The Article “Pīnyīn is a Good, Workable Writing System On Its Own” Has Been Revised

The article “Pīnyīn is a Good, Workable Writing System On Its Own”, available to be read on 3lines.org, has been revised. Its contents were taken from the Introductions of recent Pīnyīn web resources, and it should serve as a brief overview of why it’s important for those of us in the Mandarin field to recognize that Pīnyīn is a full writing system, not just a pronunciation aid. (The article “Pīnyīn Was Plan A” provides a more in-depth discussion of how we in the Mandarin field should view Pīnyīn.)

Here is a link to the newly posted article:

• “Pīnyīn is a Good, Workable Writing System On Its Own”
  
  (The login information required is the same as for anywhere else on 3lines.org. If you’re already on the 3lines.org site, you can find this article in the folder Misc ▶ Articles.)

The subject of Pīnyīn and the Chinese characters may be one of the most important subjects I have ever written about, since it deals with facing the most difficult fundamental aspect of the Mandarin language, the language that is the very reason that the Mandarin field exists. This article is a distillation of months of research and analysis regarding this subject, and of decades of experience in learning and teaching Mandarin in the Mandarin field. I highly recommend that anyone in or interested in the Mandarin field read it, and that they also go on to read the more in-depth article, “Pīnyīn Was Plan A”. Please feel free to pass on the information about these articles to any Witness you know who is in or interested in the Mandarin field. (Many of the principles discussed in these articles apply to the Cantonese field as well, which is evidently consolidating on the Sidney Lau system as the romanization system of choice.)

Here is a sample of some of the new content:

Indeed, in our ministry specifically, we definitely need to understand speech and to speak understandably much more than we need to read and write.

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Also, as a Sumerian proverb stated, “a scribe whose hand matches the mouth, he is indeed a scribe”. Pīnyīn can indeed be used to write anything that can be spoken in Modern Standard Mandarin, from the simplest expressions to the most advanced, complex, and deeply meaningful expressions, so it qualifies as a full writing system in that fundamental sense as well.

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But, aren’t characters more meaningful than Pīnyīn? There are certainly meanings and stories behind how certain characters are written, but taken as a bewitchingly complex, independent system for directly representing meanings visually, the characters can actually be a distraction or a diversion from the Mandarin words themselves, which are already a system of representing meanings through Mandarin speech sounds. Really, a Mandarin word still means what it means, no more and no less, whether it is spoken, written in characters, or written in Pīnyīn. Shakespeare said that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, and indeed, a rose would smell as sweet whether the spoken Mandarin word for it is written as “玫瑰” or as “méigui”. Writing the word in characters does not add to its meaning, and writing it in Pīnyīn does not take away from its meaning.

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While those who love traditional Chinese culture may dislike such a radical innovation, it can be said that such innovations are actually a sign of positive, healthy cultural development. Another example of such a radical but positive innovation was the West and China moving from always using Roman numerals and the Chinese characters for numbers to mostly using Arabic numerals. I’m sure most would agree that it’s a very good thing that we no longer have to deal with CMXXXVI÷III or 九百三十六÷三, because we can just work out 936÷3! Pīnyīn brings similar benefits as a writing system for Mandarin.