"It’s a good way to read by phonetic notation. One tree has two flowers, one takes off the illiterate hat and the other learns Mandarin." In those days, a song by a farmer in Shanxi province sang the common people’s love for Chinese Pinyin. Since the Fifth Session of the First National People’s Congress in 1958 approved and promulgated the Chinese Pinyin Scheme, Chinese Pinyin has gone through 60 years. Nowadays, Chinese Pinyin has penetrated into all aspects of people’s lives and become an indispensable language tool, whether it is the introduction to primary school students’ literacy, the sorting of phonetic notation in data retrieval, or the spelling input in network input.
The scientific phonetic notation scheme was originally formulated to eliminate illiteracy.
Why do you want to promote Chinese Pinyin? "The original purpose is actually very simple, that is, to find a good way to eliminate illiteracy. It is understood that at the beginning of the founding of New China, 80% of people were illiterate, and stalls for writing letters can often be seen in the streets and alleys of Beijing. " Wu Benyuan, the grandson of Mr. Wu Yuzhang, who was the director of the China Character Reform Committee, recalled: "My grandfather Wu Yuzhang said at the inaugural meeting of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region New Character Association in 1940,’ If China wants to build a new democratic country, it will not be established if the whole country is full of illiteracy.’ This is also the original intention of his efforts to explore and promote the reform of Chinese characters and develop the Chinese Pinyin Scheme. "
So, at the suggestion of Wu Yuzhang and others, on October 10th, 1949, the 10th day after the founding of New China, Mao Zedong personally approved the establishment of the China Character Reform Association, and launched three major measures, namely simplifying Chinese characters, popularizing Putonghua and formulating and popularizing Chinese Pinyin, and began the arduous task of eliminating illiteracy.
How to work out a scientific and simple phonetic notation scheme? Is it to inherit the tradition of straight pronunciation and anti-tangency in ancient China and absorb the phonetic notation method of foreign missionaries, or to adopt the pinyin scheme created by modern Chinese? According to reports, during the formulation of the Chinese pinyin scheme, there was a wave of people designing pinyin schemes. These schemes can be described as varied, some use radicals of Chinese characters as letters, some use pure Latin letters and pure Russian letters, and some use simple lines to express letters in terms of size, length and direction … But it also fully shows that "the drafting of Chinese phonetic alphabet schemes has been an urgent demand of the people of China for a long time".
According to reports, the National People’s Congress passed the Pinyin Scheme in 1958, but this was only the standard of China. It was not until 1982 that the Chinese Pinyin Scheme was recognized as an international standard.
It has improved the national quality and become a cultural bridge to enter the international arena.
As one of the "great inventions of China in the 20th century", Chinese Pinyin has shown great vitality since its implementation for 60 years, and has made great contributions to popularizing national education, improving national quality, safeguarding national unity and promoting national development.
Statistics show that the illiteracy rate in China has dropped from more than 80% at the beginning of the founding of New China in the past 60 years to 4.08% in 2011. In 2017, the proportion of literate people using standardized Chinese characters exceeded 95%, and the popularization rate of Putonghua reached over 73%. At the same time, based on the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme, the state helped 12 ethnic minorities to create and improve 16 national languages in Latin alphabet, which played an important role in the inheritance of national culture. Designed and compiled the Chinese Finger Alphabet Scheme and the National General Braille Scheme, which provided great convenience for the study and life of the disabled …
In the information society, hanyu pinyin also provides a strong support for the inheritance and dissemination of Chinese language and culture. "The meaning of informatization is mainly information coding and information interaction. In modern society, Chinese should not only accept foreign words, but also enter the international community, especially the names of people, places, institutions and things in China. In this case, hanyu pinyin with Latin letters shows great advantages. " Li Lan, a researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "In addition, with the popularization of computers and the Internet, the Chinese character input method based on Chinese Pinyin has been widely used because of its convenience and easy learning, which has played an important role in the smooth realization of culture in computers."
Nowadays, Hanyu Pinyin has extended from "the key to domestic culture" to "the bridge to international culture". "Chinese characters are ideographic characters, and foreigners can’t get pronunciation directly from their glyphs, so in the primary stage, pinyin is generally adopted to help Chinese beginners get started quickly. Some listening and speaking courses don’t even teach Chinese characters, but mainly use Chinese Pinyin to improve their oral ability. " Zhao Guocheng, deputy director of Hanban, said: "At present, 526 Confucius Institutes and 1,113 Confucius Classrooms have been established in 147 countries and regions around the world. It can be said that wherever Confucius Institutes go, Chinese Pinyin goes."
Adapt to informationization and intelligence, and help build a strong cultural country.
"If the first 30 years of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme were mainly about phonetic notation for Chinese characters, spelling Putonghua and eliminating illiteracy, and it gradually developed from a national standard to an international standard, then the main achievements in the last 30 years are to adapt to modernization, informationization, intelligence and internationalization." Chen Zhangtai, former deputy director and researcher of the State Language Committee, said that with the rapid development of the times and the continuous progress of society, this achievement of Chinese Pinyin will become more and more obvious.
The new era has given new meaning to the development of language and writing. In the next step, what new actions will Chinese Pinyin take? Du Zhanyuan, vice minister of the Ministry of Education and director of the State Language Committee, said: We must win the tough battle of popularizing and getting rid of poverty. The education of Chinese Pinyin should be well planned, which will play a greater role in improving the level of Putonghua in rural areas and the popularization rate of Putonghua in ethnic areas, and open up the "last mile" for realizing the Millennium dream of "speaking the same language". It is necessary to improve the informatization level of language and writing. Give further play to the basic role of Chinese Pinyin in the development of information technology and artificial intelligence, and focus on supporting the research of intelligent key technologies such as speech and text recognition and language understanding for machine translation and intelligent language learning. We should promote the application of Chinese Pinyin. Strengthen the construction of language and writing standards, pay attention to service education and the needs of special groups, and enhance the ability of Chinese Pinyin to serve economic and social development. It is necessary to help build a strong cultural country. Accelerate the research and formulation of "Chinese Tongyun" based on "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" and Putonghua phonetic system, and promote the development and prosperity of Chinese poetry and verse literature. At the same time, efforts are made to plan the role of Chinese Pinyin in the application of international standards, international Chinese education and international cultural exchanges, and to play a good role as a cultural tool and a link between international standards. (Reporter Ding Yazhen)
Extended reading
Chinese phonetic history
In ancient China, the straight tone method and the reverse tangent method were used;
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, missionaries Matteo Ricci and Jinnige spelled the pronunciation of Chinese characters with Latin letters.
In 1867, wade, an Englishman, published the textbook "A Collection of Languages from Yours" as a phonetic notation tool for embassy staff to learn Chinese.
In 1892, Lu Taizhang, an advocate of modern pinyin characters, made his own phonetic new words after imitating the strokes of Latin letters;
In the early years of the Republic of China, the phonetic alphabet movement was carried out, and the sounds were recorded with simple symbols of Chinese character strokes;
During the May 4th Movement, the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of Mandarin formulated the Roman characters of Mandarin.
In 1930s, the Latinized New Characters Movement was launched.
In 1958, the Chinese Pinyin Scheme was promulgated;
In 1977, at the Third United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, a resolution was passed to spell the geographical names of China according to the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme.
