Author: Yun Wang

Opening one’s eyes to the world is the first step China took towards modernization, and the National Language Movement is no exception. The earliest researchers of phonetics and those concerned with the literacy issues of common people were foreign missionaries, but it was the returnees from abroad who systematically invented tools for learning the Chinese language.

The National Language Movement began during the Hundred Days’ Reform. On July 28, 1898, the Qing government’s Grand Council Minister summoned Lu Gongzhang and others to research phonetic schemes. Lu Gongzhang can be considered the first person in this era to engage in phonetics; he is a typical overseas “returnee.”

Lu Gongzhang, with the courtesy name Xueqiao, was born in 1854, in Guzhuang Township, Tong’an County, Fujian Province, and lived in Xiamen. At the age of 21, after failing an examination, Lu went to Singapore to study English. Four years later, he returned to Xiamen and helped British missionary James Legge translate the “English-Chinese Dictionary.” There, Westerners promoting Christianity in the Zhangjiang and Quanzhou areas had already used the Roman alphabet to create a phonetic script that transcribed the local dialect and published the Bible. Lu Gongzhang focused on revising this phonetic script and spent over a decade developing a set of letters consisting of fifty-five symbols, now known as “China’s first fast phonetic new characters.” His aim was to improve literacy speed and reduce the time spent reading Chinese, believing that “if this time is dedicated to mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and various practical studies, how can the nation not be prosperous and strong?” The new character textbook he wrote was named “Understanding at a Glance: Beginner’s Level,” and the following year, he published an abbreviated version entitled “New Characters: Beginner’s Level,” which became quite popular. In 1898, the government report noted that Lu’s method required only six months for someone to be able to express themselves in writing; many foreigners in Fujian also used this method, indicating its clear effectiveness. However, Lu Gongzhang’s scheme was based on the Xiamen dialect and lacked broad applicability, yet it provided Chinese people with a method for learning Chinese characters.

Wang Zhao’s “Official Mandarin Combined Phonetic Alphabet” was developed during his exile in Japan and is similar to the Japanese katakana. The phonetic sounds used are based on Beijing Mandarin. Wang Zhao, with the courtesy name Xiaohang, was originally from Ninghe, Hebei, born in 1859. He had previously worked in the Ministry of Rites and established a small school in Lutai. Because of his involvement in the Hundred Days’ Reform, he fled to Japan. After examining the Japanese state of education, he believed that the Chinese government must focus on grassroots education, and the barrier to grassroots education is the need for a written language that serves as a common mode of communication, achieving a unity of spoken and written forms. Therefore, he devoted himself to research and, after returning to China in 1900, published his book “Mandarin Phonetic Alphabet” in Tianjin. However, despite several efforts, his scheme did not receive official approval, and he had to seek his own path. He established a school for the Mandarin alphabet, created a phonetic newspaper, and widely published materials incorporating this alphabet. During this time, he received support from Yuan Shikai, the governor of Zhili, and scholars and officials like Yan Xiu, but ultimately was banned by the Qing government.

After the founding of the Republic of China, the first “Unified Phonetic Conference” was convened. In this immature democratic process, the “Phonetic Alphabet” for standardizing pronunciations, which was passed with much commotion, was a proposal by Zhang Taiyan in his work “Refutation of China’s Use of the International Language.” This proposal is what has been used in Taiwan to this day as Zhuyin (Bopomofo). Zhang Taiyan, whose given name was Binglin, was born in 1869 and was a thinker, historian, and master of philology during the late Qing and early Republic periods. He had fled to Japan due to his opposition to the Qing dynasty and had traveled back and forth between China and Japan several times. While in Japan, he taught, ran newspapers, and learned about various Western fields such as philosophy, sociology, and literature. He was not a member of the “Unified Phonetic Conference,” but his proposal succeeded largely due to the efforts of a group of Zhejiang returnees, all of whom were notable figures—Ma Yuzao and Zhu Xizu were graduates of Waseda University; Xu Shouchang and Zhou Shuren graduated from Tokyo Kobun Institute; and Qian Daosun was a graduate of the National University of Italy. Among them, Ma Yuzao, Zhu Xizu, and Xu Shouchang were disciples of Zhang Taiyan. Their unanimous recommendation led to the success of this proposal. During this conference, numerous phonetic schemes were proposed, with many of the more famous ones coming from returnees. For example, Wang Rongbao, a native of Wu County and Waseda University alumnus, proposed a scheme based on radicals; Hu Yuren from Wuxi, a graduate of Kobun Institute, presented the symbolic scheme “Simple Characters”; and the “Unified Phonetic Conference” chairman Wu Jingheng, who also studied in Japan, invented the “Bean Sprout Alphabet.”

Although the Zhejiang members played an important role in the introduction of Zhuyin, the phonetic symbols invented by Zhang Taiyan have clearly withstood the test of time. They carry the profound cultural heritage of the inventor’s “Zhang Cao” style and also bear traces of Japanese katakana. This scheme… The method of phonetic notation in the national language was transformed from the Roman letters initially used by foreigners and Lu Gongzhang back to forms closer to Chinese characters, which is closely linked to the experiences of its inventors, promoters, and their influences from their studies in Japan. This evolution, seemingly a regression, actually aligned with the national conditions of the time. At that point, the literacy rate in China exceeded 80%, and the acceptance of stroke-based phonetic symbols was evidently higher than that of Roman letters.

Of course, a reform involving only scholars would not succeed. Here we need to look at the officials promoting the “Unified Pronunciation Committee.” They were Cai Yuanpei, the Minister of Education; Fan Yuanlian, the Vice Minister; and Dong Hongyi, the acting Vice Minister. Cai Yuanpei graduated from the University of Leipzig in Germany and later signed and published the “National Language Romanization”; Fan Yuanlian graduated from the Tokyo Higher Normal School and Hosei University in Japan, and he was the signatory of the first edition of the “National Sound Dictionary”; Dong Hongyi graduated from Waseda University and witnessed the entire process of the first Unified Pronunciation Conference. At the beginning of the Republic of China, without this group of returning overseas officials, how could the monumental task of “unifying the national sound” have been achieved?

The subsequent national language movement aimed for “consistency in spoken and written language” and “unification of the national language.” Among those in the Ministry of Education actively promoting this idea were Li Jinxii and Zhou Shuren, as well as Wang Maozu, who graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University, and Zhu Wenxiong, who returned from studying in Japan. In 1917, the first conference of the National Language Research Society was held, and Cai Yuanpei was elected president. At this time, an important figure named Hu Shi sent a postcard from the United States applying for membership. After returning to China, Hu Shi became a leader in the New Culture Movement. Alongside Hu Shi, other notable figures in the New Culture Movement included Qian Xuantong, who graduated from Waseda University, and Liu Banhong, who later graduated from the University of Paris. These two phonologists were not only academic experts of the national language movement but also significant promoters of both the New Culture Movement and the national language movement.

The National Language Unification Preparatory Committee was established in 1919, and among the initial 94 members, 41 were appointed by the Ministry of Education, of which 30% were returnees; 35 were recommended by directly governed schools, 80% of whom were returnees; and 38 were successively hired by the National Language Association, 60% of whom were returnees. In total, more than half of the members of the National Language Association were individuals who had returned from studying abroad. During the process of determining “Beijing pronunciation” as the national sound, an official from the Heilongjiang Provincial Education Department who graduated from a Japanese military academy… Liao Yuchun, Zhao Yuanren who returned from Cornell and Harvard, and Wei Tingsheng who graduated from Michigan and Harvard, all supported the Beijing dialect advocated by Li Jinxian, Qian Xuandong, Wu Jingheng, and others. In fact, most supporters of the Beijing dialect are not from Beijing, which shows that this is not merely a matter of local prejudice.

During the existence of the National Language Society, returnees played an important role. The “Plan for the Unification of the National Language” proposed by Liu Bannong, Zhou Zuoren, Hu Shi, Zhu Xizu, Qian Xuandong, and Ma Yuzhao advocated for the inclusion of the national language in primary school education. As a result, the Ministry of Education ordered all national schools to adopt the national language and teach phonetic symbols, addressing the promotion of the national language from its roots. Hu Shi proposed a “New Style Punctuation Scheme,” which was based on a plan developed by the returnee Yang Shuda from Japan. This was a significant advancement in the study of the national language, as it solved the obscurity and ambiguity caused by the lack of punctuation rules. The “Commonly Used Vocabulary of National Sound” edited by Qian Xuandong once became the official standard for Mandarin pronunciation promoted by the Ministry of Education, with Zhu Jiahua, who was the Minister of Education at the time and also a returnee who graduated from the mining and metallurgy department of the Technical University of Berlin in Germany, issuing this important text.

The national language movement was a revolution in Chinese language and writing. The proponents of this change recognized the backwardness of the national language and aimed to align it with international standards; they even explored the abolition of Chinese characters. The Romanization of Mandarin was born from this concept. Chinese characters evolved from pictographs and cannot indicate pronunciation, requiring memorization for learning. In contrast, Western languages are phonetically connected and can be assimilated to some extent, allowing for faster language acquisition. Meanwhile, due to the earlier development of Western civilization, Mandarin clearly lagged behind Western languages. Consequently, “several people” invented the Romanization of Mandarin, led by returnee professors Zhao Yuanren, Lin Yutang, Liu Bannong, and Qian Xuandong. This scheme was ultimately defined as the second official implementation of the National Sound Alphabet, forming a more complete system: on one hand, phonetic symbols served as tools for phonetic literacy; on the other hand, Mandarin Romanization promoted the development of Chinese and its integration with the world. However, due to political reasons, Mandarin Romanization was eventually abolished in mainland China, though it provided a shortcut for applications like Chinese telegraphy and laid the groundwork for the later emergence of Hanyu Pinyin. The original plan’s prototype. Later, Zhou Youguang, who was praised in mainland China as the “father of Hanyu Pinyin,” also studied abroad in Japan.

After the government change, mainland China entered an era of isolation. Reforms driven primarily by political purposes replaced academic discussions; all plans promulgated by the old government were abolished and replaced by simplified characters and Hanyu Pinyin. Simplified characters discarded the foundation of Chinese writing, becoming a mutant that could neither trace its origins nor align with Western languages. The true inventor of simplified characters was actually Qian Xuantong, who, after much effort during the Republic of China, failed to implement his ideas. Hanyu Pinyin emphasized functionality and practicality, rather than adhering to the phonetic rules of the Chinese language, and it was not even a usable writing system. It is evident that during this period, the development of language and writing in mainland China focused on the preferences of those in power, thus losing the academic discussions that could have existed during the Republic of China. Looking back at the group of returnees who led the national language movement in the early Republic, it not only focused on the application and popular education of the national language but also on its future direction and alignment with international standards.

Currently, English has over a million vocabulary words, and with the development of social, political, economic, and technological cultures, it is growing at a scale of 1,000 to 5,000 words each year. It can rapidly and directly absorb vocabulary from languages like French and German to meet its own needs. In mainland China, the application of simplified characters has significantly reduced the number of entries in standard texts like the “Xinhua Dictionary,” resulting in only about 500,000 corresponding Chinese vocabulary words. Although there has been some development, factors such as the form of writing have imposed serious limitations on the absorption of foreign vocabulary. The inventor of the national language Romanization foresaw such issues back then and aimed to replace square characters with Romanized characters to achieve a leap in Chinese characters. Regardless of whether the plan was mature, the returnees saw the future from a higher perspective. In that era of academic flourishing, the occurrence of the national language movement owes much to the contributions of the returnee faction.

References:

“A History Outline of the National Language Movement” by Li Jinxi, Commercial Press (May 2011).