Li Weihong
On February 11th, 1958, the Fifth Session of the First National People’s Congress approved and promulgated the Chinese Pinyin Scheme. In the past 55 years, the implementation of Chinese Pinyin has achieved fruitful results. Chinese Pinyin has become an important tool for reading Chinese characters, learning Mandarin, cultivating and improving reading and writing abilities, an important basis for reforming and creating minority languages, and an important basis for compiling Braille, sign language, semaphore and signal language, which is widely used in Chinese literature sorting and retrieval, and models and codes in industrial and scientific fields. With the popularization of modern information technology, hanyu pinyin is widely used to input Chinese characters, and hanyu pinyin permeates all aspects of social life, which is indispensable for a moment. As an international standard for spelling names and place names in China, as an important basis for foreign languages to refer to China and express the concept of China, and as a cultural bridge for China’s foreign exchange, Chinese Pinyin is widely used in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, foreign exchange and other fields. As a scientific, convenient and practical language tool, Hanyu Pinyin has provided great convenience for the modernization and informatization of China’s economic and social life, made important contributions to eliminating illiteracy, popularizing education, developing science and technology and improving the level of informatization in China, and played an irreplaceable positive role in socialist modernization.
Standing at a new historical starting point, we should, in accordance with the requirements of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on language and writing, strive to implement the Law on the Common Language and Writing and the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Reform and Development Plan for Language and Writing, conscientiously sum up the achievements and experiences in implementing the Hanyu Pinyin Program in the past 55 years, properly handle the problems existing in the use of Hanyu Pinyin under the new situation, and further intensify its implementation, so that Hanyu Pinyin can play a greater role in the new era.
First, the implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is an important language policy in China.
The creation of Hanyu Pinyin Scheme has a profound historical origin and a broad mass base. Chinese characters are not phonography, and the Chinese nation’s efforts to find a scientific and appropriate pinyin scheme for Chinese have never stopped since the direct pronunciation and reverse tangent. At the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, some domestic intellectuals started the phonetic alphabet movement and created more than 20 pinyin schemes. On the eve of the May 4th Movement, the government of the Republic of China promulgated the stroke-type phonetic alphabet of Chinese characters, which played a certain role in helping literacy and pronunciation. In the 1920s, Qian Xuantong, Zhao Yuanren and others created "Romanization of Mandarin", and in the 1930s, Guo Zhisheng and Qu Qiubai created "Latin New Characters of Northern Dialect", but failed to form a unified romanization scheme. At the beginning of the founding of New China, in order to meet the needs of socialist economic, political and cultural development, the CPC Central Committee made a major decision to reform the language. From 1956 to 1958, the state established the "Chinese Pinyin Scheme Review Committee" and published the "Chinese Pinyin Scheme (Draft)", and the the State Council Plenary Session adopted the "Resolution on Publishing the Chinese Pinyin Scheme (Draft)". In February 1958, the Fifth Session of the First National People’s Congress officially passed and promulgated the Chinese Pinyin Scheme. "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" is the inheritance and development of the Chinese Pinyin movement since modern times, and it is a master of more than 1,000 suggested schemes at home and abroad in the development stage. Its Latin (Roman) alphabet form and the characteristics of "phoneticization" and "internationalization" conform to the historical trend.It embodies the vision and mind of the China government and people facing modernization, the world and the future. In today’s information age, the reason why we can input Chinese characters into the computer through Chinese Pinyin and search for the required Chinese information in the massive network database is due to the scientific pragmatism of the original developers, and also to the foresight of the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi and Wu Yuzhang who personally asked and guided the development work.
The formulation and implementation of "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" has always been an important content of language and writing work in China. As an important language policy in China, the formulation and implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme has always been highly valued by the party and the state. In 1958, Premier Zhou Enlai defined the basic framework of the language and writing policy of the new China in his report "Tasks of Current Chinese Character Reform", and put forward three major tasks: sorting and simplifying Chinese characters, popularizing Putonghua, and formulating and implementing the Chinese Pinyin scheme. In 1986, the state held a national conference on language and writing work, which determined the guidelines and five tasks of language and writing work in the new period, and "further promoting the Chinese Pinyin Scheme and studying and solving related problems in practical use" ranked third. In 1997, the state held the second national conference on language and writing work, which determined the guiding ideology and goal of cross-century language and writing work. "Continuing to implement the Chinese Pinyin Scheme and expanding the scope of use" is still one of the four main tasks. In 2000, the 18th meeting of the 9th the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) deliberated and passed the Law of People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the National Common Language and Characters, which confirmed the legal status of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme as a "spelling and phonetic tool" for the national common language and characters. In 2012, the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-term Reform and Development Plan for Language and Writing set the working goal by 2020, and clearly pointed out that "Chinese Pinyin should play a better role".
The popularization of Hanyu Pinyin Scheme benefits from the strong support and guarantee of China’s language policies and regulations. Over the past 55 years, the state has taken various measures to promote the Chinese Pinyin Scheme. First, a series of norms and standards supporting the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme have been formulated and promulgated, such as Basic Rules for Orthography of Hanyu Pinyin, Rules for Spelling Hanyu Pinyin Letters of China Place Names, Transliteration and Transliteration of Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Minority Place Names, Spelling of Hanyu Pinyin Letters of China Names, and General Keyboard Representation Specification of Hanyu Pinyin Scheme, so as to facilitate social application. Second, through a series of policies, decrees and normative documents, clear requirements have been put forward for standardizing the use of Chinese Pinyin in the fields of press and publication, place name signs, sports activities, shop plaques and commodity packaging, and efforts have been continuously intensified. Third, we should persist in the teaching of Chinese Pinyin in the basic education stage, extensively carry out the teaching experiment of "Phonetic Literacy, Reading and Writing in Advance", and strive to improve the Chinese Pinyin ability of the people. At present, more than 1 billion people in China have mastered Chinese Pinyin.
The Chinese Pinyin Scheme is not only from China, but also from the world. In 1977, the Third United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names held that "the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is perfect in linguistics, and the Roman alphabet spelling of geographical names in China is the most suitable", and adopted the resolution of "adopting Chinese Pinyin as the international standard for the Roman alphabet spelling of geographical names in China". In 1979, the United Nations Secretariat decided to adopt Chinese Pinyin as the standard for transliteration of China names and place names in various Roman alphabets. In 1982, the International Organization for Standardization adopted the Chinese Pinyin Scheme as the international standard for the spelling of Roman letters in Chinese documents. The governments of Singapore and Malaysia have adopted the Chinese Pinyin Scheme as the Pinyin Scheme for their own Chinese. China’s names, place names and other proper nouns spelled in Chinese Pinyin are absorbed in English and other Roman alphabets. Authoritative tool books published in Britain, the United States and other countries include a large number of such words. Maps published in Britain, Germany and other countries use Chinese Pinyin to spell China’s place names, and the Library of Congress and libraries in some European countries use Chinese Pinyin to spell Chinese book catalogues.
"Chinese Pinyin Scheme" is the crystallization of the wisdom of several generations of the Chinese nation, a representative achievement in the history of China’s cultural development, and an important achievement in the cultural construction of new China. It benefits the society and the whole people and has far-reaching influence.
Two, to further expand the scope of application of "Chinese Pinyin Scheme", improve the standardization level of application.
At present, with the rapid development of Chinese information technology, the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is in the ascendant, and the inheritance, promotion and dissemination of Chinese culture, it is expected that Chinese Pinyin will play a greater role and help realize the "Chinese Dream" of national rejuvenation. It is necessary to further strengthen the implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme according to law and improve the standardization level of its application. Specifically, we should do the following work:
First, strengthen the teaching of Chinese Pinyin. It is necessary to resolutely implement the provisions of the Law of the State on Common Languages and Characters that "Chinese Pinyin should be taught in primary education", to ensure that the educated can master Chinese Pinyin and apply it to all aspects of Chinese learning, information retrieval and processing, and to strengthen teacher training, supervision and inspection. We should actively explore ways and means to bring Chinese Pinyin into the national lifelong education system, so as to benefit the elderly who failed to receive Chinese Pinyin teaching in primary education. We should also vigorously promote the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language for different countries, regions and languages, and give full play to the role of Chinese Pinyin in Chinese teaching.
Second, strive to expand the use of Chinese Pinyin. On the basis of existing achievements, we should seriously think about how to make the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme further serve the "informatization" and "internationalization" and how to help spread Chinese culture. It is necessary to give full play to the function of Chinese Pinyin in accurately and conveniently expressing China’s unique things, concepts and ideas in foreign languages. It is expected that Chinese Pinyin will be directly used to spell China’s names, places and unique concepts such as Confucius, Tibet and Putonghua in foreign exchanges, and that more and more similar words such as Fuwa, Haibao and Chang ‘e will be used in foreign exchanges. At the same time, we should realize that the global, intercontinental and international languages that have been widely used in the world belong to all mankind, so we should take the initiative to enrich the expressions of these languages through Chinese Pinyin and create cultural wealth belonging to all mankind together with people of all countries and nationalities in the world.
Third, strengthen management according to law. Governments at all levels and their relevant departments should fully implement the language policy of "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme", abide by relevant national laws, regulations and standards, and actively promote and use Hanyu Pinyin. We should adhere to the "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" as a unified standard for the spelling of Roman letters in China’s names, place names and Chinese documents, take effective measures to strengthen supervision and inspection, and correct irregularities in application; It is necessary to gradually improve the standardization of the use of Chinese Pinyin in Chinese information processing, social public services and other fields.
Three, in-depth study, properly handle the relevant issues in the application of "Chinese Pinyin Scheme"
In the past 55 years, great achievements have been made in the implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme, but there are still some problems in understanding and practical use, which should be paid attention to and properly handled.
First, we should properly handle the relationship between Chinese Pinyin and Chinese characters. The Chinese Pinyin Scheme is not a written scheme, and the Law of the State on the Common Language and Characters clearly stipulates that the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is a spelling and phonetic tool for the common language and characters in the country, and "is a unified standard for the spelling of Roman letters in Chinese names and place names and Chinese documents, and is used in areas where Chinese characters are inconvenient or unusable". Chinese Pinyin will not replace Chinese characters, and Chinese characters will not take the road of Pinyin. In the past 30 years, China’s Chinese character policy has always been to "maintain the relative stability of Chinese characters in a certain period of time and promote the standardization, standardization and informationization of Chinese characters". Language and writing departments should take the initiative to do a good job in relevant publicity work, so that the society can fully realize that the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is an auxiliary tool for the national common language, which mainly helps Chinese characters to play a role in aircraft frequency, train number, product model, phonetic sorting and retrieval of Chinese characters, and in situations where it is inconvenient or impossible to speak Chinese characters such as names and places in China in foreign languages.
Second, we should properly handle the relationship between Chinese Pinyin and foreign languages. Chinese Pinyin is a phonetic spelling tool for Chinese common language, not a foreign language. Correctly using Chinese Pinyin according to law and properly handling the use of Chinese Pinyin and foreign languages are related to the sovereign dignity of the country. If you need to mark the Roman alphabet, you should spell it according to the Chinese Pinyin Scheme, and you can’t use Chinese Pinyin according to the habits of foreign languages. For example, when spelling China names, you should put "surname" before "first name". On the other hand, we should also realize that with the deepening of China’s reform and opening up and the increasing frequency of international exchanges, it is not only the hospitality of our country with a history of 5,000 years of civilization, but also the inevitable requirement of China’s "opening to the outside world and integrating into the world" to provide foreign language services in the field of public services to facilitate their work, study and life. Therefore, we must make overall plans and properly handle the relationship between "safeguarding sovereignty" and "providing services", strengthen the research on related issues, clarify the different functions and usage occasions of Pinyin and foreign languages, and reverse the current chaotic phenomenon of nonstandard and inconsistent use of Pinyin and foreign languages.
Third, efforts should be made to study and solve relevant technical problems in practical use. According to the National Law on Common Languages and Characters, the Chinese Pinyin Scheme is not only a phonetic notation tool, but also a spelling tool. However, it should be noted that the achievements made in the implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme in the past 55 years are mainly reflected in the function of "phonetic notation for Chinese characters", but the function of "spelling Putonghua" has not been fully and effectively exerted, and the research on related issues is also insufficient. The difference between spelling and phonetic notation is not only that the object of spelling is language, but that of phonetic notation is text; Moreover, spelling needs orthography, such as letter case, word segmentation, punctuation usage and other requirements of the text. In practical use, many people use phonetic notation to spell Chinese characters, which has some problems, such as no word segmentation and hyphenation, and incorrect use of case and case. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen research and properly handle some problems in the orthography of Chinese Pinyin, such as word segmentation, idiom spelling, proper noun spelling and tone marking. In addition, efforts should be made to study and deal with a series of problems, such as how to take care of social habits in the pronunciation of the names of Chinese pinyin letters, how to coordinate the writing style of Chinese pinyin letters with related foreign letters, whether to use two spellings or three spellings in pinyin teaching, and how to express foreign or foreign proper nouns in Chinese pinyin. Only by solving these problems, further improving the efficiency of the use of Chinese Pinyin and perfecting the functions of Chinese Pinyin can it be conducive to the further implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme.
The formulation of "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" is a pioneering work of language and writing in China. Over the past 55 years, the state has carried out a lot of fruitful work and achieved brilliant achievements in promoting Chinese Pinyin. At present, social informatization and economic globalization provide a broader and deeper application space for Chinese Pinyin. At the same time, there are still many problems in the implementation and application of Chinese Pinyin, which can not meet the needs of China’s economic construction and social development. For example, due to insufficient publicity and implementation, there are still some people in society who don’t understand the nature and function of Chinese Pinyin and can’t fully understand its scientific, practical and wide application prospects; Some localities and schools ignore and weaken the teaching and scientific research of Chinese Pinyin. In social application, the use of Chinese Pinyin is not in accordance with the relevant rules, and spelling mistakes and irregularities are common; In some fields, the phenomenon of not using Chinese Pinyin or replacing Chinese Pinyin with foreign languages has also occurred from time to time in violation of national regulations and standards. The above situation shows that in the face of the new situation of language and writing work, we must further strengthen the promotion of Chinese Pinyin, expand its application scope, constantly improve the relevant application rules, improve the popularity of Chinese Pinyin, and enhance the standardization level of Chinese Pinyin application.
As the competent department of the national language and writing work, the State Language Commission will take the opportunity of commemorating the 55th anniversary of the promulgation of the Chinese Pinyin Program to thoroughly implement the Law on the National Common Language and Writing, comprehensively promote the legalization, standardization, standardization and informatization of the national common language and writing, further strengthen the planning guidance, management supervision and scientific research on the implementation of Chinese Pinyin, and promote Chinese Pinyin to make due contributions to building a well-off society in an all-round way and realizing the Chinese dream.
