Archive for the ‘pīnyīn’ Category
Read & write Mandarin: no characters required?
June 1st, 2008
Zhōu Yǒuguāng on a Beijing talk show; 4=2 in Beijing; Pinyin and topolects; schadenfreude
Everyone knows that literacy in Mandarin means hour after brutal hour of memorizing and practicing a script whose design clearly shows the influence of sadistic genius. Here are a couple of favorites from the torture rack: two pairs of characters that have absolutely no connection except that they just might possibly, to the benighted, appear to be vaguely similar in form to one another.
衣农， 日曰
Well, at least we think we know what Mandarin literacy means. But do we really? Could you possibly get away with achieving literacy through something less than masochism? Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t take away our pinyin
February 22nd, 2008
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). Read the rest of this entry »
