The Origin of Chinese Pinyin

Chinese Pinyin Scheme: 1955~ 1957, which was researched and formulated by the Chinese Pinyin Scheme Committee of China Language Reform Commission, was approved and promulgated by the National People's Congress in February, and was recognized as an international standard for spelling Chinese by the International Organization for Standardization.

Peking University Chinese Department China Linguistics Research Center

First, the Chinese Pinyin Scheme and the Chinese Pinyin Movement.

In February 1958, 1 1, the Fifth Session of the First National People's Congress officially approved the publication of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme, and the legal Chinese romanization Pinyin Scheme was born, realizing the dream of the people of China who have worked hard for it since the end of 19. Wu Du, then Premier the State Council and director of the China Language Reform Committee, said: The Chinese Pinyin Scheme is a summary of the historical experience of the people of China in creating Pinyin Scheme in the past 60 years. To understand the profound historical meaning of this sentence, we should start with the Chinese Pinyin Movement in China's modernization movement in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. As early as the 1920s, we had phonetic symbols (19 13 formulation, 19 18 promulgation and implementation) to "standardize the pronunciation of Chinese characters" and unify the national language and characters. Then, why does the Chinese Pinyin movement continue to develop in the Latin direction?

Phonetic Alphabet is the first set of legal phonetic symbols in the history of China, and its publication and use is the beginning of Chinese phonetic notation. However, in the cultural background at that time, the phonetic symbols used traditional national letters (the ancient script of regular script), which was unwise from the perspective of the development of characters, because it did not conform to the Latin trend of most characters in the world, and it was also subject to many restrictions in scientific and technological applications and cultural exchanges. In addition, the symbol itself is not completely pinyin, and several vowels can be further decomposed into smaller phonetic units, such as ㄢ(an), ㄣ(en), ㄤ(ang), ㄥ(eng), ㄠ(ao) and ㄡ(ou). Zhou Enlai pointed out in "The Task of Current Character Reform" (1988): "After the Revolution of 1911, phonetic symbols came into being, which was the first set of phonetic symbols officially published by the state and widely implemented in primary and secondary schools in China. Phonetic symbols have made some contributions to literacy education and phonetic unification. Although today, phonetic symbols still have many shortcomings (for example, as the basis of minority languages and a tool to promote international cultural exchanges, phonetic symbols are obviously far less than Latin letters), we should affirm its historical achievements. It has also played a pioneering role in the phonetic symbol movement in the past 40 years. " This evaluation is undoubtedly fair and comprehensive.

At that time, in the face of all kinds of criticisms after the phonetic symbols were published, and the call for the adoption of Latin letters commonly used in the world, the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of Chinese Language and Characters, on the proposal of Qian, formally established the "Study Committee on the Phonetic Symbols of China Romance", which was composed of 1 1 and its core members were:, Qian, Lin Yutang and Wang Yi.

Because he Qian had made sufficient preparations in theory and practice in advance, one year later, the Research Committee on Romanization of Putonghua submitted the French Pinyin for Romanization of Putonghua (1926). Two years later, it was officially announced by the president of the National Government Academy (that is, the Ministry of Education) and named "Mandarin Phonetic Alphabet No.2", and the original phonetic symbol was called "Mandarin Phonetic Alphabet No.1".

"Mandarin Romance" is the first set of phonetic Latin alphabet Chinese Pinyin scheme drawn up by ourselves and announced by the government during the Chinese character reform Chinese Pinyin Movement. It completely uses ready-made Latin letters, does not need additional symbols and does not create new letters. First, it raises some questions, such as word-for-word linking. As far as its "integrity of writing system and internationalization of symbolic views" is concerned, Guoyu has pushed the Chinese Pinyin movement since the late Qing Dynasty to a new stage (Zhou Youguang language). However, "Guo Luo" has not been seriously implemented, and it has never entered the Chinese teaching system in primary and secondary schools and normal schools, because for Chinese phonetic symbols, it has been used for more than ten years, and it seems that there is no need for a set of national Roman characters with much more complicated recognition and spelling. Because there is no active and effective support from government agencies above, and there is no social foundation below, "the achievement of promoting Roman characters in the national language is equal to zero" (in Zhao Yuanren).

Shortly after the publication of Guoyu, the "Latinized New Characters Movement in China" appeared in the society. Many groups have been set up in Shanghai, Xi, Wuhan, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong to learn Latin neologisms. Among many schemes, the "Latinized New Figures in the North" (hereinafter referred to as "Bella") is the most famous and widely spread, even to Lyon, France, Thailand and other places in Southeast Asia. Various pinyin schemes drawn up by Guoluo, Bella and the Latinized New Characters Movement provided many valuable experiences for judging the Chinese pinyin schemes in the 1950s, so we say that the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is a summary of the historical experience of China people in creating pinyin schemes in the past 60 years.

Second, the design and composition of Chinese Pinyin scheme

After the Academic Conference on Standardization of Modern Chinese (1955), the China Language Reform Commission has stepped up its efforts to cooperate with the popularization of Putonghua. In the second year, the discussion draft of "Chinese Pinyin Scheme (Draft)" (1956) was published, and at the same time, the revised first formula and the revised second formula were published, which caused extensive discussion. After careful consideration and revision, the Cultural Reform Commission submitted a revised draft (1957 438+0438+0), which was adopted by the First National People's Congress on February 1958 and officially promulgated and implemented.

The scheme of Chinese Pinyin adopts 26 Latin letters which are the most widely used in the world. The design concept, the relationship between letters and sounds, the configuration and the spelling method of the scheme can be introduced in six parts according to the content of the scheme: 1. Alphabet, which specifies the order of letters and the pinyin values of letters; 2. Initial consonant list, which specifies the spelling unit of the first syllable in Chinese; 3. Vowel table, which specifies the spelling unit after initials, with one sound and one rhyme, and the initial sound and the final rhyme form syllables; 4. key signature and Tone sandhi rules stipulate the expression method of tone, the necessary component of ideographic syllables; 5. Sound insulation rules, which stipulate the rules for separating syllables during word segmentation and continuous reading; 6. Omit the rules, and stipulate the changes of spelling forms of basic vowels when sounds and rhymes are accompanied. The following six components are explained theoretically in turn.

1. hanyu pinyin scheme and its supplementary letters

The alphabet of the Chinese Pinyin scheme does not include supplementary letters designed to meet the needs of Chinese, but only refers to 26 Latin letters. Latin letters have long been the most popular letters in the world because of their simplicity, clarity, symmetry, beautiful appearance, easy reading and writing, easy addition of additional symbols as needed, or changes into variant letters or combined letters, so they can meet the needs of various languages. Latin alphabet is widely used in Europe, America, Australia, most parts of Africa and some parts of Asia. Most countries that do not use Latin alphabet have legal or universal spelling of Latin alphabet. Once Latin letters are used to record the pronunciation of a language, they become the characters of the language or the letters of the phonetic scheme of the language, such as English letters, German letters, French letters and so on. Therefore, the Latin alphabet in the Chinese phonetic alphabet scheme should be called Chinese phonetic alphabet.

2. The arrangement order of letters in the alphabet is completely in accordance with the original Latin order, and vowels and consonants are staggered, which makes it easier to read, and the application value of the order is higher. Because it is an international arrangement order, it is convenient for coding, book indexing and other applications, and it is convenient for international scientific and cultural exchanges. In the past, Guoluo did not adopt the traditional order of Latin letters, but only listed initials and finals in letters, while New Latin Characters in Northern Dialect (hereinafter referred to as Beila) listed the alphabet, but inserted double letters that were not in the original Latin letters in the arrangement order (such as ch between C and D, rh between R and S, and zh after Z), and cancelled them in the alphabet. In the historical development of Chinese Latinized Pinyin Movement, for the first time, the Chinese Pinyin scheme completely adopted the traditional order of 26 Latin letters, which is obviously conducive to increasing the circulation value and technical value of the scheme.

The pronunciation of Latin letters is based on their pronunciation in Latin, while the Chinese phonetic scheme is the phonetic scheme of Putonghua, so it is necessary to determine a new name sound for the letters (marked with phonetic symbols in the alphabet):

Judging from the name sounds of the alphabet listed above, five vowel words ι o e I u take the Chinese sound values they represent as the name sounds. If ι is O, if there are several sounds in a symbol, the main pronunciation is the name sound, such as I and E. Consonant letters (including Y and W) are combined with vowels to form a name sound, because vowels are loud-sounding musical sounds, and letters representing vowels are self-sounding letters, while consonants are silent letters. Because they represent noise and are not loud, a vowel must be added to make them sound loud. The principle of naming names should not only conform to international practice, but also consider its distinguishing ability in Chinese. For example, the reason why N doesn't pronounce ên is because many Chinese dialects are difficult to distinguish from L. One pronunciation is ê n and the other is easy to distinguish from each other.

In addition to the alphabet, the Chinese Pinyin scheme also designs a number of supplementary letters on the basis of Latin letters. Because according to the traditional reduction, 26 Latin letters can only represent a little more than 20 phonemes, some of which have the same sound values, such as C, Q, K and X, which do not represent independent phonemes. Therefore, using 26 Latin letters to express Chinese pronunciation, from the configuration relationship between letters and pronunciation, on the one hand, there will be redundant letters, on the other hand, there will be missing letters, if some letters are not added, it will not meet the needs of expressing Chinese pronunciation. Therefore, in addition to 26 basic letters, the scheme also adds four double letters from the original letter combination: zh ch sh ng；; By adding symbols to the original letters, two additional letters Mi and ü are added. All supplementary letters are not included in the alphabet, which is the practice of most countries that adopt Latin letters, in order to maintain the traditional order of Latin letters and facilitate international scientific, technological and cultural exchanges.

In the letter composition of the Chinese Pinyin scheme, in order to make the syllable spelling form short, a shortened form is also designed for four double letters (the last one borrows the international phonetic alphabet). These letters are actually impassable because of the influence of handwriting on continuous writing and the inconvenience of keyboard and printing.

2. The initials and finals are the smallest pronunciation units in phonology, and the division of vowels and consonants is based on the phonetic features of western phoneme systems, while the traditional Chinese phonology is based on the phonetic analysis of square characters according to the characteristics of Chinese characters. After the tone part of Chinese characters is divided, the basic structure of Chinese characters is further analyzed into two parts: initials and finals. One sound and one rhyme, the first sound and the last rhyme, the combination of sound and rhyme, and one tone form the tone of a Chinese character. Therefore, to design a pinyin spelling scheme for Chinese, there must always be a list of initials and a list of finals, which is not available in the western pinyin writing system. Mastering these dozens of initials and finals means mastering the basic components of Chinese phonetic system, and adding a tone can read the pronunciation of any Chinese character.

The initial consonant list 1 of the Chinese phonetic scheme * * * includes 2 1 consonants, and the list is as follows:

The initials list includes three supplementary letters zh ch sh, which are not listed in the alphabet and can be used as initials. The arrangement of initials is also different from the mixed arrangement of meta-consonants in the alphabet. It adopts the arrangement method of pronunciation parts in phonetics, which are: lip sound bpmm f, tip sound d t n l, tongue root sound g k h, tongue surface sound j q x, post-tip sound zh ch sh r, and pre-tip sound z c s.

The phonetic symbols below the Latin letters in the initial list represent the phonetic values of the initial, such as b and ㄅ, which all indicate that the lip sound is not aspirated and clear [P]; F and both stand for lip fricative [f]. The Chinese character on the right of the night symbol is the pronunciation of the initial consonant, such as the Chinese character "Bo Po Touches Buddha", in which "b p m f" or "ㄅㄆㄇㄈ" is the initial consonant, and the vowel O or ㄜ constitutes the pronunciation-Bo Po Touches Buddha or ㄅㄜㄆㄈ. If you don't add vowels to form pronunciation, the consonants themselves (local sounds) will be hard to hear clearly.

For the same reason, letters should have a name sound in the alphabet and a call sound in the initial list. Then why is the name sound of the same letter B, B ? (ㄅㄛㄝ, Bo) and the address sound Bo (ㄅㄛㄛ, Bo)? That's because the alphabet and the initial consonant list are not arranged in the same order, and the position of adding vowels is different from what vowels are added (international habits should be considered in the alphabet), so the initial consonant list with name sounds will be difficult to read, and vice versa. But from the perspective of pinyin, the name sound is also suitable for Chinese pinyin, because it is consistent with the sound value contained in the initial pronunciation. Comparing (ㄅㄝ with bo(ㄅㄜ), ha(ㄏㄚ (with he(ㄏㄜ) and jie(ㄐㄧㄝ), the phonetic symbols have been used for decades. Therefore, the difference between the pronunciation of a name and the pronunciation of a address can be considered that the former is only for saying letters, regardless of whether it acts as an initial consonant or not, and the latter is the name after acting as an initial consonant. They can keep their pronunciation and do their own work.

3. Vowel table and its explanation

The vowels in the Chinese phonetic scheme are based on the four-tone classification of Chinese phonology, and the list is as follows:

The vowels in the first vertical line in the table are collectively referred to as open-mouthed vowels, which are regarded as the phonological sounds in Chinese phonology. This rhyme is preceded by I for straight vowels (the second vertical line), by U for closed vowels (the third vertical line) and by U for closed vowels (the fourth vertical line).

According to the four-call classification, the vowels are arranged in four vertical rows according to different vowels, and peers generally show the similarities and differences between vowels in horizontal rows, that is, the same horizontal vowel usually belongs to the same rhyme category. For example, an ia ua has three different vowels, but the original rhyme {rhyme belly and rhyme ending} is the same and belongs to the same rhyme category, which is called the rhyme in thirteen strokes; From the fifth row to the eleventh row, the order is Huailai, Huidui, Yaotiao, Youqiu, Yan Qian, Renchen and Jiangyang. But for the sake of neatness, the three vowels in the fourth row belong to two rhymes in thirteen strokes, ie and üe belong to overlapping snow rhymes, and E belongs to the third row with O and uo. The first three vowels also belong to two rhymes, I and ü belong to Yi rhyme, and U belongs to Gusu rhyme. In addition, letters are different from phonetic symbols and cannot be subdivided like phonetic symbols. On the other hand, for striking reading and avoiding writing confusion, it is necessary to distinguish phonetically indistinguishable letters. For example, the letter I actually represents three different vowels: lingual vowel [i], vowel before the tip of the tongue [] and vowel after the tip of the tongue [], which do not belong to the same rhyme category. After the four-call classification of vowels, the two vowels do not belong to the same, but belong to the open call: vowel. From the phonological point of view, ong and ONG belong to the Middle East rhyme with eng, ing and ueng, and the phonetic display belongs to the same rhyme category.

There are 35 vowels listed in the vowel list, but not all vowels in Mandarin. According to the description in the vowel table (1), the vowels of seven syllables such as "knowing, though, poetry, joy, capital, female and thinking" are I; (2) Vowel is written as er, and when it is used as the ending, it is written as r; (3) When vowels are used alone, they should be written as vowels, so four vowels {-i should be added to represent [] and [] respectively. Therefore, according to the hanyu pinyin scheme, Mandarin has 2 1 vowel, and * * has 39 vowels.

Notes (4) and (5) under the vowel list respectively specify vowels starting with I, U and U, the writing form when there is no initial in front of them, and the ellipsis form when three vowels iou, uei and uen are spelled in front of them, which will be explained and discussed below.

(Transferred from Language Weekly)