Text/Xuefei

1840, the opium war broke out. China intellectuals, under the bombardment of western naval forces, shattered the dream of "going to China", opened their eyes to see the world for the first time, and began to re-examine the China culture that has been passed down for thousands of years.

Chinese characters will not die, and China will die.

After much thought, someone finally discovered the "secret" of China's backwardness: the western phonetic symbols can be written as long as they can speak, so the national literacy rate is high, while Chinese characters are independent of language, and strokes are difficult. Even some people who read widely have expressed the feeling that Chinese characters are difficult. "The backwardness of the country is the backwardness of science and technology. The backwardness of science and technology is due to the backwardness of education. Education is backward because it is too difficult for China to learn Chinese characters. " Seeing this situation, a group of intellectuals in China began to demand the reform of Chinese characters, and even demanded the abolition of square characters and the use of alphabetic characters. The call for reform reached its climax during the May 4th Movement, and Lu Xun, known as "soul of china", even shouted "Chinese characters will not die, and China will die".

1892, a young man named Lu Taizhang in Fujian, after ten years of hard work, wrote a book called "A Glance". This is the first set of Chinese Pinyin scheme made by China people themselves. At that time, Lu Taizhang called it "a new word for cutting sounds", and "spelled Xiamen sounds with Latin letters and their variants, with both phonology and horizontal writing, with initials on the right and finals on the left, with nasal symbols and tone symbols". However, Lu Taizhang's "Jian Yin Xin Ci" has not been popularized.

1in the spring of 906, the "Imperial Joint Conference on Posts and Telecommunications" was held in Shanghai. The Wade-Zhailisi Pinyin Scheme, which was compiled by Professor Wade of Cambridge University and revised by missionary Zhailisi, was officially made public. It was known as the Vitomar Pinyin Method in history, which made Chinese Pinyin widely spread around the world for the first time.

1965438+On February 25th, 2003, the "Speech Unification Conference" of the Ministry of Education of Beiyang Government was held in Beiping, and representatives from various provinces were sent out one after another. The purpose of this meeting is clear: to examine and approve the voice of the country and adopt letters. Five years later, the "national standard pronunciation" and phonetic symbols determined by this meeting were officially announced by the Ministry of Education. "Classical Chinese classes in primary schools all over the country have been changed to vernacular Chinese classes, and primary school textbooks all use pinyin letters to mark new words of Chinese characters."

1928, linguists li jinxi and Zhao Yuanren created Romans's French Pinyin in Mandarin (hereinafter referred to as "Guo Luo"). 193 1 Qu Qiubai, a producer of * * * living in the Soviet Union, worked with Soviet sinologists to develop a new Latin script (hereinafter referred to as "Bella"). However, these pinyin schemes themselves have fatal defects. "Bella" is widely used in the liberated areas, and even achieved the status equivalent to Chinese characters. After many local farmers have learned this set of pinyin characters, they can use it to write letters and read pinyin newspapers. Wu (1878- 1966, a famous historian and linguist, one of the "five elders" in China) once recalled that "the winter school in Yan 'an County wiped out 1500 illiterates in less than three months. They have learned new words and can write letters, read books and read books.

However, because "Bella" has no tone, it can't solve the homonym problem, and people can only guess the meaning through the context, which often leads to misunderstanding. As for "Guoluo", although there is a difference of four tones, it is difficult for ordinary people to master it with a set of complicated rules of tone change. Although wade style is recognized internationally, many sounds are misspelled. In the 1940s, Hu, a famous linguist, left unforgettable memories when he was studying at St. John's University in Shanghai. He remembers that when the English teacher called the roll with Wade's phonetic notation, no one answered for a long time, and then someone reacted. It turned out to be Zhang Changjiang. "Whose gun is the gun? We don't know anyone. In fact, the words "gun", "Zhang" and "Jiang" in Wade's style are all spelled the same way. Zhang Changjiang became a' gun'. " Not only that, Chiang Kai-shek, an important figure in the Republic of China, was also spelled Chiang Kai-shek, and the translation is "Chang", which makes people laugh and cry.

Clever national form

This chaotic situation in which various pinyin methods coexist has attracted Mao Zedong's attention. 1949 10 10 Only ten days after the founding of New China, the non-governmental organization "China Character Reform Association" was announced, with Wu as the chairman of the Standing Committee. In order to show concern for China's character reform, Mao Zedong specially sent Hu Qiaomu, the secretary, to join the China Character Reform Association, so as to understand and guide the character reform in time.

On February 5th, 1952, Ma Xulun conveyed Mao Zedong's new instructions at the inaugural meeting of China Language Reform Research Committee. Mao Zedong thinks: the characters must be reformed, and the pinyin direction of the world characters must be the same; The form should have national characteristics, and the letters and schemes should be formulated according to the existing Chinese characters. But what is a national form, Mao Zedong and others did not give a clear definition.

After nearly a year of intense discussion and design, at the beginning of 1953, a new scheme of Chinese Pinyin finally appeared in front of Mao Zedong. Unexpectedly, after careful reading, Mao Zedong thinks that although the pinyin method is simple, the strokes are too complicated. In his view, pinyin characters should be simple in any case. With the stick figure and cursive style of the original Chinese characters, the strokes should be basically one-sided and not complicated. After listening to Mao Zedong's opinion, the committee members began to work out a new pinyin scheme separately, but it was still unsatisfactory.

Seeing that the writing reform is coming to a dead end, the China Writing Reform Committee and the Ministry of Education jointly held a national writing reform conference in Beijing on June 1955+ 10/5. At this meeting, an important figure who changed the process of China's writing reform came into people's field of vision. He is Zhou Youguang, who is known as the "father of Chinese Pinyin" in China. Zhou Youguang, an economics professor at Fudan University who was preparing to go back to Shanghai for class at that time, suddenly received a notice to stay in the Cultural Reform Commission. Although Zhou Youguang's old job was economics, before liberation, he had participated in activities to promote Latin neoscripts in Shanghai.

From 65438 to 0954, Zhou Youguang, who was always interested in language and writing, wrote The Story of Letters in his spare time. "This thin little book is vivid and easy to understand. The origin, development and spread of letters are clarified. Mao Zedong also took a keen interest in this book and left a deep impression on Zhou Youguang. "

In the same year, Zhou Youguang published an article entitled "What is a National Form" when members of the Pinyin Scheme Group were arguing endlessly about "What is a National Form". In the article, Zhou Youguang said: "The formation of national forms has to go through a period of habit formation. After training, Hu Qin can become national music, Qipao can become Hanfu, and foreign letters can become Guoxin. For English, Latin letters are also foreign letters, and using them to spell English has become a national form in Britain. The form of Chinese characters is not suitable for the requirements of letters, and Latin letters are the most popular in the world. It is better to use it than to start a new stove. "

Shortly thereafter, Zhou Youguang put forward three principles of Chinese Pinyin Scheme: Latinization, Phoneme and Spoken Language, which made great contributions to the introduction of Chinese Pinyin Scheme. At the same time, in view of the fact that the Soviet Union had changed all Latin scripts into Slavic scripts at that time, and China was not an ally, some people advocated using Slavic scripts to form an alliance with the Soviet Union in words. Therefore, the letter form of Chinese has once again caused a heated debate.

This situation caused Mao Zedong's anxiety. After careful consideration, he made a speech in favor of Latin alphabet at the meeting of intellectuals on10.20/956. Mao Zedong said, "I am very much in favor of the reform of Chinese characters. Do you agree to use Latin letters in the future? In my opinion, among the broad masses, the problem is not big; Among intellectuals, there are some problems. How can China use foreign letters? However, it seems better to use this foreign letter. ..... whatever is good in foreign countries and useful to us, we just want to learn, that is, we have to digest it all and become our own. "

1956 On February 20th, the Chinese Pinyin Scheme (Draft) was issued, which clearly stated: "The purpose of formulating the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is to design a set of pinyin letters and writing rules, and to spell Putonghua with Beijing accent as the standard pronunciation."

1958 February 1 1 day, the fifth session of the first national people's congress officially approved this plan.

1in the autumn of 958, as a compulsory course for primary school students, the Chinese Pinyin Scheme officially entered the national primary school classroom. Zong Chunqi, executive vice chairman of Beijing Journalists Association, is a primary school student who just entered the first grade of 1958. He once recalled that when he opened the newly developed textbook, "I was surprised to find that the first page of the textbook was some tortuous foreign letters." In addition to square Chinese characters, this is the first time I have seen such words. " But soon, Zong Chunqi discovered that he could learn many new words through these Latin letters. After learning Pinyin, he often goes to Xinhua Bookstore to read books. "Spell it out to know what a word you didn't know before is. At that time, I read a lot of books and learned many words by myself. "

Wu Jiansheng, who works in the Institute of Linguistics of Shanxi Academy of Social Sciences, recalled that in 1960, when she was only five years old, she and her mother Yu Bingru came to Beijing from a small county in the south of Shanxi Province to participate in a speech literacy exhibition in ten provinces and cities. At that time, a staff member took her to the stage and asked her to write "Hello, children in Wu Jiansheng". She wrote this sentence in Chinese Pinyin. After the meeting, Wu happily picked up the little girl.

"In Wu Jiansheng's hometown of Wanrong, Shanxi, it has also become a national red flag because of its successful literacy and promotion of Mandarin with Chinese Pinyin." For a long time after the founding of New China, Wanrong County, like many other places in China, has been doing literacy work, but with little effect. After the "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" was published, it was reported that "ordinary farmers can master Chinese Pinyin in 15 to 20 hours, and they can recognize 1500 words in 100 hours". At that time, Wanrong was marked with Chinese Pinyin in the streets, fields and canteens. Even the villagers in Wanrong County learn pinyin from each other when they are working and resting in the fields.

Since then, Chinese Pinyin has entered thousands of households, and with the continuous development and progress of society, it has become more and more a part of people's lives.

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