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Gwoyeu Romatzyh
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Gwoyeu Romatzyh (literally "National [Language] Romanization"), 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").
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Gwoyeu Romatzyh (literally "National [Language] Romanization"), 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"). These tones are a fundamental part of the Chinese language: to a Chinese speaker they are no less a component of a word than vowels are to an English speaker. Tones in Chinese allow speakers to discriminate between otherwise identical syllables—in other words they are phonemic. Other systems indicate the tones with either diacritics (for example Pinyin: ai, ái, ai and ài) or numbers (Wade-Giles: ai1, ai2, etc.). GR spells the same four tones ai, air, ae and ay. These spellings, which follow specific rules, indicate the tones while retaining the pronunciation of the syllable ai. Because it embeds the tone of each syllable in its spelling, GR may help students to master Chinese tones—though some academics dispute this claim.
In 1928 China adopted GR as the nation's official romanization system. GR was used to indicate pronunciations in dictionaries of the National (Mandarin-based) Language. Its proponents hoped one day to establish it as a writing system for a reformed Chinese script. But despite support from a small number of trained linguists in China and overseas, GR met with public indifference and even hostility due to its complexity. Another obstacle preventing its widespread adoption was the fact that it was too narrowly based on the Beijing dialect, in a period lacking a strong centralized government to enforce its use. Eventually GR lost ground to Pinyin and other later romanization systems. However, its influence is still evident, as several of the principles introduced by its creators have been used in romanization systems that followed it. Its pattern of tone spelling remains in the standard spelling of the Chinese province of Shaanxi (shanxi), which cannot be distinguished from Shanxi (shanxi) when written in pinyin without diacritics.
History
, who first proposed tonal spelling]]
Tonal spelling, Gwoyeu Romatzyh's most distinctive feature, was first suggested to Y.R Chao by Lin Yutang. By 1922 Chao had already established the main principles of GR.
The details of the system were developed in 1925–1926 by a group of five linguists, led by Chao and including Lin, under the auspices of the Preparatory Commission for the Unification of the National Language. In 1928 GR was officially adopted by the government. GR was intended to be used alongside the existing Juhin (Zhùyin) phonetic symbols: hence the alternative name for GR, "Second Pattern of the National Alphabet." Both systems were used to indicate the revised standard of pronunciation in the new official Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use of 1932. The designers of GR had greater ambitions: their aim was complete reform of the script, using GR as a practical system of writing.
, the chief designer of GR, as a young man ca. 1916]]
In the 1930s two shortlived attempts were made to teach GR to railway workers and peasants in Hénán and Shandong provinces. Support for GR, being confined to a small number of trained linguists and Sinologists, "was distinguished more for its quality than its quantity." During this period GR faced increasing hostility because of the complexity of its tonal spelling. Conversely, Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren criticised GR for its lack of phonetic rigour. Ultimately, like the rival (toneless) system Latinxua Sinwenz, GR failed to gain widespread support, principally because the "National" language was too narrowly based on Beijing speech: "a sufficiently precise and strong language norm had not yet become a reality in China".
A vestigial use of GR in mainland China can be seen in the official spelling of the first syllable of Shaanxi for Shanxi province, to distinguish it from Shanxi province, particularly in foreign-language text where the tone marks are often omitted. Some prominent Chinese have used GR to transliterate their names: for example the mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern. The romanization system was changed by the government of the People's Republic of China in 1958 to the current system used now in the country, and other foreign and international institutions, like the United Nations, the Library of Congress, the International Organization for Standardization, and is widely used to teach Mandarin Chinese to foreign students: Hanyu Pinyin. Meanwhile, in the Republic of China (Taiwan), GR survived until the 1970s as a pronunciation aid in monolingual dictionaries such as Gwoyeu Tsyrdean [Guóyu Cídian] and Tsyrhuey [Cíhuì], but was officially replaced in 1986 by a modified form known as MPS II.
Description
Note: In this section the word "tone" is abbreviated as "T": thus T1 stands for Tone 1 (first tone), etc. To assist readers unfamiliar with GR, Pinyin equivalents have been added in brackets.
Basic forms (Tone 1)
An important GR innovation, later adopted by Pinyin, was to use contrasting unvoiced/voiced pairs of consonants from Latin to represent aspirated and unaspirated sounds in Chinese. For example b and p represent and (p and p‘ in Wade). A potentially confusing feature of GR is the use of j, ch, and sh to represent two different series of sounds. When followed by i these letters correspond to the alveolo-palatal sounds (Pinyin j, q, and x); otherwise they correspond to the retroflex sounds (Pinyin zh, ch, and sh). Readers used to Pinyin need to pay particular attention to these spellings: for example, GR ju, jiu, and jiou correspond to Pinyin zhu, ju, and jiu respectively.
GR orthography has these additional notable features:
iu represents the close front rounded vowel spelt ü or in many cases simply u in Pinyin.Final -y represents allophones of i ( and ): GR shy and sy correspond to Pinyin shi and si respectively.el corresponds to Pinyin er (-r being reserved to indicate Tone2). The most important use of -(e)l is as a rhotacization suffix, as in ideal = i dean + -(e)l, "a little" (yìdianr).A number of frequently-occurring morphemes have abbreviated spellings in GR. The commonest of these are: -g (-ge), -j (-zhe), -m (-me), sh (shi) and -tz (-zi).
Tonal modifications
By default, the basic GR spelling described above is used for Tone1 syllables. The basic form is then modified to indicate tones 2, 3 and 4. This is accomplished in one of three ways:
- either a vowel is changed to another vowel resembling it in sound (
i to y, for example, or u to w)
r or h) is added after the vowel.
Wherever possible the concise first method is used. The following rules of thumb cover most cases.
Tone 1 (basic form)
shiue, chuan, chang, hai, bau (xue, chuan, chang, hai, bao)
Tone 2: i/u ? y/w; or add -r
shyue, chwan, charng, hair, baur (xué, chuán, cháng, hái, báo)
Tone 3: i/u ? e/o; or double vowel
sheue, choan, chaang, hae, bao (xue, chuan, chang, hai, bao)
Tone 4: change/double final letter; or add -h
shiueh, chuann, chanq, hay, baw (xuè, chuàn, chàng, hài, bào)
Neutral tone: precede with a dot (full stop)
perng.yeou, dih.fang (péngyou, dìfang).
Exception Syllables with an initial sonorant (l-/m-/n-/r-) use the basic form for T2 rather than T1. In these syllables the (rarer) T1 is marked with -h- as the second letter. For example mha is T1 (ma), whereas ma is T2 (má). T3 and T4 are regular: maa (ma) and mah (mà).
Compounds as words
An important principle of GR is that syllables which form words should be written together. This strikes speakers of European languages as obvious; but in Chinese the concept of "word" is not easy to pin down. The basic unit of speech is popularly thought to be the monosyllable represented by a character ( tzyh, zì), which in most cases represents a meaningful syllable or morpheme, a smaller unit than the "linguistic word". Characters are written and printed with no spaces between words; yet in practice most Chinese words consist of two-syllable compounds, and it was Chao's bold innovation in 1922 to reflect this in GR orthography by grouping the appropriate syllables together into words. This represented a radical departure from hyphenated Wade-Giles forms such as Kuo2-yü3 Lo2-ma3-tzu4 (the Wade spelling of GR). This principle, illustrated in the extract below, was later adopted in Pinyin.
Texts
Y.R. Chao used GR in four influential works:
A Concise Dictionary of Spoken Chinese (in collaboration with Lien Sheng Yang) (1947)Mandarin Primer (1948)
- This course was originally used in the Army Specialized Training Program at the Harvard School for Overseas Administration in 1943–1944 and subsequently in civilian courses.
A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (1968a) "Sayable" in this context means colloquial, as opposed to the vernacular Chinese (bairhuah, Pinyin báihuà) style often read by students.
Readings in Sayable Chinese was written "to supply the advanced student of spoken Chinese with reading matter which he can actually use in his speech." It consists of three volumes of Chinese text with facing GR romanization. They contain some lively recorded dialogues, "Fragments of an autobiography," two plays and a translation of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (Tzoou daw Jinqtz lii). Two extracts from Tzoou daw Jinqtz lii with facing translations can be read online.
In 1942 Walter Simon introduced GR to English-speaking sinologists in a special pamphlet, The New Official Chinese Latin Script. Over the remainder of the 1940s he published a series of textbooks and readers, as well as a Chinese-English Dictionary, all using GR. His son Harry Simon later went on to use GR in scholarly papers on Chinese linguistics.
In 1960 Y.C. Liu, a colleague of Walter Simon's at SOAS, published Fifty Chinese Stories. These selections from classical texts were presented in both classical and modern Chinese, together with GR romanizations and romanized Japanese versions prepared by Simon (by that time Professor Emeritus of Chinese in the University of London).
Lin Yutang's Chinese-English dictionary (1972) incorporated a number of innovative features, one of which was a simplified version of GR. Lin eliminated most of the spelling rules requiring substitution of vowels, as can be seen from his spelling Guoryuu Romatzyh, in which the regular -r is used for T2 and a doubled vowel for T3.
Language learning
Most learners of Chinese now start with Hanyu Pinyin, which is easier to learn than GR. But GR has its advantages. According to Y.R. Chao:
For example, it may be easier to memorize the difference between GR Beeijing (the city) and beyjiing ("background") than the Pinyin versions Beijing and bèijing, where the tones seem to be almost an afterthought.
Not all teachers are convinced of the superiority of GR as a means of teaching correct tones to learners. One study conducted at the University of Oregon in 1991–1993 compared the results of using Pinyin and GR in teaching elementary level Chinese to two matched groups of students. It concluded that "GR did not lead to significantly greater accuracy in tonal production."
GR continues to be used by some teachers of Chinese. In 2000, the Princeton Chinese Primer series was published in both GR and Pinyin versions. GR is used as the main romanization method in some university departments, for example the East Asian Studies Program at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Example
Here is an extract from Y.R. Chao's Sayable Chinese. The topic is scholarly ("What is Sinology?"), but the style colloquial. The tonal spelling markers or "clues" are again highlighted using the same colour-coding scheme as above. Versions in Chinese characters, Pinyin and English are given below the GR text.
- "Hannshyue" de mingcheng duey Jonggwo yeou idean butzuenjinq de yihwey. Woomen tingshuo yeou "Yinnduhshyue", "Aijyishyue", "Hannshyue", erl meiyeou tingshuo yeou "Shilahshyue", "Luomaashyue", genq meiyeou tingshuo yeou "Inggwoshyue", "Meeigwoshyue". "Hannshyue" jeyg mingcheng wanchyuan beaushyh Ou-Meei shyuejee duey nahshie yiijing chernluen de guulao-gwojia de wenhuah de i-joong chingkann de tayduh.
- GR tone key
- Tone 1 (basic form: unmarked) Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 4
Simplified Chinese characters:
Traditional Chinese characters:
Pinyin version:
"Hànxué" de míngcheng duì Zhongguó you yìdian bùzunjìng de yìwèi. Women tingshuo you "Yìndùxué," "Aijíxué," "Hànxué," ér méiyou tingshuo you "Xilàxué," "Luómaxué," gèng méiyou tingshuo you "Yingguóxué," "Meiguóxué." "Hànxué" zhèige míngcheng wánquán biaoshì Ou-Mei xuézhe duì nàxie yijing chénlún de gulao-guójia de wénhuà de yìzhong qingkàn de tàidù.
English translation:
The term "Sinology" carries a slight overtone of disrespect towards China. One hears of "Indology," "Egyptology" and "Sinology," but never "Graecology" or "Romology"—let alone "Anglology" or "Americology." The term "Sinology" epitomizes European and American scholars' patronizing attitude towards the culture of those ruined ancient empires.
External links
- - Converts between Gwoyeu Romatzyh and other formats
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