看的态度。
Traditional Chinese characters: 漢學的名稱對中國有一點不尊敬的意味。我們聽說有印度學、埃及學、漢學,而沒有聽說有希臘學、羅馬學,更沒有聽說有英國學、美國學。漢學這個名稱完全表示歐美學者對那些已經沉淪的古老國家的文化的一種輕看的態度。
Pinyin version: "Hànxué" de míngchēng duì Zhōngguó yǒu yìdiǎn bùzūnjìng de yìwèi. Wǒmen tīngshuō yǒu "Yìndùxué," "Āijíxué," "Hànxué," ér méiyǒu tīngshuō yǒu "Xīlàxué," "Luómǎxué," gèng méiyǒu tīngshuō yǒu "Yīngguóxué," "Měiguóxué." "Hànxué" zhèige míngchēng wánquán biǎoshì Ōu-Měi xuézhě duì nàxiē yǐjing chénlún de gǔlǎo-guójiā de wénhuà de yìzhǒng qīngkàn de tàidù.
English translation: The term "Sinology" carries a slight overtone of disrespect towards China. One hears of "Indology," "Egyptology" and "Sinology," but never "Graecology" or "Romology"—let alone "Anglology" or "Americology." The term "Sinology" epitomizes European and American scholars' patronizing attitude towards the culture of those ruined ancient empires.
Chinese romanization |
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Mandarin for Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin (ISO standard) EFEO Gwoyeu Romatzyh Spelling conventions Latinxua Sin Wenz Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II Chinese Postal Map Romanization Tongyong Pinyin Wade-Giles Yale Legge romanization Simplified Wade Comparison chart |
Cantonese for Standard Cantonese Guangdong Romanization Hong Kong Government Jyutping Meyer-Wempe Sidney Lau S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols) S. L. Wong (romanisation) Standard Cantonese Pinyin Standard Romanization Yale Barnett-Chao |
Wu Long-short (romanization) |
Min Nan for Taiwanese, Amoy, and related Pe̍h-oē-jī For Hainanese Hainanhua Pinyin Fang'an For Teochew Peng'im |
Min Dong for Fuzhou dialect Foochow Romanized |
Hakka for Moiyan dialect Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an For Siyen dialect Phak-fa-sṳ |
See also: General Chinese (Chao Yuenren) Cyrillization Xiao'erjing Bopomofo Romanisation in Singapore Romanisation in the ROC (Taiwan) |
Preceded by none |
Official romanization adopted by the People's Republic of China 1928-1949 on the Chinese Mainland 1949-1958 (since the proclamation of the People's Republic of China |
Succeeded by Hanyu Pinyin |
Preceded by none |
Official romanization adopted by the Republic of China (Taiwan) 1928-1945 on the Chinese Mainland 1945-1986 in Taiwan |
Succeeded by Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II |