GR is the better known of the two romanization systems which indicate the four by varying the spelling of syllables . 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 or numbers . GR spells the same four tones ''ai'', ''air, ''ae and ''ay. These spellings, which follow specific , indicate the tones while retaining the pronunciation of the syllable ''ai''. Because it embeds the tone of each syllable in its spelling, GR may —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 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.
History
, 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 . In 1928 GR was officially adopted by the government. GR was intended to be used alongside the existing 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.
In the 1930s two shortlived attempts were made to teach GR to railway workers and peasants in and 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 system Latinxua Sinwenz, GR failed to gain widespread support, principally because the "National" language was too narrowly based on : "a sufficiently precise and strong language norm had not yet become a reality in China".
A vestigial use of GR in can be seen in the official spelling of the first syllable of ''Shaanxi'' for province, to distinguish it from 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.
In Taiwan GR survived until the 1970s as a pronunciation aid in monolingual dictionaries such as ''Gwoyeu Tsyrdean '' and ''Tsyrhuey '', but was officially replaced in 1986 by a modified form known as MPS II, which was in turn replaced by Tongyong Pinyin in 2002.
Description
:''Note:'' In this section the word "tone" is abbreviated as "T": thus T1 stands for Tone 1 , etc. To assist readers unfamiliar with GR, Pinyin equivalents have been added in brackets.
Basic forms
An important GR innovation, later adopted by Pinyin, was to use contrasting pairs of consonants from Latin to represent sounds in Chinese. For example ''b'' and ''p'' represent and . 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 sounds ; otherwise they correspond to the sounds . 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'' : GR ''shy'' and ''sy'' correspond to Pinyin ''shi'' and ''si'' respectively.
*''el'' corresponds to Pinyin ''er'' . The most important use of ''-l'' is as a suffix, as in ''ideal'' = ''i dean'' + ''-l'', "a little" .
*A number of frequently-occurring morphemes have abbreviated spellings in GR. The commonest of these are: ''-g'' , ''-j'' , ''-m'' , ''sh'' and ''-tz'' .
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
*or a letter is doubled
*or a silent letter is added after the vowel.
Wherever possible the concise first method is used. The following rules of thumb cover most cases.
Tone 1
:''shiue, chuan, chang, hai, bau''
Tone 2: i/u → y/w; or add -r
:''shyue, chwan, charng, hair, baur''
Tone 3: i/u → e/o; or double vowel
:''sheue, choan, chaang, hae, bao''
Tone 4: change/double final letter; or add -h
:''shiueh, chuann, chanq, hay, baw''
Neutral tone: precede with a dot
:''perng.yeou, dih.fang'' .
Exception Syllables with an initial sonorant use the basic form for T2 rather than T1. In these syllables the T1 is marked with ''-h-'' as the second letter. For example ''mha'' is T1 , whereas ''ma'' is T2 . T3 and T4 are regular: ''maa'' and ''mah'' .
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 , 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 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-tz?4'' . This principle, illustrated in the below, was later adopted in Pinyin.
Texts
used GR in four influential works:
*''A Concise Dictionary of Spoken Chinese''
*''Mandarin Primer''
:This course was originally used in the Army Specialized Training Program at the School for Overseas Administration in 1943–1944 and subsequently in civilian courses.
*''A Grammar of Spoken Chinese''
*''Readings in Sayable Chinese'' [] "Sayable" in this context means colloquial, as opposed to the vernacular Chinese 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 ''Through the Looking-Glass ''. 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 were presented in both and modern Chinese, together with GR romanizations and versions prepared by Simon .
Lin Yutang's Chinese-English dictionary 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'', But GR has its advantages. According to Y.R. Chao:
For example, it may be easier to memorize the difference between GR ''Beeijing'' and ''beyjiing'' than the Pinyin versions ''Běijīng'' and ''bèijǐng'', 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 . The topic is scholarly , but the style colloquial. The tonal spelling markers or "clues" are again highlighted using the same as above. Versions in , and 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 Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 4
Simplified Chinese characters:
Traditional Chinese characters:
Pinyin version:
"Hànxué" de míngchēng duì Zhōngguó yǒu yìdiǎn bùzūnjìng de yìwèi. Wǒmen tīngshuō yǒu "Yìndùxué," "?ijíxué," "Hànxué," ér méiyǒu tīngshuō yǒu "Xīlàxué," "Luómǎxué," gèng méiyǒu tīngshuō yǒu "Yīngguóxué," "Měiguóxué." "Hànxué" zhèige míngchēng wánquán biǎoshì ?u-Měi xuézhě duì nàxiē yǐjing chénlún de gǔlǎo-guójiā de wénhuà de yìzhǒng qīngkàn 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.
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