Zhou Youguang, Father of Chinese Romanization, Dies at 111

[Bernardo de La Paz]

Source: Assoc. Press

Zhou Youguang, a linguist considered the father of modern China's Pinyin Romanization system, died Saturday at the age of 111.

Born in 1906 during China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing, Zhou died at his home in Beijing, one day after celebrating his birthday, according to state broadcaster Chinese Central Television and other official media outlets.

After receiving a Western-style education at Shanghai's St. John's University, Zhou moved to the United States and for a time worked as a banker on Wall Street.

Returning to China along with other idealistic youths after the communist victory in 1949, he was placed in charge of a committee working on a new system to allow Chinese characters to be converted into Roman script.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/zhou-youguang-father-chinese-romanization-system-dies-44775454

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What an accomplished and long life. Wow.

"汉语拼音之父"周有光去世 享年112岁"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Youguang

Zhou Youguang (Chinese: 周有光; pinyin: Zhōu Yǒuguāng; 13 January 1906 – 14 January 2017) was a Chinese economist, banker, linguist, sinologist, publisher and supercentenarian, known as the "father of Pinyin",[1][2] a system for romanization of Mandarin Chinese which was officially adopted by the Chinese government in 1958, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982, and the United Nations in 1986.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is normally written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters.

The Hanyu Pinyin system was developed in the 1950s based on earlier forms of romanization of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times.[1] The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard in 1982.[2] The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is used for romanization alone (in part to make areas more English-friendly) rather than for educational and computer-input purposes.[3][4]

[Kaleva]

1. As he got older, he made more and more mistakes

[hunter]

3. Such things go both ways.

Relying on dictionaries or machine translations is a very dangerous business... especially if you are getting a tattoo (Buzzfeed).

[Feeling the Bern]

4. actually, the first character, "gan"

干 means do, dry, and fuck.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Funny, ha ha, but that's not a Pinyin mistake and certainly not his mistake. . . nt

[hunter]

2. His was an amazing story when you think about it.

Here's a picture from the BBC article:



The Latin alphabet obviously makes the language much more accessible to those whose written languages use alphabets, especially Latin alphabets.

It also makes it easier to use computers and cellphones, so much so that there are some fears people are forgetting Chinese characters.

I remember when the American press was transitioning from the older Wade-Giles system, imposed on China from the outside, to the Pinyin.

Peking became Beijing, and so on.