[KS] Romanisation and Pinyin

Jim Hoare jim at jhoare10.fsnet.co.uk
Sat Jun 11 18:17:39 EDT 2005


 I do not think that it worked like that. Because the Chinese government was 
adamant that within China, pinyin would prevail, it was taught and used to 
the exclusion of all other systems, from the mid -1970s onwards. Older 
Chinese may have known Wade-Giles but younger ones did not. In so far as 
Chinese in the PRC learnt any system of romanization, after about 1972, it 
was pinyin. And the Chinese were, perhaps until about 10 years ago, adamant 
that no other system should be used. Text messaging came a long, long way 
afterwards, and young Chinese already knew pinyin when it came along.
In recent years, the PRC government has relaxed a bit, and some older 
spellings/transliterizations have come back. Some never went away. Peking 
duck and Peking man remained, and Peking University has now joined them.
Interesting though, that some (not necessary Mr/Ms Blomberg) think that the 
authoritarian approach to such matters is a good one. It seems to me, as a 
former government servant, that it is best if governments kept out of such 
matters except for their own staff.

Jim Hoare

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cedar Bough Blomberg" <umyang at gmail.com>
To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: [KS] Romanisation and Pinyin


Of course the reason most Chinese know Pinyin is because when typing
or text messaging on their cell phones, if you can't spell in Pinyin,
you can't type Chinese.  Pretty easy way to get people to use a
standard system!

Cedar






More information about the Koreanstudies mailing list