From: TAN@CWU.BITNET
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: pinyin reform
Date: 21 Dec 92 04:47:00 GMT
Organization: Indiana University
X-Envelope-To: soc.culture.china@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu
X-Vms-To: IN%"soc.culture.china@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu"

From:   IN%"HUSS8397@iscsvax.uni.edu" 19-DEC-1992 15:34:21.56
>
>>Example 1:
>>
>>1. zhe, 2. zzhe, 3. zhhe, 4. zhee, 5. zhe

>        This system violates some of the main rules that must be kept in
>consideration when developing a phonetic alphabet: Simplicity, Ease of learning
>and keeping in mind who your audience.  If you are going to modify pinyin it is
>best not to make it so difficult that it must be completely relearned.  You
>system is a good idea but is unnecessarily complicated.  Most of the people on
>this discussion group have taken to putting the tonal number directly after the
>word (ie Ni3de da3suan4 tai4 kun4nan3).  The audience that you are aiming at
>most likely already has a background in Chinese and Pinyin.  This system would
>not take much longer than a minute to learn.


>Thanks
>Mark Huss
>University of Northern Iowa.

It is true that this system is more difficult even for Chinese children for
following two reasons:

1. The diacritical marks (-, /, v, \) above the main vowels are easier to
perceive than the doubled letters;

2. The kids have to learn to perceive all doubled letters as single letter. For
instance, aa = a, bb = b, cc = c, etc.  They don't have to do this for the
current pinyin system.

For Chinese people who have known pinyin well, the difficulty is understandably
greater.  They have to unlearn the traditional spelling.  For the foreigners,
this method may bring more troubles as an aid in learning hanzi.

My purpose is to develop an independent writing system to ultimately
replace the characters, rather than merely transliterate them.  The basic
ideas are as follows:

A hanzi is composed of two parts: semantic and phonetic.  The semantic part
is a modification of current character radicals.  The Xinhua dictionary
lists 176 radicals.  A Chinese linguist has reduced the number to 50 by
combination, or modification of existing radicals. Theoretically, it is
possible to further reduce the number of radicals to about 30.  I
conceptualize this set of radicals as 'semantical alphabet' of Chinese
language.

The other set is 'phonetical alphabet'. It is a reformed
pinyin system.  The difference is that only the lowercase letters are adopted.
No uppercase letters will be used.

This system has two advantages.  First, each hanzi can has a
distinct spelling that is combination of the semantic and phonetic parts, or
variations. Therefore, when substituting the characters in classical books,
this system will preserve all the subtlety of these works.  Furthermore, it
will be much better than hanzi in developing modern Chinese language.

Second, a typewriter as simple as one for alphabetic languages will possibly be
designed.  The semantic alphabet will take the positions for uppercase letters,
while lowercase letters will remain same.  Of course, the arrangement of
letters on keyboard can be different from standard English keyboard.

For transliteration, Ni3de da3suan4 tai4 kun4nan3 (Your plan is too
difficult) is viable, but may not as an independent writing system.

Your comments, suggestions, and criticism are sincerely welcome!


Julian Zhang

P. S.:
I cannot read soc.culture.china, but can send email to the net. Thus, please
send your comments, opinions, and criticism to both the net and me.  My email
address is: TAN@CWU.