{"id":395,"date":"2009-07-15T19:19:43","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T11:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=395"},"modified":"2015-12-15T14:29:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T06:29:40","slug":"romanization-in-early-communist-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2009\/romanization-in-early-communist-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"romanization in early communist propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"pre-1949I’ve been reading War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945<\/a>, by Chang-tai Hung, which is one of the University of California Press books available for free online<\/a>. It contains a reproduction of a woodcut with with the following text in romanization: <\/p>\n

XIANG WU MANIOU KAN KI<\/span>
\n(齊看有满吴向)<\/p>\n

To my disappointment, the book does not discuss the romanization movement at all, though the presence of Sin Wenz (Xīn Wénzì<\/span> \/ 新文字)<\/a> in the woodcut is an indication of its relevence. <\/p>\n

Note: DeFrancis’s Nationalism and Language Reform in China<\/em> has some good material on Sin Wenz. The sample chapter<\/a> I have here on Pinyin.info, however, doesn’t cover that. And the long-out-of-print book is not presently searchable through Google Books either. But at the time of this writing Bookfinder has two copies for under US$40<\/a>, which is a good deal for this hard-to-find book. So if you have the money and this is the sort of book you like, you should buy this now, as you’re unlikely to come across one for less money.<\/div>\n

Anyway, back to the romanization in the illustration. In Hanyu Pinyin, which would not exist until some 15 years later, XIANG WU MANIOU KAN KI would read “xiàng Wú Mǎnyǒu kànqí”<\/span> (“emulate Wu Manyou”). This Wu Manyou<\/a> was a “model peasant” who got his very own official emulate-this-guy campaign in the early 1940s. <\/p>\n

Notice that the use of the letter x<\/em> predates Hanyu Pinyin. (Actually, x<\/em> in romanization for Sinitic languages long<\/em> predates Hanyu Pinyin, appearing even in Trigault’s seventeenth-century work.) But even though the xiang<\/em> of Sin Wenz and the xiang<\/em> of Hanyu Pinyin are written the same, the two systems handle the letter differently<\/a> in most cases. In Sin Wenz texts, most of the time the letter x represents what would be written h in Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the full name of Sin Wenz is Latinx<\/strong>ua Sin Wenz, not Latinhua Xinwenz. Note, too, the use of the original “Latin” rather than “Ladin”, just as Gwoyeu Romatzyh uses Roma<\/strong>tzyh rather than Luomaa<\/strong>tzyh, indicating the link between romanization and the alphabet of Rome (Roma).<\/p>\n

Also interesting is the form of the character that is second from the right<\/a>. (These Chinese characters are read from right to left. Put left to right, they would appear as 向吴满有看齊.) Note how it is not in the traditional form:
\n吳<\/span> <\/p>\n

Nor is it the standard “simplified” form (which would not have been officially adopted for more than decade after this woodblock was made):
\n吴<\/span><\/p>\n

Of variant characters<\/a> there is no end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945, by Chang-tai Hung, which is one of the University of California Press books available for free online. It contains a reproduction of a woodcut with with the following … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,55,32,19,31],"tags":[595,596],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-chinese","category-literacy","category-mandarin","category-romanization","category-writing-systems","tag-sin-wenz","tag-xin-wenzi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6984,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/6984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}