"Reading in Asian Languages" is rich with information about how literacy works in the non-alphabetic writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) used by hundreds of millions of people and refutes the common Western belief that such systems are hard to learn or to use. The contributors share a comprehensive view of reading as construction…

Chinese characters are often viewed as a premodern or incomplete form of literacy. Authors with an autonomous view of literacy view Chinese as a concrete, homeostatic language inadequate for use in abstract thought and movement toward mass literacy. Even those with an ideological model framework propose that the intrinsic nature of Chinese…

The table of 545 simplified Chinese characters indicates the proper forms for general use according to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The simplified characters are arranged according to a system that combines stroke counting and stroke order. Alongside the simplified characters are their traditional and more complex forms,…

Script reform, the modification of an existing writing system, is often confused with script replacement of one writing system with another. Turkish underwent the replacement of Arabic script by an adaptation of Roman script under Kamel Ataturk, but a similar replacement in Persian was rejected because of the high rate of existing literacy in…

This is a collection of reference materials to be used with the Chinese-Mandarin Basic Course textbooks. This collection consists of information on romanization systems, indexes for reading and writing characters, and other tables for quick reference. (NCR)

Lessons are presented on Mandarin Chinese concerning how to convert from the Yale romanization system to the Wade-Giles romanization system. The Yale system is the one most widely studied in the United States. Since biographical and geographical names in newspapers, magazines, books, and maps are still spelled out in the Wade-Giles romanization…

Considers whether or not library materials in East Asian languages should be integrated into the general collection. Romanized access through a Latin-script library catalog and nonromanized access through a browsing collection are considered. After exploring the difficulties in romanizing Chinese and Japanese scripts, a separate collection is…

This paper explores the range of arguments and sentiments regarding the promotion and/or abolition of types of Chinese scripts. The written representations of Cantonese in Hong Kong, Mandarin in Taiwan as well as Mandarin in China are examined via issues of identity and of discourse both at national and international levels. Chinese scripts are…

This guide provides an overview of the salient features of the Japanese language from the perspective of the beginning-level English-speaking learner. Chapters address these topics: the Japanese language and its historic and cultural setting; phonology (sounds and syllables, word accentuation; loanwords; connected speech); writing (scripts,…