Father of Pinyin
Chinese linguist
Mr. Zhou Youguang, known as the father of Pinyin, passed away on January 14, 2017 at the age
of 111. Zhou's contribution was to design a Chinese writing system scheme using
Roman alphabet sixty years ago, which is referred to as Pinyin. Domestic and
foreign news media reported the news. Linguisticly, some information from the reports
is inaccurate.
“Before
Pinyin was developed, 85% of Chinese people could not read, now almost all can”, BBC reported. However, Taiwan, another Chinese
community, has not adopted Pinyin.
People there almost could read too. Therefore, BBC attribute the low illiteracy
in China to pinyin is unreasonable. Using Roman alphabet does not mean low
illiterate. For instance, Romans Empire used Latin, but the vast majority of
Europeans are illiterate. The vernacular movement in Renaissance improves the
literacy rate. The reason is that it is easier to remember if letters or characters
correlate with speech sounds. Therefore, the core cause of low illiteracy in
China is the Chinese vernacular movement that took place nearly a century ago.
The New York Times reported,
“adopted by China in 1958, Pinyin was designed not to replace the tens
of thousands of traditional characters with which Chinese is written, but as an
orthographic pry bar to afford passage into the labyrinthine world of those
characters.” In fact, Pinyin
was designed not to afford
passage into the labyrinthine world of Chinese
characters, but orthography of new Chinese writing system. In other words, the purpose of the design of Pinyin is
to replace Chinese characters. Owing to conservatives strongly opposing, the
temporary compromise was to acknowledge that Pinyin is not letters for writing,
but Chinese phonetic alphabets. The effect is not good when using Pinyin as phonetic
alphabets. It is the tool for the wrong job. Pinyin is Roman alphabets, not phonetic
alphabets. Denying it is self-deception.
Kana, Japanese alphabet,
were in use more than a thousand years ago, and Hangul, the Korean alphabet, were
in use more than 600 years ago. Before they were officially in use, they all
went through hundreds years of transition. Pinyin was in use in China almost sixty
years ago and most Chinese people know Pinyin at present. The time is ripe for
pinyin to be officially in use. All is ready except for the last push - We
acknowledge that Pinyin is letters for writing. We can hardly do without Pinyin
now.
Now the Roman
alphabet is the mainstream of the writing system in the world, de facto
standard. Roman letters are more efficient than Chinese characters, and the
effect of twenty-six letters surpasses that of tens of thousands of Chinese
characters. By adopting Pinyin, the Chinese writing system no longer need Romanization,
the conversion of writing from a different writing system to the Roman script by
ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. China will have a
modern writing system, and will also be a country with modern science.
现代仓颉
被称为拼音之父的语言学家周有光先生一月十四日逝世，享年112岁。周老的贡献是主持制定了“汉语拼音文字方案”，简称拼音。国内外新闻媒体都做了报道。从语言学角度看，有些报道是不准确的。
BBC报道，使用拼音之前，85％的中国人是文盲，现在几乎人人识字。但是，中国的另外一部分，台湾没有采用拼音，也几乎人人都识字。因此，BBC把中国文盲率降低的原因归功于使用了拼音，证据不足。并不是使用了拼音文字，文盲率就降低。例如罗马帝国时期，欧洲使用的拉丁文就是拼音文字，但是绝大多数欧洲人是文盲。文艺复兴时期的白话文运动提高了欧洲人的识字率。原因是如果书写系统里的字母或者符号和说话的声音有了关联，有助于记忆。所以中国文盲率降低的重要原因是一百年前的白话文运动。
纽约时报报道，1958年启用的汉语拼音，设计的目的不是为了取代成千上万的传统汉字，而是要让拼音成为帮助学习繁琐的汉字的一种工具。实际上，制定拼音不是要让拼音成为帮助学习繁琐的汉字的一种工具，而是制定中文书写系统的新标准。换句话说，制定拼音的目的就是为了取代汉字。只是因为思想保守的人强烈反对，最后妥协不承认汉语拼音是拼音文字，而是汉字的音标。拿拼音当音标使用，效果并不好。拼音不是音标，而是拼音文字。不承认是自欺欺人。
日本一千多年前就开始使用假名，朝鲜韩国六百多年前已经开始使用谚文。它们都经过上百年的过渡，才正式使用。中国使用拼音已经将近六十年，目前大多数中国人都懂拼音。正式使用拼音的条件已经成熟，差的就是临门一脚了-承认拼音是拼音文字。现在我们已经离不开拼音了。
现在拉丁字母是世界的主流，事实上的标准。拉丁字母比汉字效率高。二十六个字母的作用超过了成千上万的汉字。使用拼音后，中文不再需要罗马化。罗马化是国际标准化组织把不同的书写系统转换成拉丁字母。中国将有一个现代化的书写系统，中国也将成为一个有现代科学的国家。
