Pīnyīn Was Plan A

Wayne Wong

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Updated 2024-04-14

[Note: This was my first article on this subject, and it is quite in-depth. To paraphrase a well-known quote, ‘I made this longer than usual because I had not had time to make it shorter.’ Eventually, after thinking more about this subject and talking to others about it, I was able to write a couple of shorter related articles. If you want an in-depth discussion about this, though, go ahead and dig in below. You can always stop wherever you like and come back at another time for more. 😄]

汉字 / 漢字?
Pīnyīn?

Plan A. Really. 🔼

A while ago I came across a fascinating article by John DeFrancis, a noted American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries (including the highly regarded ABC Dictionary series), and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The article is called “The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform”, and the Chinese writing reform it refers to involves moving from the use of Hànzì (汉字/漢字 Chinese characters) to the use of a writing system that uses an alphabet, the current prime candidate being Pīnyīn (拼音 Pinyin). Here are some passages from the article:

When knowledge of the new alphabetic writing system for Chinese seeped into China, it was enthusiastically taken up by the left-wing movement throughout the country, more or less clandestinely in Guomindang [Guómíndǎng]-controlled areas, but quite openly in Yan’an [Yán’ān]. Especially noteworthy is the support it received from such prominent figures as Mao Zedong [Máo Zédōng], Liu Shaoqi [Liú Shàoqí], Lu Xun [Lǔ Xùn], Cai Yuanpei [Cài Yuánpéi], Guo Moruo [Guō Mòruò], Mao Dun [Máo Dùn], Ba Jin [Bā Jīn], and many others. In 1936, Mao told the American journalist Edgar Snow:

In order to hasten the liquidation of illiteracy* here we have begun experimenting with Hsin Wen Tzu [Xīn Wénzì]—Latinized Chinese. It is now used in our Party school, in the Red Academy, in the Red Army, and in a special section of the Red China Daily News. We believe Latinization is a good instrument with which to overcome illiteracy. Chinese characters are so difficult to learn that even the best system of rudimentary characters, or simplified teaching, does not equip the people with a really rich and efficient vocabulary. Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to abandon characters altogether if we are to create a new social culture in which the masses fully participate. We are now widely using Latinization and if we stay here for three years the problem will be solved. (Snow’s emphasis).

...

In his public statements, Mao said that Pinyin would have only a secondary role and that the primary emphasis would be on simplification of characters. But in later remarks made to restricted audiences he emphasized that this was only a temporary concession to reality and that he still held to the view, expressed in 1956 in a letter to an old schoolmate, that “some day in the future we must inevitably carry out a basic reform.” The following year he reiterated his support for alphabetic writing in a speech delivered at a meeting of the Communist Central Committee on “The Problem of the Intellectuals.” And in 1973, three years before his death, he repeated his objection to Chinese characters in an exchange involving himself, Henry Kissinger, and Zhou Enlai [Zhōu Ēnlái], which I present here in full:

Chairman Mao: Chinese language is not bad, but the Chinese characters are not good.

Prime Minister Zhou: They are very difficult to learn.

Chairman Mao: And there are many contradictions between the oral and written language because the oral language is monosyllabic while the written language develops from symbols. We do not use an alphabet.

Dr. Kissinger: There are some attempts to use an alphabet, I am told.

Prime Minister Zhou: First we must standardize the oral language.

The reality that forced Mao to give way in the 1950s and that still prevents Pinyin from having a primary role was made plain by Wang Li [Wáng Lì], the PRC’s foremost linguist, who supported the basic reform of the Chinese writing system. Wang—himself, of course, a member of the elite group he criticized—said opposition “comes primarily from intellectuals, especially from high level intellectuals.”

(The above picture is from the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.)

On the official CIA website, I also found a released historical document, evidently from around 1960, called “The Progress of Pinyin”, which also discusses the original vision for Pīnyīn:

The third drive, the most revolutionary, the most significant for intelligence, and the one with which this paper is concerned, is that for latinhua [Lādīnghuà], latinization, and is officially known as Hanyu Pinyin Fangan [Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng’àn], Program for the Chinese Language in Phonetics. Pinyin, “phonetics,” has come to denote the particular system of representing spoken Chinese in Latin letters-determined by the arbitrary values, including tonal qualities, given them-that is now being propagandized by the regime. Ostensibly the system is intended only to provide an aid for learning the standard (Peking) pronunciation of Chinese characters, a purpose which has so far governed most of its uses. The long-range aim, however, seems to envisage the Chinese coming to use only Pinyin and eventually dropping the characters. Wu Yu-chang [Wú Yùzhāng], chairman of the Chinese Language Reform Committee, who as a refugee in the Soviet Union in the early days saw the Pinyin system being developed by philologists and who feels confident that China’s millions will some day be using it in their daily work, specified as much in 1955:

Traditional Chinese writing is the product of feudalism. It has become a tool for the oppression of the proletariat and a stumbling block to mass education. It is not suited for the modern era. China must replace its outmoded character system with Pinyin.

Yes, some people feel that Traditional characters are better than Simplified characters, and that any characters are better than an alphabetic writing system like Pīnyīn, which they feel is but training wheels for children, the weak, the lazy, and the untalented. However, we can see from the above that several of the early movers and shakers of modern China—including some prominent political figures, linguists, and writers—had the completely opposite view. In fact, the ultimate long-term goal of the architect and founding father of the People’s Republic of China and of significant colleagues of his regarding Pīnyīn was for it to one day replace the Hànzì, the characters.

Modern-day Pīnyīn advocates generally see that as unrealistic, or at least very far off, and many of them, such as Victor H. Mair, do not call for that. However, many of them do call for Pīnyīn to be accepted, not just as a pronunciation aid for the characters, but as the full-fledged script (writing system) for Mandarin in its own right that it linguistically qualifies as, and they call for Pīnyīn to be taught, learned, and used as such a full-fledged script (writing system) in parallel with and with more or less the same status as the characters in a scenario known as digraphia (shuāngwénzhì/双文制/雙文制 two-script system).

“But There Are So Many Words That Sound the Same!” 🔼

Some may object, saying that there are so many homophones in Chinese that the characters are needed to tell them apart from each other. (A homophone is a word that has the same pronunciation as another word, but that has a different meaning from it.) However, consider: When people are just speaking Mandarin, with no characters in sight to help them, do they have problems understanding each other because of all the homophones? Can blind Mandarin-speakers, who cannot see characters, still “see” what people mean when those people speak Mandarin? Native Mandarin-speakers have confirmed to me that no, homophones are not a significant problem in spoken Mandarin—people can use the context and understand each other okay. So, people can use the context and understand each other okay when using Pīnyīn too, since Pīnyīn directly represents the sound of spoken Mandarin. The style of some written Mandarin would perhaps need some adjusting to be less terse and more like that of spoken Mandarin, but it is definitely doable—Mandarin written in Pīnyīn is workable, just as spoken Mandarin is workable.

Perhaps we should look at things another way as well: Perhaps (actually, almost certainly) written Chinese became more and more terse because the characters are so hard to write that people were strongly motivated to write as few of them as possible. (This must have especially been the case when characters had to be scratched onto bones or carved onto stone tablets!) Then, perhaps Chinese became so full of homophones because people came to rely more and more on the characters to distinguish homophones from each other, rather than finding other ways to alleviate the problem. Those other ways could include:

• Including as much clarifying context in the written language as is necessary, as is done in the spoken language

• Reducing the number of homophones by

  • Adding syllables to existing homophones

  • Changing the pronunciations of existing syllables within homophones

    • Some examples are cited here by Zhōu Yǒuguāng (周有光, Zhou Youguang), who led the team that created Pīnyīn:

      • Changing the pronunciations while keeping the same expressions

        • “For example, ‘cancer’ (癌症) and ‘inflammation’ (炎症) were both pronounced as ‘yánzhèng’ in the past. Now in hospitals, ‘cancer’ is pronounced as ‘áizhèng’ and has the same meaning as when it was pronounced ‘yánzhèng’ in the past, but it has acquired a different pronunciation and is, thus, differentiated from ‘inflammation’ (yánzhèng).”

      • Changing the pronunciations by selecting different expressions

        • “For example: ‘chūbǎn’ (出版), to publish, and ‘chūbǎn’ (初版), the first issue (of a book/magazine/etc), were very confusing. Now ‘the first issue (of a book/magazine/etc.)’ is written as ‘dì-yī bǎn’ (第一版). These are the rules set up by the publication department in Beijing.”

  • Increasing the range of sounds available for use in the spoken language

    • For example, a few sounds that come to mind that are not currently used in Modern Standard Mandarin are those represented in English by “v” and by “th” (both the sound in “the” and the sound in, well, “both”).

    • Victor Mair said, “We have lost a lot of the phonetic richness of earlier forms of Chinese, with something I call phonetic nivelation, the drying up of the sounds.”

So, rather than just being seen as a solution to the problem of homophones in Mandarin, perhaps (over?)reliance on characters should also be seen as part of the cause of that problem in the first place, and as a big factor in perpetuating that problem when people should really be developing other, more appropriate solutions! As Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

In this respect of seeming to offer a way to solve a problem that they helped to cause in the first place, Hànzì remind me of mobsters who demand compensation for their “protection”, which people wouldn’t need in the first place if the mobsters weren’t around!

Regarding the real root of the homophone problem, Zhōu Yǒuguāng with great insight pointed out,

Homophones are a problem of language, not “script.” The root of this problem lies in the pronunciation of the language (yǔyīn), not in the different ways of spelling the words (cíxíng).

Yes, relying on characters to differentiate Chinese homophones is at best a band-aid solution that actually makes the problem worse rather than getting at the real root of it: the pronunciations of the affected words. Yes, the best way to deal with homophones is to eliminate them by changing their pronunciations so that they are no longer homophones, just like you can eliminate your enemies by turning them into your friends, rather than continuing to pay “protection money” to certain characters who are actually helping your enemies to keep on being your enemies. While it may seem radical to thus get at the root of the problem by changing the language itself in ways such as those mentioned above, the truth is that languages are naturally changing in such ways all the time, as shown by the actual examples mentioned above. We who use a language can and should change it as necessary by using it differently. People are doing it all the time with English, and they are doing it with Chinese too.

Meanwhile, the ultimate clarifier in modern Mandarin, even with all its existing homophones, is context, not characters. Characters themselves can have multiple possible meanings and multiple possible pronunciations, so one often has to, yes, check the context of something written in characters before the meaning and/or pronunciation of certain words in it can be determined with certainty. For example, should “恶(惡)” be pronounced as “ě”, “è”, “wū”, or “wù”, with their different associated meanings? It ultimately depends on the context—the character on its own is still ambiguous, not enough to clarify things.

So, that there are so many different words in modern Mandarin that sound the same is not a good reason not to use Pīnyīn, any more than it is a good reason not to speak Mandarin. Ironically, it is actually a good long-term reason not to use characters!

Actual Evidence That Using More Pīnyīn Is Better 🔼

It is actually not necessary to rely merely on personal opinion when considering whether or not it would be a good idea for Mandarin-learners to use Pīnyīn more than it has traditionally been used. For one thing, many of us have seen and experienced much evidence for this ourselves in recent years, during which Jehovah has blessed the worldwide Mandarin field with explosive growth as Pīnyīn has been used more and more for training and helping Mandarin-learners. This is in striking contrast to the agonizingly slow growth experienced in the Chinese field in earlier years, when Chinese language training was more focused on characters.

Strong additional evidence was provided by an experimental program that was conducted in many elementary schools throughout China to explore what would result from expanded use of Pīnyīn. Under the Z.T. subheading there, the article “The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform”, mentioned above, discusses this interesting experimental program. Here are some quotes:

The Zhuyin Shizi, Tiqian Duxie [Zhùyīn Shízì, Tíqián Dúxiě] ‘Phonetically Annotated Recognition Promotes Earlier Reading and Writing’ experiment came into being in 1982 in the northeast province of Heilongjiang [Hēilóngjiāng] when a group of innovative reformers sought to improve instruction at the elementary level by the creative application of Pinyin.

The reformers stressed starting with whole syllables and progressing to multiple syllables to create words. [By the way, this aggregation (grouping) of syllables into words is a great benefit of Pīnyīn, because it greatly eases reading comprehension.—W. W.]

Children were encouraged to write using only Pinyin in the initial stage, and thereafter were free to use Pinyin in place of characters that they did not know how to write.

...it was not simply a reform in the teaching of characters, but represented a completely new pedagogical approach whose success was obvious after only one year of instruction.

“In contrast to the standard curriculum, under which children were only taught Hanyu Pinyin Romanization for the first two months purely as a phonetic notational device for the pronunciation of Chinese characters, under this ‘Zhu Ti [Zhù Tí]’ experimental curriculum, children are encouraged to develop their reading and writing skills in standard Mandarin Chinese using Hanyu Pinyin Romanization for the first two years.”

Of special interest are his notes on further examples of the astounding success of the program, of which I mention only three: (1) In a 1988 writing competition, of the 4,091 students who took part, three Z.T. students received first prizes and four received second prizes. None of the non-Z.T. students won prizes. (2) Of the same 4,091 students, 6.61 percent of Z.T. students recommended for admission to ‘key middle schools’ were accepted, whereas only 2.15 percent of the non-Z.T. students were accepted. (3) In a countrywide graduation competition based on the sixth-grade curriculum, a Z.T. fifth-year class had a pass rate of 100 percent compared to a sixth grade pass rate of 88.89 percent.

Basically, compared to those in the standard program who were just taught Pīnyīn for a couple of months or so purely as a phonetic aid for pronouncing characters, the students who were allowed to use Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system for a couple of years or so not only did significantly better in learning the language and in learning the Chinese characters, they also did significantly better overall academically. This is not surprising to me, since language is needed to learn and progress in any and every other field of learning. As former UN interpreter Wu Wenchao said,

Chinese language is difficult to learn in comparison with alphabetic languages. …Chinese students work very hard and would have to spend two more years [some have said even longer] in learning in order to reach the same level of a Western intellectual. …The difficulty in learning is analogous to long boot-up time in computer terminology, which means system delay in becoming operational.

In view of the above, I can’t help but wonder how well those learning Mandarin for the Mandarin field can do who just keep on using Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system, instead of stopping and moving on to characters after some arbitrary length of time. Since Jehovah’s organization is now providing official Pīnyīn versions of the core publications, and since many unofficial Pīnyīn-containing resources are available as well (as discussed more extensively below), Pīnyīn-using Mandarin field language learners now actually do not have to divert years of additional time to learn the relatively complex Chinese characters. Also, they do not have to put forth additional constant, ongoing effort to remember the Chinese characters they’ve learned, and to learn new ones. (And if they do choose to learn some Chinese characters, they could do so more effectively than they could without the assistance of Pīnyīn.) Mandarin field language learners who just use Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system can focus more on the information being communicated in the publications, that they in turn need to communicate to those in the field, without having to expend so much time and mental effort on language technicalities. Such ones should do significantly better overall in the Mandarin field, just as the Z.T. students mentioned above did significantly better overall academically.

Regrets, Opposition, and Latin 🔼

Many people, motivated by real love of God and neighbour, have worked hard to learn Chinese characters so that they can communicate effectively with Chinese people. Such ones should definitely be commended. There are also other reasons why some are interested in Chinese characters, though, that cause people to become emotionally attached to them, as if they were an end in themselves.

Many are sentimentally attached to Hànzì, Chinese characters, because of the vast amount of history and traditional Chinese culture and beauty embodied in them, and they would consider it regrettable if these things were diminished or lost. Doubtlessly, these things are not without value. However, we must be careful not to be swayed or moulded by Chinese nationalism or “culturalism”, as many worldy people are. (Romans 12:2) If such things as history and traditional cultural concepts of beauty were the most important things to Jehovah’s people, then those in the English-language field would still be using the King James Version as their main translation of the Bible, and those of us in the Chinese field would still be using the venerable Chinese Union Version (Héhé Běn/和合本) as our main translation. Obviously, though, we are not doing those things. Why not? Why is the New World Translation our standard translation of the Bible instead? In addition to the translational errors and inadequacies found in those older translations, another big reason is that in our ministry, our work as Jehovah’s Witnesses, clear, effective, and understandable communication of the God-honouring and life-saving truth from God’s Word must take priority over human tradition and cultural concepts of beauty.

Even from a purely cultural point of view, a culture stays strong, relevant, and influential by adapting to the present and helping to build the future, not by desperately holding on to past glories while the rest of the world passes it by. This is especially true in the modern world, in which human technology and culture are developing at an ever increasing rate as information, the currency (medium of exchange) of culture and the fuel of change, is created, processed, and shared on a worldwide scale at an ever increasing rate.

As an example, can you imagine trying to say that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics would be a great writing system for our times? (“They’re like pictures that represent meaning! They’re beautiful!”) Would it make a difference if over a billion people were already using these hieroglyphics? Maybe that would make it even more urgent to make a simpler and more efficient writing system available as an option!

Also noteworthy from a cultural viewpoint is that while it uses the international Latin alphabet, the Pīnyīn system was developed in China by Chinese people. Thus, along with the characters, Pīnyīn is also a product of Chinese culture. In fact, Pīnyīn is a good example demonstrating that great products of Chinese culture don’t all have to be hundreds or thousands of years old!

And even if Pīnyīn eventually does someday, somehow become the dominant writing system of China, the Hànzì would still be around for a long time. Consider a historical analogy: There are good reasons why people in many places now get around using automobiles rather than horses, even though the transition may have been jarring and costly at first, but horses have not become extinct. In fact, lots of people love horses, and think they’re wonderful. At the same time, though, they’re probably glad that horses are not the dominant or only mode of transportation anymore, that they have the option of using a car (or a bus, or a rapid transit train, or an airplane, etc.) to just get from point A to point B. Similarly, even if the time should come when the Hànzì are no longer the dominant writing system for Chinese, these venerable symbols of Chinese culture would still be remembered and loved by many, even as people enjoy the benefits of more modern, efficient, and user-friendly writing systems like Pīnyīn.

In addition to those who feel that phasing out the Hànzì would be a regrettable cultural loss, I have also noticed that there are some for whom knowledge of Hànzì is a matter of pride and self-identity. They are proud of knowing the Hànzì as they do, and they view their knowledge of the Hànzì as part of what makes them who they are, as something that distinguishes them from those who don’t know the Hànzì. Such ones may defend the Hànzì to the point of irrationality in the face of a more accessible alternative that would make them and their hard-earned knowledge of Hànzì less “special”, that would threaten to render worthless all of the blood, sweat, and tears they have invested into grappling with these “Chinese puzzles”. It’s as if they are saying, “That’s not fair! If I had to go through all this bitter hard work to learn characters before I could read and write Chinese, then everyone else has to too!”

Maybe this is connected to why so many Chinese people seem to think,

“I suffered with Chinese characters, so you must suffer with them too!”

rather than,

“I want you to use _Pīnyīn_ so you won’t have to suffer with Chinese characters like I did.” https://t.co/rgv337FoFi

— Troubadour WW (@troubadourww) April 13, 2024

This is probably a big reason why, as noted above, “opposition [to Chinese writing reform] ‘comes primarily from intellectuals, especially from high level intellectuals.’ ” Lǔ Xùn (鲁迅/魯迅, Lu Xun), considered by many to be the greatest Chinese writer of the twentieth century (he wrote “The True Story of Ah-Q”, “Diary of a Madman”, and “My Old Hometown”), had this to say about the matter:

In addition to the limitations of social status and economic means, our Chinese characters present another high threshold to the masses: their difficulty. If you don’t spend ten or so years on them, it’s not easy to cross this threshold alone. Those who cross over it are the scholar-officials, and these same scholar-officials do their utmost to make writing as difficult as possible because it makes them especially dignified, surpassing all other ordinary scholar-officials.

…

Chinese characters and the Chinese literary language are already difficult enough by their own nature. On top of that, the scholar-officials have purposely devised all of these additional difficulties that get added on. Such being the case, how could anyone hope that the masses would have any affinity for the Chinese writing system? But the scholar-officials precisely want it to be this way. If the characters were easy to recognize and everybody could master them, then they would not be dignified, and the scholar-officials would lose their dignity along with them.

This tendency of many to prioritize their own pride and position over what’s really better for everyone is also described in this quote from Guy Kawasaki about something he learned from Steve Jobs:

A players hire A+ players. Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization.

Yes, Pīnyīn was Plan A, but China unfortunately let the proud, self-serving B players have their way.

Is that the way we as Jehovah’s people should be? Shouldn’t godly, self-sacrificing love move us to do what’s best for others rather than fulfilling the imperfect human instinct for being self-glorifying, self-justifying, and self-serving? Are we showing pride in the name of love?

In this, I agree with Zhōu Ēnlái (周恩来/周恩來, Zhou Enlai), the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, who agreed with Lǐ Zhúchén (李烛尘/李燭塵, Li Zhuchen), who said,

Every time the question of the reform of Chinese characters is brought up, somebody raises an objection, or even stubbornly opposes it for this or that reason. Some say that the characters are not difficult. I will say that such a person is like one who, as soon as his wounds are healed, forgets the pain he suffered. ...If he will but recall his bitter experience in learning characters, and consider the interests of the children and the illiterates by placing himself in their place, he will not dissent or object so strongly. [This was actually said regarding opposition to the simplification of the characters, but the principle applies to opposition to Pīnyīn as well.—W. W.]

More recently, one commenter pointed out:

It takes a very grown-up person to say “I did this the hard way, but child, I want you to do it the easy way, for the greater good.”

Also, during the 2014 Stanford Commencement address, Bill Gates said:

If we have optimism, but we don’t have empathy, then it doesn’t matter how much we master the secrets of science, we’re not really solving problems—we’re just working on puzzles.

Mr. Gates’ above observation applies to the subject at hand in that while many enjoy trying to solve the puzzles presented by Chinese characters, and while many also enjoy being known for being good at solving these puzzles, empathy should move us to recognize that there are much bigger issues involved than just our personal enjoyment or glorification.

Yes, when even some worldly people can recognize the above points, we Christians should recognize even more the need to show love and empathy rather than being proud, self-glorifying, self-justifying, and self-serving. Also, we should be actively and determinedly following the course of true Christian love and empathy rather than just going along with others who are proud, self-glorifying, self-justifying, and self-serving. We should especially do so when we have scriptures such as this to guide us:

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.—1 Corinthians 8:1.

The situation with some people defending Chinese characters so irrationally and vehemently reminds me of how for a long time the clergy of Christendom irrationally and even violently opposed the production and distribution of Bibles printed in the languages of the common people, insisting that Bibles should be in Latin as they had traditionally been for many years. This would protect the special status of the clergy as ones whom the people had to go through in order to obtain the precious knowledge of God’s Word. However, since Jehovah already designed the right amount of difficulty into his Word, adding language-related difficulties to it wrongly and overly hinders people from benefitting from it, when God’s will is “that all sorts of people should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth” . (Daniel 12:4; Matthew 13:34, 35; 1 Timothy 2:4) While the clergy were probably telling themselves and others that they were trying to protect the specialness of God’s Word, they were actually hampering its rightful spread, and their efforts ultimately failed. (One thing that greatly facilitated the widespread distribution of God’s Word was the use of a little piece of technology known as the printing press. Well-applied technology continues to provide important tools that aid the spread of the good news.) Now, Latin is a dead language, and Jehovah’s organization speaks ill of those who opposed the spread of God’s Word to the common people, while speaking well of those who worked and sacrificed to make God’s Word available in languages that the common people could read without unnecessary difficulty.

Nowadays, although illiteracy is still a big problem in China*, most of the people in the Chinese field to whom we preach and teach can read the existing Chinese literature that uses Chinese characters. “However,” as Romans 10:14 asks, “how will they call on him if they have not put faith in him? How, in turn, will they put faith in him about whom they have not heard? How, in turn, will they hear without someone to preach?” Yes, there is still a great need for many, many more workers in the Chinese field, and the Chinese characters are perhaps the biggest technical obstacle in the way of this, and in the way of those already in the Chinese field being able to do more. Concerning the obstacles presented by Chinese characters, the great Chinese writer Lǔ Xùn, who passed away in 1936, reportedly said, “Hànzì bú miè, Zhōngguó bì wáng.” (“汉字不灭，中国必亡。/ 漢字不滅，中國必亡。” “If Chinese characters are not abolished, China will certainly die.”) True, with the simplification of the characters, the assistance of Pīnyīn, and the extra hard work put forth by the Chinese people to “tough out” the extra technical burdens presented by the characters, it now seems unlikely from a worldly viewpoint that the use of characters will cause the nation of China to die (although we know it will die at Armageddon, and its culture’s influence will eventually fade away completely after that). However, how sad it would be if many Chinese people died unnecessarily because the ongoing obstacles presented by Chinese characters hindered our efforts to reach their hearts with the life-saving message from God’s Word.

Many workers in and potential workers for the Chinese field who are willing and otherwise qualified will find that learning to speak Chinese is actually not that hard, compared to learning to speak some other languages. However, to them the publications that are written only in Chinese characters might as well be written in Latin, like all available copies of the Bible used to be. (Actually, learning to read Latin would probably be significantly easier than learning to read Chinese characters, especially for Westerners.) This is obviously hindering the spread of the good news in the Chinese field, much as keeping the Bible in Latin hindered its spread back in the Dark Ages.

Interestingly, near the end of his article, “The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform”, John DeFrancis mentioned one possible future scenario:

PCs and mobile phones and other innovations still to come will undoubtedly allow more and more advocates of writing reform to escape the stranglehold of officialdom, to the point where (in a century or so?) characters are finally relegated to the status of Latin in the West.

Time will tell if things ultimately turn out that way, but there are some signs that things are at least moving in the direction of digraphia:

• Pīnyīn has become the preferred method of inputting Chinese characters on personal computers and mobile devices. So, some users perhaps wonder, “If I type Pīnyīn in order to enter Chinese characters into a message to send to someone else who’s going to type Pīnyīn in order to enter Chinese characters into a message to send back to me, why are we bothering with the expensive middleman that is the Chinese characters? Why not just use Pīnyīn?”

• Software tools have become available that make it quick and easy to type Pīnyīn with proper diacritical tone marks on our personal computers and mobile devices. Many of these tools are bundled with operating systems, free, or very low cost.

• The earthly part of Jehovah’s organization has become a world-class publisher of Pīnyīn material (source link at Pinyin.info), and it looks like it will only increase its Pīnyīn output in the time ahead.

  • Some may say, “Well, that’s just us,” but people acting for religious reasons have significantly influenced the development and adoption of writing systems before. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica says: “Quoc-ngu was devised in the mid 17th century by Portuguese missionaries who modified the Roman alphabet with accents and signs to suit the particular consonants, vowels, and tones of Vietnamese. It was further modified by a French missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes. …Quoc-ngu is now universally used in Vietnam and is the official writing system.” Note that Vietnamese used to be written with Chinese characters.

Regarding the de facto reality that is developing, The New York Times quotes linguist and author William C. Hannas as saying,

Digraphia—the coexistence of character and alphabetic writing—is happening in China not by policy from the top down, but by default from the bottom up.

So, who knows, if it’s Jehovah’s will, and if people like us overcome prejudice and make good use of available Pīnyīn tools and resources and of “innovations still to come”, maybe it actually won’t take very long before it is at least a commonplace and accepted thing for one to use Pīnyīn as much as one likes to in order to read and write Mandarin Chinese, and for Chinese characters to be seen as optional rather than necessary.

Meanwhile… 🔼

The current reality is that it is good for us in the Chinese field to learn as many Chinese characters as we reasonably can. However, experience has shown that focusing too much on characters can cause one to get bogged down with their multifarious complexities and vagaries—while a picture may be worth a thousand words, the flip side of that is that it can take a thousand words or more to precisely describe a picture, or a character!

All these complexities and vagaries can cause Hànzì to effectively be a GREAT WALL OF CHARACTERS blocking communication with Chinese people. (Honestly, that’s what a block of Chinese characters can seem like to even a long-time learner. What an ironic and wrong thing for a writing system to be—a long-term barrier to communication! And it’s not only Westerners who feel that way about Chinese characters—The New York Times quotes Chinese blogger Jiang Beining as saying: “Characters are an invisible wall between China and the world.”) This can understandably be discouraging, and it can cause many a publisher to lose confidence and to despair of ever becoming an effective worker in the Chinese field.

Overemphasis on the inherently difficult Hànzì writing system can also slow down and distract from one’s progress in mastering other aspects of the language that are actually more important in the Chinese ministry. What other aspects are these? John DeFrancis, the linguist mentioned above, said in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy that

Speech is primary, writing secondary

Meaning is ultimately carried in the sound of a language; writing mainly carries meaning not in itself, but because it represents the sound of the spoken word. This primacy of speech is not functionally or culturally poor or limiting, as held by some proponents of Hànzì and their contained meaning. Note what multiple award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who wrote the lyrics for West Side Story) said about something that, like speech, is made up of sound alone:

Music is the richest of the arts because it’s the most abstract. And it is so filled with emotion.

Another relevant quote is this one from Bono, a member of the well-known band U2:

Music is the language of the spirit.

Yes, speech is made up “only” of sound, but then so is music, which is the language of the spirit and merely the richest of the arts! Since it is so closely related to something that is the language of the spirit and the richest of the arts, it should come as no surprise that when it comes to language, “speech is primary”.

That means that understanding the speech of a language and speaking a language understandably are even more important than reading and writing it. Indeed, understanding speech and speaking understandably are the proper foundation upon which reading and writing must be built, not vice-versa. That is a basic fact about language, and about how Jehovah created us to learn and use language. For example, a baby naturally first learns to understand some of the words it hears, then one day it sees its father and says “dada”. Only later does it learn to read and write the word “father”. A baby who writes out “father” before it ever said “dada” would be most unusual!

Also, Jehovah built right into us the specialized equipment we need to directly produce speech, but we can only produce writing indirectly through the general purpose tools that are our hands, which generally must do so using external, man-made tools and media such as pens and keyboards and paper and computer screens. If even us humans can design and build things with screens that can dynamically display writing, then Jehovah certainly could have designed our bodies to be able to do so as well, but he didn’t. Instead, Jehovah himself designed our bodies so that “speech is primary, writing secondary”.

In our ministry specifically, we definitely need to understand speech and to speak understandably much more than we need to read and write. For example, Japanese publishers have explained to me that since Japanese writing uses many Chinese characters, some(?)/many(?) of which have the same meaning in both Chinese and Japanese, Japanese people can often understand the meanings of Chinese characters that they read. However, the Chinese and Japanese pronunciations of those characters can be very different. So, before a Japanese publisher can be effective in the Mandarin ministry, he must still first learn how to understand and speak Mandarin—just recognizing and knowing the meanings of the characters is not enough.

As it says in the article “Serving With a Foreign-Language Congregation”, in the March 15, 2006 Watchtower,

Your first linguistic goal should be to “utter speech easily understood.” [In other words, speech is primary!—W. W.] (1 Corinthians 14:8-11) Though people may be tolerant, mistakes or a heavy accent may distract them from listening to your message. Giving attention to proper pronunciation and grammar right from the start will prevent you from forming bad habits that are hard to break.

The full text of 1 Corinthians 14:8–11, cited above, is also very releveant:

8 For if the trumpet sounds an indistinct call, who will get ready for battle? 9 In the same way, unless you with the tongue use speech that is easily understood, how will anyone know what is being said? You will, in fact, be speaking into the air. 10 It may be that there are many kinds of speech in the world, and yet no kind is without meaning. 11 For if I do not understand the sense of the speech, I will be a foreigner to the one speaking, and the one speaking will be a foreigner to me.

Think about it: When witnessing, what good is it for you to recognize and know the meanings of the characters in a scripture if you can’t

• introduce it,

• pronounce the words in it correctly when reading it out,

• explain it understandably,

• understand the student’s questions,

• or answer the student’s questions effectively?

On the other hand, we can often give a good witness just by understanding and speaking Chinese, even if the opportunity does not arise to read or write any Chinese while doing so.

In view of the above, it is good to keep in mind the counsel in the January 15, 2011 Watchtower:

Jehovah’s Word urges us to “make sure of the more important things.” (Phil. 1:10) Likening the Christian life course to a long-distance footrace, under inspiration the apostle Paul recommended: “Let us also throw off every weight…, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” (Heb. 12:1) His point was that we must avoid needless pursuits, needless weights, that will tire us out. It may be that some of us are simply trying to squeeze too much into already busy lives. … Reasonableness and modesty should move all of us to recognize our limitations and keep unnecessary commitments to a minimum.

Yes, overemphasis on Chinese characters can be a burden that weighs us down rather than helping our progress in learning and using Chinese. And as the above counsel from The Watchtower emphasizes, we really do need to “throw off every weight” and avoid things that weigh us down on the long-distance marathon of our Christian lives, let alone in our long-term efforts to learn Chinese. Yes, to us it is indeed a significantly bad thing that Chinese characters are so hard to learn and remember.

In physical warfare, diversion can be an important and effective technique to use against an enemy. If your enemy can somehow get you to divert significant time, energy, and resources from your main objective to something else, then he has succeeded in hurting your cause and helping his own cause. In fact, one translation of Sūn Zǐ Bīngfǎ (孫子兵法, The Art of War) says:

“All warfare is based on deception.”

Our enemy in our spiritual warfare on the Mandarin battlefield is a proven master of deception. (2 Corinthians 10:4, 5; 11:14) If he can get us to divert significant time, energy, and resources towards dealing with Chinese characters when our top priority should actually be Mandarin speech, then that would be good for him and his godless cause, but bad for Jehovah, us, and the people and things we are fighting for.

On the other hand, if you rely on Pīnyīn to get by in the Mandarin field, or if you need to fall back on Pīnyīn once in a while when you encounter one of the thousands of rarely used Chinese characters, or if you just prefer to use Pīnyīn, you need not feel ashamed. You just need to keep the following points in mind:

• Pīnyīn was actually Plan A for modern-day China, but Plan A has not been fully followed through on, largely because of old-fashioned selfish pride, nationalism/“culturalism”, and traditionalism, with some intellectual self-indulgence thrown in there for good measure. As Jehovah’s people, we have been trained to recognize that these are very bad reasons for doing something, or for not doing something.

• Technically, linguistically, Pīnyīn is a valid and effective writing system for Mandarin, not just a pronunciation aid for the characters.

  • As mentioned in the above link, the Chinese national standard Zhōngguó Mángwén (中国盲文/中國盲文 Chinese Braille) is basically a transliteration or conversion of Pīnyīn into braille letters. Braille is obviously a writing system, so Pīnyīn must also be a writing system, not just a pronunciation aid.

  • Also, as a Sumerian proverb stated, “a scribe whose hand matches the mouth, he is indeed a scribe”. Pīnyīn can indeed be used to write anything that can be spoken in Modern Standard Mandarin, so it qualifies as a full writing system in that fundamental sense as well.

    • That Pīnyīn is a full writing system for any and all Modern Standard Mandarin speech also means that, in addition to it being correct to say that “Pīnyīn is Chinese” because it was developed in China by Chinese people, it is also quite correct to say that “Pīnyīn is Chinese” in the sense that, even if it isn’t Hànzì, it is indeed written Mandarin Chinese—it’s not as if Pīnyīn was written English or French or something!

  • Really, after a bit of research into what the definition of a “writing system” is, it becomes evident that a system like Pīnyīn should naturally be considered a writing system, in spite of the efforts of worldly Chinese intellectuals to artificially and unjustly keep Pīnyīn down in order to protect and enshrine the traditional Hànzì writing system that they have so much invested in.

  • Since Pīnyīn is not just a pronunciation aid, but a full writing system, it is not “training wheels”—it’s regular wheels. On the other hand, Chinese characters are like non-round wheels—more difficult than necessary. While some may find non-round wheels “interesting”, or maybe even “beautiful”, much of the time we just need to get from point A to point B as quickly and easily as possible. We may even need to do so to save someone’s life. For example, what kind of wheels should be on an ambulance? That’s the kind of “wheels” we should be using in our life-saving work.

    • So, using Pīnyīn is not a matter of “taking the easy way out” or of not being willing to work hard. Using Pīnyīn can help us to get the best results from the hard work we put in. Just like with using round wheels instead of non-round wheels, it’s a matter of working smart in addition to working hard.

  • Rather than thinking of ourselves as inadequate and needing training wheels if we need Pīnyīn to help us pronounce Mandarin expressions, perhaps it is more appropriate to think of Chinese characters as inadequate, if they need to use Pīnyīn as booster rockets before they can be relied on to get off the ground and “fly” as a usable writing system for Mandarin.

    • I personally learned how to ride a bicycle without needing training wheels, but I continue to find Pīnyīn helpful even after having studied Chinese for decades. I think many who are reading this have had similar experiences, and would agree that in this case, maybe the problem is not with us, but with the characters.

    • By way of comparison, I learned from my experience as a computer and network support technician that many people who were unfamiliar with how to use their computers to accomplish certain tasks were not unintelligent persons—often their computer systems were simply not intuitive and easy enough to use. (Our office used Windows PCs exclusively. :-) ) That is why people working in the computer industry continue to work hard to make their systems more intuitive and easier to use, rather than just claiming that users have to smarten up. (Sometimes they do, but that’s not always the problem.) That may also be a big reason why newer, more intuitive, and easier-to-use computing devices such as the iPad are surging in popularity. Similarly, that so many intelligent, well-motivated people have such difficulties with the Chinese characters may show that the characters themselves are simply harder to learn and remember than a writing system ought to be, and that there should be the option to use Pīnyīn, a far more intuitive and far easier-to-use writing system.

      • Note that it is really quite appropriate to compare writing systems to computer technology. The word “technology” comes from the Greek words tekhnē (skill) and logiā (from logos, meaning word, speech), so at its root a technology is a set of words or speech (and thus the thoughts they represent) about a certain kind of skill—“skill speech”. Thus, it would be appropriate to think of writing systems, and even languages themselves, as cultural technologies. (Interestingly, they are technologies, or sets of “skill speech”, involving speech itself, and thus they are of basic, foundational importance to any and all other technologies, or sets of “skill speech”.) As cultural technologies, languages like Mandarin and writing systems like the Hànzì and Pīnyīn should be allowed and encouraged to progress, like other technologies are allowed and encouraged—expected, in fact—to progress for the benefit of all and not remain stagnant.

  • Practically speaking, we should keep in mind that, as many in the Mandarin field have found, by investing the minimal amount of time and effort needed to learn and get used to the Pīnyīn system, we will be equipped to always be able to quickly and easily read anything in Mandarin that’s written in Pīnyīn, and we will always be able to quickly and easily write anything in Mandarin using Pīnyīn. In contrast, even those who are fairly familiar with Chinese characters will at times come across unfamiliar or forgotten characters whose meanings and pronunciations they can only guess at. Also, even those who are fairly familiar with Chinese characters will at times be completely unable to remember or figure out how to write a certain character.

  • (By the way, since, as mentioned above, the Pīnyīn system was developed in China by Chinese people, it is a product of Chinese culture, and it is a part of Chinese culture. So, using Pīnyīn is not an imposition of Western culture—it is an application of Chinese culture! In fact, the Chinese developers of Pīnyīn of their own free will purposely chose to base it on the international Latin alphabet (it’s not just the English alphabet) so that users of Pīnyīn would benefit from its familiarity. Experience has shown that they were right to do so, and that’s what should be most important to us—not mere human cultures or traditions, but what works best for Jehovah’s work.)

• As Jehovah’s people, we have been working hard in the Chinese field for many years now, and our own history and years of experience show us that Pīnyīn has greatly facilitated and accelerated our work in this field, allowing us to focus more on the supremely important spiritual aspects of the ministry, rather than having no alternative but to deal with the relatively extreme technical burdens involved in learning and remembering Chinese characters, as historical and beautiful as they are.

  • Remember, as a mere invention of humans, Chinese characters are not sacred—only things from Jehovah are sacred. So, Chinese characters should not be allowed to become to Jehovah’s people like sacred cows, which are venerated and unreasonably protected while they consume precious resources even as children are starving.

  • Rather than viewing Chinese characters that way and thus suppressing the use of Pīnyīn, Jehovah’s organization is in fact making more and more official Pīnyīn publications available, both in paper form and as digital publications from jw.org. This is concrete evidence that Jehovah’s organization considers Pīnyīn to be helpful and valuable in the Mandarin field, and that it considers more use of Pīnyīn to be the right future direction to pursue.

    • As we know and greatly appreciate, among the available official Pīnyīn publications is the complete Pīnyīn New World Translation Bible—no getting stuck with “might as well be in Latin” Bibles for us! Happily, the Pīnyīn New World Translation Bible is even available in electronic form now on jw.org and on the Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY (WOL). (For more information, go to tiandi.info/bi.)

    • Note also which publications are being made available in Pīnyīn: While the one publication that is widely available in Zhùyīn is the Bible Stories book, which is, comparatively speaking, “kid-stuff”, the publications that are widely available in Pīnyīn include

      • the New World Translation Bible itself,
      • the Watchtower study editions,
      • Our Christian Life and Ministry​—Meeting Workbook,
      • the publications studied at the Congregation Bible Study,
      • the main Bible study textbooks,
      • the songbook,
      • etc.

      —the core, “grownup” stuff. Obviously, Jehovah’s organization does not consider Pīnyīn to be just for kids—it’s ongoing actions demonstrate that it considers Pīnyīn to be for everyone, including grownups.

  • Much unofficial Pīnyīn-containing material has been available for a long time as well (e.g., 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, etc. material), and it looks like it will continue to be available for the foreseeable future.

• We are (or should be) in the Mandarin field to praise Jehovah, to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom, and to help save lives, not to please or impress worldly Chinese intellectuals or any other humans with similar mindsets.

With the above points in mind, make the best use you can of both characters and Pīnyīn, according to what really works best in any particular situation. For example, as Victor Mair said,

Don’t get caught up on being able to write every single Hànzì...The great thing about my wife as a Chinese language teacher—she would encourage her students to just write the Chinese and don’t get hung up on every single character. If you can’t write a character, write it in Pīnyīn.

I would go so far as to say that if you want to or need to read or write Mandarin expressions, but you can’t or you don’t want to or need to use characters, then feel free to just use Pīnyīn and enjoy its benefits.