Most of you who read my calendar posts probably know what pinyin is, the major current transcription system for Chinese characters (if you don’t know follow the link). But have you heard of 江苏新字母 ”Jiangsu New Letters”? Probably not, I hadn’t. But I found this remarkable little book by Zhu Wenxiong 朱文熊 (1883–1961), famous linguist and language reformer. While studying at University of Tsukuba 筑波大学 in Japan in 1906 he published this little book, bearing the title ”Jiangsu New Letters”. Our copy is a reprint from 1957, published by the 文字改革出版社 ”Character Reform Press”. The first official pinyin draft was published in 1956, approved in 1958, and in-between a whole series of historical material on spelling, transcription and characters was published 拼音文字史料叢書 (Series of Historical Materials on Spelling and Characters).
Zhu Wenxiong was part of the so-called 切音字运动, roughly meaning ”Spelling movement”, but where 切音 qieyin is not really spelling but a method of indicating the pronunciation of a character by two others. This is done by using the initial sound of the first character and the final sound of the second character. Zhu Wenxiong supported using the Latin alphabet, and in 1906 took his native Suzhou dialect 苏州话 (sub group of Wu Chinese 吴语 which includes Shanghai dialect) as example for his spelling proposal. Suzhou is in Jiangsu province, thereby the title of the book. In the 1930s a predecessor of the current pinyin system called ”Latinxua Sin Wenz” 拉丁化新文字 was promoted primarily by the Communist party, but also had supporters as Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), President of Peking University 北京大学and founder of Academia Sinica 中央研究院, and Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881-1936), one of the foremost modern Chinese writers.
