67 years ago today, on February 11th, 1958 (December 23rd, 1957 in the lunar calendar), the Chinese Pinyin Scheme was promulgated and implemented. Hanyu Pinyin Plan On February 11, 1958, the Fifth Session of the First National People's Congress discussed the proposal on the draft Hanyu Pinyin plan proposed by Premier Zhou Enlai of the State Council, and Director Wu Yuzhang of the Chinese Character Reform Commission on the current character reform and Hanyu Pinyin Plan report, and decided: (1) Approve the Chinese Pinyin plan. (2) Agree in principle with Director Wu Yuzhang's report on the current character reform and Chinese Pinyin plan, and believe that Chinese characters should continue to be simplified and Putonghua should be actively promoted; As a tool to help learn Chinese characters and popularize Putonghua, the Chinese Pinyin scheme should be taught in normal schools, primary and secondary schools first to accumulate teaching experience, and at the same time, it should be gradually implemented in publishing and other aspects, and the further improvement of the scheme should be continued in practice. Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (Hànyǔ Pīnyīn) is the Latinization scheme of Chinese characters in the People's Republic of China. It was studied and formulated by the Chinese Pinyin Scheme Committee of the former Chinese Character Reform Commission (now the National Language Working Committee) during the character reform from 1955 to 1957. This pinyin scheme is mainly used to annotate the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, as a kind of Mandarin phonetic symbol of Chinese characters. On February 11, 1958, the National People's Congress approved the publication of the plan. In 1982, it became the international standard ISO7098 (Chinese Roman alphabet spelling method). Some overseas Chinese areas, such as Singapore, use Chinese Pinyin in Chinese teaching. In September, 2008, Taiwan Province, China decided that the Chinese transliteration policy was changed from "general pinyin" to "Chinese pinyin". All parts involving Chinese-English translation will require the use of Chinese pinyin, which will be implemented since 2009. Chinese Pinyin Alphabet The Historical Origin of Chinese Pinyin Originally, there were no Pinyin letters in China, and the method of straight pronunciation or reverse cut was used to give phonetic notation to Chinese characters. Straight pronunciation means using homophones to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. If homophones are all uncommon words, they can't be read even if they are pronounced. Reverse cut means using two Chinese characters to give phonetic notation to another Chinese character. The upper character of reverse cut is the same as the initial consonant of the annotated character, and the lower character of reverse cut is the same as the final and tone of the annotated character. Mr. Zhou Youguang called reverse cutting "heart cutting welding method". These two phonetic notation methods are inconvenient to use. In the late Ming Dynasty, western missionaries came to China to preach. In order to learn Chinese characters, they began to spell Chinese with Latin alphabets. In 1605, Italian Jesuit missionary MatteoRicci (1552-1610) published "The Miracle of Western Characters" in Beijing, in which four Chinese character articles were phonetically noted with Latin letters. This is the earliest publication to phonetic Chinese characters in Latin letters, slightly later than the "Xiaojing" to phonetic Chinese characters in Arabic letters, which is probably the earliest attempt to phonetic Chinese characters in alphabetic letters. The original book "The Miracle of Western Characters" is not easy to find. It is said that there are still copies in the Vatican Library. In 1626, French Jesuit missionary Jenny Pavilion published Western Confucianism Ears and Eyes in Hangzhou, which is a vocabulary for phonetic notation of Chinese characters in Latin letters. The scheme used for phonetic notation is modified on the basis of Matteo Ricci's scheme. The scheme of Matteo Ricci and Jinni Pavilion is designed based on the standard of "Mandarin reading pronunciation", which is suitable for spelling Beijing pronunciation. This novel Pinyin method has greatly enlightened Chinese scholars. Fang Yizhi, a phonologist in the late Ming Dynasty, said, "The difference of words is also connected with borrowing ears. If things belong to one word, each word has its own meaning, such as the fact that things are in the far west are in harmony. Because of the sound, it is not heavy or common, but especially better?" Yang Xuanqi, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, said, "Xinmao's family lived in the old Jinwu period, and it was still a son of Yunzhang. However, for two or three hundred years, Matteo Ricci and Ginny Pavilion's schemes were only used by foreign missionaries, and were not widely spread among Chinese people. Between 1815 and 1823, Morrison, a British missionary who preached in Guangzhou, compiled a Chinese Dictionary, which was the earliest Chinese-English dictionary. In the dictionary, he used his own pinyin scheme to spell the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, which was actually a dialect to teach Roman characters. Then, the dialect church Roman characters of different dialects are also designed in other dialect areas. Among them, Xiamen's "phonetic characters" began to spread in 1850, and 50,000 copies of books were printed and sold in 1921 alone. Until the founding of New China, about 100,000 people used such dialects to teach Roman characters. Dialects in other places teach Roman characters, which are spread in trading ports in the south, mainly used for preaching. In 1867, ThomasF. Wade, secretary of the British Embassy, published the Beijing phonetic Mandarin textbook "Language from You Collection". He designed a set of spelling methods to spell Chinese names, place names and things in Latin letters, which was called "Wade style". From 1931 to 1932, two foreign missionaries put forward "spicy Chinese characters", which is a Chinese Latin alphabet designed according to Guangyun and based on syllables. Almost all homophones have different spellings, and they are spelled in dialects. These schemes of spelling Chinese characters with Latin alphabets provide experience for the future Chinese pinyin movement.