Re: USAGE: Chinese Romanization (was: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase)

I really do not think this is getting us anywhere.

My understanding (which I admit may be faulty, but I my evidence is
limited) is that:
1. (Hanyu) Pinyin was approved by the Communist National Assembly of the
People's republic of China in 1958;
2. Pinyin was based roughly on Beifang Latinxua (Beila) with elements of
the Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) systems;
3. Beila was devised in the 1920s by Chinese left-wing scholars and that
some Russian sinologs, among which was Dragunov, contributed to this;
4. GR was also devised during the 1920 by Chinese scholars & linguists,
among which was Yuen Ren Chao, and was adopted by the Nationalist
government in 1928;
5. both Beila and GR, like earlier Chinese schemes dating from the 1890s,
relied mainly on the tradition of Western transcriptions which started
with Matteo Ricci in 1605.

It seems to me that our differences center on (5). I see Belia and GR (and
hence Pinyin) as relying mainly on the whole western tradition; you, if I
have understood correctly, put a greater emphasis on German tradition than
on other western traditions.

Nothing in our discussions has made me change my opinion that it's the
whole western tradition. I may well be mistaken, but although these recent
discussions have led to my finding out more on the matter, I haven't found
convincing enough evidence to make me change my mind.

I'll just fairly briefly answer one or two points below:

On Wednesday, September 8, 2004, at 05:16 , Tamás Racskó wrote:
> On 8 Sep 2004 Ray Brown <ray.brown@FRE...> wrote:
[sni[]
>   However, if we would conclude that Volapük gave |z|, my original
> statement -- "heavily _influenced_ by German" -- would be still
> true. Indirect influence is also influence.
I haven't denied _indirect_ influence. I thought you were talking about
direct influence. If I've misunderstood you, then I apologize.

[snip]
>> whatever the actual position of Mao at the time, was strictly
>> communist and not exactly pro-western. That's why I am skeptical
>> about any direct influence from any one western source.
>
>   Creating a Latin-based transcription is a fairly western thing.
Yes, that comes in my point (5) above. I think we are both agreed on that.

> They could have cancelled Latinxua and designed a pro-communist
> Cyrillic one to avoid pro-western manners. But I do not know that
> there would be an "official" Chinese Cyrillic transcription.
> Chinese are very practical, if they design a Latin-based system,
> they use western sources.
Absolutely - I am agreed on all these points.

[snip]
>> My point was that I do not see |c| = [ts] as particularly German. I
>> would more readily describe it as Slav usage
>
>   The real Slav usage is Cyrillic, indeed.
That's debatable - but let's not go down that path. But |c| = [ts] is only
true of German before front vowels. It was not AFAIK used this way in
German transcriptions of Chinese. By the mid 1950s the Chinese who look at
the whole western traditions of orthography. I would have thought that
among those devising Pinyin were scholars with some knowledge of western
traditions. I feel that without actual evidence provided by those
responsible, we are just guessing what weighed most in their minds when
making these decisions.

> Before WWII, nearly
> almost nations under the Soviet domination were forced to use
> Cyrillic orthography instead of their previous Latin traditions;
I don't recall the Poles, Czechs or Slovaks being so forced.

>
> ............. AFAIK Latinxua was designed in 1930-
> 1940,
My information is that it was devised during the 1920s in opposition to GR
and was first published in Qu Qiubai in 1929.

[snip - avoiding questions of what were or were not Zamenhof's influences]
>
>
>>> if there would be significant Russian Slavonic contribution.
>>
>> But there isn't AFAIK.
>
>   Maybe my memory deceives me but I remember you mentioned Dragunov
> in connection with design of Latinxua.
I did - but I have no idea what he personally may have contributed.

[snip]
>> Indeed, the u-umlaut was used in the "English" Wade-Giles system!
>
>   It is a good point but this proves rather a German influence on
> Wade-Giles system.
I have agreed from the start that u-umlaut was first used in German. But
by the 1950s it was no longer confined to German, that's all.

[snip]
> them in order to get a better one. The only vivid Latin-based
> system I know that used voiced-unvoiced contrast was the German in
> those days.
Didn't the Yale system, used by the Americans during WWII, use the same
system? I don't suppose for one moment the Chinese in 1950 would have
looked upon the Yale system with great favor. But I'm fairly certain the
Yale system was not following any German system; it was a system drawn up
to help anglophones learn Chinese fairly quickly; it use a system that
made sense from an *English point of view*

May I remind you of what I quoted from the 1960 edition of "Teach Yourself
Chinese" (which used Wade-Giles):
Ch.  J as in jeep.
Ch'. Ch as in cheap.
    ....
K.  G hard as in gay, gum, etc.
K'. K as in kerb, and many initial hard c's like can, card.
   ....
P.  B as in bow, band, bin, etc.
P'. P as in pin, pond, pool, pan, etc.
  ...."
  etc.

When I read that I thought "Why the heck not write |j|, |g|, |b| and so?"
So when about a year later when I picked up a second hand copy of "A
Chinese Reader and Guide to Conversation" by W. Simon & C.H. Lu (published
1943) which used GR, I thought "How sensible!" I didn't think "How like
German!"

The point is that for anyone who knows modern spoken English, it simply
makes sense to use that convention. I know Yuen Ren Chao knew English. How
many others involved in GR did, I wonder.

I suspect many considerations, including the German system, led to the
adoption of this convention for, as you say....

> unaspirate contrast, because this was more elegant than apostrophe.
Yes it's undeniably more elegant and, indeed, if you had confined your
remarks simply to this feature, we would probably have basically agreed
some time ago, but....

> And if they adopted this feature, why they should not consider
> German (Ricci-German) solutions in other design problems?
I'm sure they considered the whole western tradition of transcription,
including the German and others. I just do not see such obviously specific
German influence elsewhere.

I think, in fact, we are reasonably close on many points; our main
difference seems to be over how much direct influence there was from the
German system.

I really think we perhaps ought to give this a rest as we're probably
starting to bore other members.

Ray
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"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004