Discusses the popularization of Putonghua, the common language of the People's Republic of China, and the creation and popularization of a national phonetic alphabet. These two issues are related by the fact that romanization is seen as an important vehicle for the popularization of Putonghua. (CLK)

Based on travel to the People's Republic of China, language changes and reform are reported. New meanings of old expressions and new expressions are listed and discussed. Language reform consists of: popularization of Putonghua, simplification of the characters, and romanization of the Chinese Language. (SW)

The 1986 report by the Canadian Task Force on Aboriginal Languages, which recommended that the writing systems used for the northern Dene languages be standardized within 10 years, resulted in the 1987 Dene Standardization Project. The mandate for the project was to make recommendations on orthography standardization as the first step in the…

This paper is intended to provide "an informative general survey" for those persons interested in Chinese, a language used by 25 percent of the world's population. One of the earliest languages in recorded form, written Chinese has both classical and modern forms. Language reforms in Peking, designed to standardize and simplify spoken…

American students are exposed to many different romanization systems when learning Chinese. The most important systems include Pinyin, Zhuyin fuhao, Wade-Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzhy, and the Yale system, to name just a few. The Pinyin system, which is built on the English alphabet, is the official transliteration system of mainland China. The Zhuyin…