  gwoyeu romatzyh (pinyin: guÃ³yÇ luÃ³mÇzÃ¬, literally "national language romanization"),. in 1937 the sinologist trittel coined the german translation "lateinumschrift der reichssprache" (defrancis[1950]: ch 4, footnote 4). abbreviated gr, is a system for writing mandarin chinese in the latin alphabet. the system was conceived by y.r. chao (zhao yuanren) and developed by a group of linguists including chao and lin yutang from 1925 to 1926. chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using gr. in addition a small number of other textbooks and dictionaries in gr were published in hong kong and overseas from 1942 to 2000. gr is the better known of the two romanization systems which indicate the four tones of mandarin by varying the spelling of syllables ("tonal spelling").the only other romanization system to utilize tonal spelling is simplified wade, a modified form of wade-giles devised by swedish linguist olov bertil anderson. these tones are as fundamental to the chinese language as vowels are to english; their presence lets speakers discriminate between otherwise identical syllables and words."a word pronounced in a wrong tone or inaccurate tone sounds as puzzling as if one said bud in english, meaning 'not good' or 'the thing one sleeps in.'" chao(1948):24. other systems indicate the tones with either diacritics (for example pinyin: Äi, Ã¡i, Çi and Ã i) or numbers (wade-giles: ai1, ai2, etc.). gr spells the same four tones ai, air, ae and ay.in these examples air (Ã¡i) with a rising tone means "cancer", while ay (Ã i) with a falling tone means "love". these spellings, which follow specific rules, indicate the tones while retaining the pronunciation of the syllable ai. chao claimed that, b
Chinese_dictionaries Romanization_of_Chinese