{"id":541,"date":"2006-10-15T22:54:42","date_gmt":"2006-10-15T14:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/essay-in-hanyu-pinyin\/"},"modified":"2018-08-21T12:55:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T04:55:21","slug":"essay-in-hanyu-pinyin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/essay-in-hanyu-pinyin\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay in Hanyu Pinyin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although I have a few texts here on Pinyin Info written in Pinyin, most of them aren’t long and are usually conversions from texts written in Chinese characters. So it is with very great pleasure that I announce the Internet release of an extensive and important essay by Zhang Liqing (張立青,张立青) that was written in Pinyin originally: Hànzì Bù Tèbié Biǎoyì<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening: <\/p>\n

\n

Dàduōshù huì Hànzì de rén rènwéi Hànzì shì biǎoyì wénzì. Jiù shì shuō Hànzì gēn biéde wénzì bù yīyàng, bùbì yīkào fāyīn huòzhě biéde yǔyán tiáojiàn; yī ge rén zhǐyào xuéhuì le hěn duō Hànzì, kànjian Hànzì xiě de dōngxi jiù zhīdao shì shénme yìsi. <\/span><\/p>\n

Zhè dàduōshù rén yòu kàndào liǎng jiàn shìqing. Dì-yī, Hànzì zài Zhōngguó liánxù yòng le sānqiān duō nián, bìngqiě dào xiànzài hái zài yòng. Dì-èr, Hànzì zài Dōng-Yà jǐ ge guójiā liúchuán le hěn cháng yī duàn shíjiān. Yúshì, tāmen yǒu tuīxiǎng chū liǎng ge jiélùn. Yī ge shuō Hànzì chāoyuè shíjiān; lìngwài yī ge shuō Hànzì chāoyuè kōngjiān. Guībìng qǐlai jiù shì Hànzì biǎoyì, kěyǐ chāoyuè shí-kōng. Zuìhòu gèng jìnyībù, bǎ Hànyǔ yě lājìnlái, shuō Hànzì zuì shìhé Hànyǔ. <\/span><\/p>\n

Shàngmiàn de kànfǎ hé jiélùn “gēn shēn dì gù”, dànshì bùxìng dōu hěn piànmiàn, bù fúhé zhēnzhèng qíngkuàng. Wèishénme ne? Hěn jiǎndān….<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nothing would make me happier than for Mandarin teachers the world over to distribute this work to their students, for it’s much more than an exercise in Pinyin; it’s an essay with important points to make about the nature of Chinese characters. (And, yes, O teachers of the world, the copyright terms<\/a> do allow you to reprint this.)<\/p>\n

This essay appeared originally in 1991, in the Sino-Platonic Papers<\/em><\/a> release of Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday<\/em><\/a>, so some of you may have seen it already. But the full Schriftfestschrift<\/em> is a whopping 15 MB, while this essay is a more manageable 759 KB PDF. <\/p>\n

This special release of this article is in honor of the seventieth birthday this month of Zhang, some of whose work appears here at Pinyin Info. So, after reading Hanzi bu tebie biaoyi<\/a>, I recommend that you turn to her translations of Lü Shuxiang (first seen here on this site!) and Zhou Youguang:<\/p>\n