Gwoyeu Romatzyh

Gwoyeu Romatzyh,^[a] abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Standard Chinese in the Latin alphabet. It was conceived by Yuen Ren Chao, who led a group of linguists to develop the system from 1925 to 1926. From 1942 to 2000, a small number of reference works published in Hong Kong and overseas made use of the system, and Chao would use it throughout his later linguistics work, including in his most influential publications. However, Gwoyeu Romatzyh never achieved widespread use among the Chinese public. In places where it had been used, it was eventually replaced—largely by Hanyu Pinyin (or simply 'pinyin'), which became the international standard romanization during the second half of the 20th century. Pinyin itself made use of principles originally introduced by Gwoyeu Romatzyh, whose influence is often reflected in the design of later systems.

GR indicates the four tones of Standard Chinese by varying the spelling of syllables, rather than by using either diacritics as in pinyin, or numerals as in the earlier Wade–Giles system. The distinct spellings for each tone also vary by syllable according to particular rules. Tonal spelling was originally proposed by Lin Yutang, one of the members of the development team. Chao said that this could possibly aid students of Chinese learning to articulate tones.^[1] However, later study comparing the tonal accuracy of students reading aloud from either Gwoyeu Romatzyh or pinyin has not substantiated Chao's hypothesis.^[2]

In September 1928, the Republic of China adopted Gwoyeu Romatzyh as the national romanization system for Standard Chinese.^[3] It began to see use in Chinese dictionaries, with some proponents hoping that it would eventually replace Chinese characters entirely. However, despite support from linguists both in China and overseas, the public largely lacked interest in the system, or even viewed it with hostility due to its complexity.^[b] In addition, its widespread adoption was hindered by its narrow calibration to the Beijing dialect during a period when the country lacked a strong centralizing government to impose its use. While tonal spelling also features in romanization schemes used for other Asian languages like Hmong and Zhuang, their rules are considerably simpler than those in Gwoyeu Romatzyh.

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