Gwoyeu Romatzyh - History

History

Tonal spelling, Gwoyeu Romatzyh's most distinctive feature, was first suggested to Y.R. Chao by Lin Yutang. By 1922 Chao had already established the main principles of GR. The details of the system were developed in 1925–1926 by a group of five linguists, led by Chao and including Lin, under the auspices of the Preparatory Commission for the Unification of the National Language. In 1928 GR was officially adopted by the government. GR was intended to be used alongside the existing Juhin (Zhùyīn) phonetic symbols: hence the alternative name for GR, "Second Pattern of the National Alphabet." Both systems were used to indicate the revised standard of pronunciation in the new official Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use of 1932. The designers of GR had greater ambitions: their aim was complete reform of the script, using GR as a practical system of writing.

In the 1930s two shortlived attempts were made to teach GR to railway workers and peasants in Hénán and Shāndōng provinces. Support for GR, being confined to a small number of trained linguists and Sinologists, "was distinguished more for its quality than its quantity." During this period GR faced increasing hostility because of the complexity of its tonal spelling. Conversely, Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren criticised GR for its lack of phonetic rigour. Ultimately, like the rival (toneless) system Latinxua Sinwenz, GR failed to gain widespread support, principally because the "National" language was too narrowly based on Beijing speech: "a sufficiently precise and strong language norm had not yet become a reality in China".

A vestigial use of GR in can be seen in the official spelling of the first syllable of Shaanxi for Shǎnxī province, to distinguish it from Shānxī province, particularly in foreign-language text where the tone marks are often omitted. Some prominent Chinese have used GR to transliterate their names: for example the mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern. The romanization system was changed by the government of the People's Republic of China in 1958 to the current system used now in the country, and other foreign and international institutions, like the United Nations, the Library of Congress, the International Organization for Standardization, and is widely used to teach Mandarin Chinese to foreign students: Hanyu Pinyin. Meanwhile, in the Republic of China (Taiwan), GR survived until the 1970s as a pronunciation aid in monolingual dictionaries such as Gwoyeu Tsyrdean and Tsyrhuey , but was officially replaced in 1986 by a modified form known as Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II.