scripts related to Chinese characters — an article

sample of some of the scripts discussed in the paper; click to view the articleThe most recent rerelease from Sino-Platonic Papers is The Family of Chinese Character-Type Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, one of the main people behind the creation of Hanyu Pinyin. So it’s no surprise that his name has come up before in Pinyin News.

This article, from September 1991, categorizes and briefly discusses more than a dozen scripts derived from Chinese characters, most of which were used inside China by non-Han people.

The link above is to an HTML version. The original format of the article is preserved in the PDF file (650 KB).

Zhuang ms found, resembles Naxi documents

An ethnic culture research worker in Funing County, Yunnan Province, China, has come across an old Zhuang book of songs. What makes this manuscript particularly interesting is that the songs are written down not in a regular script but rather in something similar to Naxi pictographs, i.e. pictures that serve as mnemonic references to the text rather than as real pictographs or real writing.

The article I read on this is a little vague, so I’m hoping someone can come up with some images of the manuscript or a more scholarly source.

source: Yúnnán fāxiàn Zhuàngzú gǔlǎo xíngtài túhuà wénzì — kān pìměi Dōngbā wénhuà (云南发现壮族古老形态图画文字 堪媲美东巴文化), CCTV.com, August 16, 2006