Happy 101st birthday, Zhou Youguang!

Friday, January 13, is Zhou Youguang’s 101st birthday. Zhou is one of the main people behind the creation of Hanyu Pinyin. Remarkably, he did not become involved with language work until he was in his late forties — something I’ve always found a source of inspiration.

Pinyin Info has several readings by Zhou Youguang (周有光) from his book The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts. (The English translations are by Zhang Liqing, who has also translated an important imaginary dialogue on romanization; this will soon be featured here.)

For more (in Mandarin), see the entry for Zhou Youguang’s 100th birthday.

Here are some of Zhou Youguang’s books:

4 thoughts on “Happy 101st birthday, Zhou Youguang!

  1. Too bad there have been no breakthroughs since Pinyin was invented……….no end in sight to the character memorization method of achieving literacy………..

  2. Pingback: Pinyin news » Zhou Youguang on 50th anniversary of simplified characters, etc.

  3. Pingback: Pinyin news » brief bio of Zhou Youguang

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