Thanks to the Guardian, this video of the one of the founding fathers of pinyin, Zhōu Yǒuguāng 周有光, is meandering the blogosphere. Hat tip to pinyin.info for the reference.
Beijing Sounds doesn’t often pick up newsy memes cuz I figure you hear about them elsewhere. And maybe I shouldn’t in this case either, since if you read BJS you probably read the pinyin.info blog as well.
But Zhōu Yǒuguāng is worth highlighting for foundational pinyin work like The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, which is on my purchase list but not yet bought (pinyin.info has a chapter available here). He’s also just a great guy to listen to, which you’ll see if you check out the aforementioned video. He also happens to reside in Beijing — icing on the cake for Beijing Sounds.
There’s at least a little more video of him available. Inspired by the clip, I searched for other 周有光 videos and came across this 30 minute piece (in Mandarin). You can forgive the hagiographical style because Zhōu himself seems so pure in his devotion to his work. And when you hear the quote below, you’ll be reminded that pinyin now plays an integral role in Mandarin education not only for us Zhonglish speakers, but for elementary students and teachers across the country as well. While we may whine that the script isn’t as widespread as we’d like, it’s worth expressing gratitude for the hard work that Zhōu and others have done to bring pinyin to the level of acceptance it has today.
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Zhōu: 我问了好多小学教师，
wǒ wènle hǎoduō xiǎoxué jiāoshī
I’ve asked a lot of elementary teachers我说如果今天没有拼音，
wǒ shuō rúguǒ jīntiān méiyǒu pīnyīn
I say, if today there wasn’t pinyin你们有困难吗？
nǐmen yǒu kùnnan ma?
would it be difficult for you?他们说那样儿不行啊！
tāmen shuō nèiyàngr bùxíng a
They say: that would be no good你拿掉了拼音，我不会教书
nǐ nádiào le pīnyīn, wǒ búhuì jiāo shū!
If you take away pinyin, I wouldn’t be able to teach! [laughing]
Yeah, and without pinyin I wouldn’t be able to write down what I hear, either.
With that, it’s the weekend, and I propose a grateful toast to all those who’ve brought us this descriptive, usable script.
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Comments 2
Your blog is very interesting, and I am curious to know who you are, but I can’t find your name anywhere on the site (no, I didn’t read every post). Can you identify yourself to me?
I am an American living in Jilin City, Jilin Province. I’ve been living here for more than five years.
Posted 29 Feb 2008 at 5:32 am ¶Hi Randy, thanks for stopping by. Yes, even if you read everything on the blog, you won’t find my real name, if that’s what you’re asking about. But that’s not much of a secret either, as those who email me know (maybe my email is too well hidden? It’s bjshengr -at- gmail -dot- com. I’ll put it back in the sidebar where I used to have it before my big technology change a few weeks ago).
The original idea of publishing with some semblance of anonymity was just to make it slightly less easy to connect my professional life with this blog via my real name. Not that anyone cares. Not that I write anything controversial. Not that my professional life has anything to do with this blog. But people are weird.
I’m beginning to wonder, though, if it isn’t a little bizarre and paranoid. Still debating.
In any case, there are probably enough personal details in the blog that you could know more about me than your neighbor. Email me if you’d like more!
Posted 29 Feb 2008 at 5:52 pm ¶Post a Comment