“Pinyin Was Plan A” Post Substantially Rewritten

As it says in an update I posted there,

Since this post was originally posted back in January, I have been continuing to research and analyze this subject, since it is of such primary importance in the Chinese field. As one result of this ongoing research and analysis, this post has been substantially rewritten and updated, and a significant amount of material has been added to it. I highly recommend reading it in its current form even if you have already read the original post.

This post now discusses digraphia, the scenario in which pinyin would be treated as a parallel writing system along with the characters rather than just as a pronunciation aid. It also now contains examples of homophones whose pronunciations have actually been changed, getting at the root of the homophone problem rather than band-aiding over it by relying on characters to differentiate homophones. (This and other added information shows that it is not correct to think that the number of homophones currently in Mandarin is a good reason not to use pinyin.) Many quotations from experts in the field have also been added, such as this one from Zhou Youguang, who headed the team that developed pinyin:

If you want to use pinyin to write Chinese, that’s OK

Much other information has been added to the post as well, such as that under the new subheading Actual Evidence That Using More Pinyin Is Better.

As mentioned above, I highly recommend that you take the time to read the entire rewritten post. Please also consider sharing this post with any fellow Witness whom you think may be interested in this subject.

This subject is of central importance to what we do in the Chinese field—it may be one of the most important subjects I will ever write about on tiandi.info, since it deals with facing the most difficult fundamental aspect of the Chinese language, the language that is the reason the Chinese field exists—and this rewritten post contains much of the fruitage of months of research and analysis regarding it.

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