| Speak Chinese in English by Shang Zuo |
| Making friends from different cultures often makes us think about what we got used to. One example is a question a friend asked. "How do you type Chinese on the computer?" The short answer is, we have some sort of mapping between Chinese characters and English letters. Software is available that helps users input Chinese by actually typing 26 Latin letters on a standard keyboard. The long answer is ... rather long. The history of how the Chinese invented the system, which is called Pinyin, is worth studying. Actually, many people have already seen and used Pinyin. Chinese names translated to English and imported words like Feng Shui are all written in Pinyin. Unlike English and most other languages, which could be spelled by a limited number of basic letters, Chinese characters are a vast set. A literate should know nearly ten thousand. The most inconvenient part is, when you look at a character, you don't necessarily know how to pronounce it. In ancient times, this was never a problem, because education was a privilege of the upper classes. However, it became important to invent a tool to facilitate Chinese language-learning when modern China started to bring education to the masses. When we look at China's history, we must keep the turbulent background in mind. When the West used warships to open the gates of the Qing Empire, the Chinese suddenly faced the bitter fact that we had been left so far behind. It was not only a matter of a reform, but a revolution, a choice between survival and extinction of the civilization. Many radical ideas were introduced. Some proposed to abandon the writing system altogether. Even though it seems ridiculous and incredible today, the proposal appeared like a reasonable option. After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Chinese Language Reform Committee was established in 1952. Their job was: first, simplify Chinese characters; second, popularize the common speech (putong hua); and third, invent a new character set to identify Chinese language pronunciations. The three goals were all controversial, though I'm only going to focus on the last one. It might surprise some readers that using Latin letters in Pinyin was only one proposal among many others. When scholars and linguists worked on the project, they considered how to preserve the traditions of Chinese characters. I personally imagine that a new character set according to the idea would look very much like Korean and Japanese characters. Different schools on the committee couldn't reach a consensus. By 1955, the committee had received 655 different proposals from the whole country. In 1956, during a meeting of the committee with party leaders, Mao Zedong expressed his preference to use Latin letters. The decision was thus made. In 1958, Pinyin was published and became a national standard. As an ordinary Pinyin user, I have nothing to complain with it. It's not perfect, but is easy to use; not a marvel, but a solid tool. However, English speakers often find it hard to pronounce the English translations of Chinese names. That's mainly because the Pinyin system was primarily designed for Chinese pronunciation only, not the other way around. Because English and Chinese languages have pronunciations uniquely their own, English speakers may be confused by the likes of Qi and Xi. When the world entered the computer age, the Chinese faced a new challenge of how to enter Chinese characters into computers. Software companies invented various kinds of input software. Computer users became puzzled by all these inventions on the market. Within a decade, a few softwares won. Some professional input softwares that stress speed could take a month of training to master. But popular input softwares are all based on Pinyin, because most people are familiar and comfortable with it. The learning curve of using it on keyboard is very short. In the dawn of the computer era, we all heard voices saying that the Chinese language couldn't survive the new age and that it was doomed. At the same time, others claimed that attempts to modify quintessential Chinese characters were crimes and an evil scheme of communists. In reality, we often encounter such a theme. When a country fails, people are too desperate, or incapable, or not willing, to find the causes and solutions. Instead, they simply blame "culture." On the other hand, too much arrogance, or an attitude of "We are so good," only means detachment from reality. The cost could be huge. |
 |
 |