Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Modern Spoken Chinese
- Part II Modern Written Chinese
- Part III The modern Chinese writing system
- 8 Basic features of the Chinese writing system
- 9 Simplification of the traditional writing system
- 10 Phonetization of Chinese
- 11 Use and reform of the Chinese writing system: present and future
- 12 Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
10 - Phonetization of Chinese
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Modern Spoken Chinese
- Part II Modern Written Chinese
- Part III The modern Chinese writing system
- 8 Basic features of the Chinese writing system
- 9 Simplification of the traditional writing system
- 10 Phonetization of Chinese
- 11 Use and reform of the Chinese writing system: present and future
- 12 Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Efforts by Western missionaries
Although the 'Phags-pa script, created between 1260 and 1269 at the behest of the founding emperor of the Yuan dynasty, Yuan Shizu, was also used to transcribe Chinese and other languages, it was designed primarily for writing Mongolian. The first schemes specifically designed for the phonetization, or more specifically, romanization of Chinese were all developed by Western missionaries in China. Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit who went to China in 1583 from Italy, is generally believed to be the first person to design a systematic romanized writing for Chinese. His scheme was later modified by another Jesuit missionary in China, Nicolas Trigault. Basically, their schemes served two purposes, to transcribe Chinese proper names, and to help foreigners learn Chinese, in particular the Chinese characters. As recorded in the literature (DeFrancis 1950; J. Li 1935; Ni 1948a; 1948b; Y. G. Zhou 1979:19), quite a few dictionaries were compiled on the basis of these schemes for the convenience of missionaries.
Because of conflict between the Jesuits and the Imperial Court of the Qing Dynasty, the influence of Jesuits in China in the eighteenth century was reduced to a minimum. As a consequence, the romanization of Chinese that they had initiated lay dormant for nearly a century, and was not revived until the early 1800s. The British Protestant missionary Robert Morrison (1782–1834) published a dictionary during 1815–23, in which he introduced a romanization system that he had designed for Mandarin Chinese.
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- Information
- Modern ChineseHistory and Sociolinguistics, pp. 164 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999