Why Chinese Created an ALPHABET

Pinyin is the phonetic alphabet for Chinese characters. Learn about its 350 year history in this video!
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✍️ SYNOPSIS: This video will cover the history of the Romanization of Chinese characters, including all the major systems that were created leading up to Hanyu Pinyin (汉语拼音).
▶️ History of Pinyin (1/3): This video;)
▶️ Simplification of Chinese (2/3): • When They Nearly KILLE...
▶️ The Truth About Simplified Chinese (3/3): • The TRUE Origins of Si...
📍TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Why is Chinese so HARD??
1:02 - Early Romanization of Chinese
3:17 - Wade-Giles System
4:27 - Postal System
5:14 - A Push for Language Reform
6:20 - Zhuyin Fuhao
7:13 - GR/Sin Wenz/Yale System
8:28 - Pinyin is Created
10:16 - 7 Reasons why we NEED Pinyin
⚠️ NOTES:
1) The conversation at [00:13] is loosely based on an exchange between Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin
2) The "Jesuit missionary" for the 1626 publication [3:00] was Nicolas Trigault
3) I mispronounced "Giles" as it should be "gy" like gyroscope + "aisles"
4) The aspiration marker in Wade-Giles is not actually an apostrophe [4:08] but a "spiritus asper" and the backtick symbol is typically used (`)
5) Some people consider the Chinese Postal System [4:27] a subset of Wade-Giles, and it was only used for place names
6) Théophile Piry was the first postmaster general in China [4:57]
7) The revolutionary that overturned the Qing dynasty [6:07] is typically known as Sun Yat-sen in English, which is different from his common Chinese name 孙中山 (sūn zhōng shān)
8) Zhou Youguang [9:08] actually went back to China in 1949 to help rebuild the country after the war. But when they asked him to work on the writing system in 1954, he was initially hesitant due to his lack of formal education in that area.
9) In ancient China, if you wanted to tell someone how a certain character was pronounced, you would typically use 反切法 "Anti-cut method", by using one character to cite the initial and another character to reference the final. Ex. 读 (dú) = 多 (duō) + 书 (shū)
📚 REFERENCES:
Romanization of Chinese: repository.seikei.ac.jp/dspace...
Pinyin Basics: www.fragrantmandarin.com/spea...
What is Pinyin: studycli.org/learn-chinese/wh...
Britannica: www.britannica.com/topic/Piny...
Zhuyin: www.chinaknowledge.de/Literatu...
Postal System: muse.jhu.edu/article/260184
Zhou Youguang: www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
Comparison chart: www.pinyin.info/romanization/c...
In-depth comparison: www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv9hvs6k
明朝时代的拼音法：baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1631...
汉语拉丁化：baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1672...
章炳麟：baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1708...
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[@ABChinese]

✅BONUS Info in the description box! I also included all my sources and further readings if you're interested. ✅BUY the Youdao Dictionary Pen 3 today » bit.ly/3NPnovY Save 25% w/ promo code: ABCHINESE

[@connormcdougall9390]

As a foreigner living in mainland China, one thing I find difficult/frustrating is that most 'pinyin' on display doesn't include the tone markers. Brand or product names, landmark or street signs, people's names, etc, all omit the tone markers, making hard to learn new words throught immersion. The only time I do see the tone markers is in educational material.

[@ABChinese]

Haha yes, well the pinyin in brand names and such is more of an assistance than a learning tool. Plus, there's only a tiny fraction of English fonts that support tone marks... that's why you'll always see me use the same 2 fonts whenever I have to use pinyin in my videos!

[@LorenzoF06]

@@ABChinese Wait, are you using Latin letters with diacritics (mà, má, mā, mǎ)? It seems strange to me, most of the fonts I've seen support them

[@ABChinese]

Yeah, so most fonts don't support them, but when you type them, the system will substitute a font that does support them. If you notice some other Chinese teaching channels, you can see how only the letter with the tone mark looks a bit different than the rest of the text, because it's a different font.

[@cathys2307]

It just seems stupid to have tone marks on signs, etc.

[@LorenzoF06]

@@cathys2307 Why though? T wld b lk wrtng Nglsh wtht vwls, maybe you can understand but it feels just wrong not having them

[@AugustdeChriox]

Considering that Pinyin was invented in the 1950s and still has such strong compatibility, it should be said that they are very forward-looking. The fact that almost every Chinese people directly use American keyboards shocks many Europeans and Japanese. A language with a history of thousands of years can actually transform itself to adapt to the new era. To a certain extent, the decision-makers who selected it from more than 600 solutions were gods who foresaw the computer age.

[@mariaeterna.]

Pinyin is definitely the best invention for us non native speakers 🙏♥️ it made my life a whole lot easier!

[@carolisaac5459]

I'm 80. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have happened upon this. You are an angel. I lived on Taiwan as an American student's wife at TaiDa University in Taipei, and tried my hand at learning Mandarin. That was a six month course. This film is worth the whole six months. Now I'm ready to try again. TY

[@ABChinese]

Thank you for the comment!

[@veggiet2009]

Chinese characters may be stupid hard to learn but as a child they were the reason why I decided I wanted to learn Chinese. Learning how to communicate with other people and see a different side of the world are definitely more of my motivations now but I still want to learn Chinese characters. Which is kind of why I roll my eyes whenever I see anyone tell me that to learn Chinese I need to stop learning the characters first, granted they have a point and I'm probably just causing more hardship for myself but characters Rock

[@ahmadsantoso9712]

Chinese writing is actually easy, it's hard only for people with low ᏆϘ

[@rabbitazteca23]

Same

[@smartyoudao]

Thank you so much for reviewing our Youdao Dictionary Pen, we believe our pen will be extremely useful for those learning how to read without pinyin or learning Chinese. Thank you for such informative video about the history of Pinyin! It´s super interesting!

[@ainoame16]

I loved this! I can tell you put a lot of work into this. Thank you so much for a highly interesting history lesson.

[@krk29]

This is a beautiful, fun and informative video ...And I agree, these type of contents will definitely be more appreciated,even if it takes more time for you to prepare. Kudos for the effort and the research!!

[@mariosr29]

This was a very well researched video. Fun to watch and highly informative. Keep up the good work my man!

[@MonochromePixel]

i love how you present this information in such a precise way! book itchy :’)

[@genace]

Very informative! You have a really interesting niche with these history videos. I personally really like pinyin, although the more literal spelling of the Yale system makes a lot of sense too!

[@chocolatechips1776]

I think my brain just melted. Haha thank you for the in-depth and entertaining explanation! Loved all the hilarious memes and such thrown in! Also, your advertising of the pen was so slick; I had to watch the whole segment lol. Happy new year!

[@andersaucy]

Super comprehensive. Thanks for making this video

[@renaud_c_h]

Super informative and very interesting. As a new learner (less than 6 months), I find your videos are cool to watch and are very helpful. And this one should have been the first for me to watch! 👏👏👏

[@ABChinese]

Awesome! This video is more of a "cool to know" honestly, and knowing all this doesn't really help your actual language abilities

[@renaud_c_h]

@@ABChinese true ,but background knowledge is always interesting. And having an interest in the culture around the language is for me personally what drew me to learn Chinese.

[@karinmilles5002]

A very interesting video on an intriguing subject! 謝謝!

[@marialikia.127]

I loved this!!! Also, the new hair suits you :-)

[@stuartrobertson6882]

Thank you, very interesting.

[@overflowchung7347]

thanks for this clear explanation。🙂

[@AugustdeChriox]

早期传教，威翟，邮政，国罗，北拉，一直到现在的拼音，非常细致，很不错

[@cocoanutte]

Thanks for your hard work. 你辛苦了。

[@maximilianisaaclee2936]

Interesting to learn about the history. Although I'm not a Pinyin user, I use Zhuyin (even though I'm not Taiwanese), it's interesting to learn about the history. I find some of the other romanisation systems, though imperfect, interesting looking on paper, just like how modern Vietnamese looks interesting on paper with those crazy spelling and accent marks.

[@matthewdavis8199]

Fascinating!

[@chinesewithting5185]

老师，这个是个纪录片呀！😁 哦应该是口播视频、动画片、纪录片、历史剧all in one ☝️, 植入超级自然。 Ps您和Grace老师的见面好好玩

[@ABChinese]

哈哈对！我想稍微转移我频道的方向，做更多research based视频。然后我非常幸运见到了Grace😊😊😊, 超级欣赏她！

[@lidiasouza5376]

Show! Grata por seus esforços e partilha!

[@mathiaslist6705]

And then computers solved all the troubles and people never wanted to give away their smartphone ... 20 years out of school and you get in trouble deciphering hand writing

[@PierreMiniggio]

11:23 Who knows ? Vietnamese did drop their own characters as a solution to increase literacy :P

[@edwardfowble9429]

Congrats, you are really upping your game here. Interesting to ponder what if the reformers stuck to their guns and went fully phonetic. Sci-Fi author Ted Chiang had an essay "Bad Character" in The New Yorker where he reflects on the emotional damage suffered learning Chinese characters on a Saturday morning instead of watching cartoons and what the cultural effects have been of written Chinese compared to phonetic. It ignited some debate with scholar Tom Mullaney accusing him of orientalism and David Moser firing back on how he highlighted westerner's criticism of Chinese characters instead of May 4th folks like Lu Xun saying "If Chinese characters do not fade away, China will perish!".

[@RambutanLaw]

Seriously....the Ted Chiang articles reads like 'Mummy, the Chinese characters are too hard, why can't just use Pinyin' rant second generation Overseas Chinese had with their parents.

[@xuexizhongwen]

It wouldn’t work for Chinese to be written strictly phonetically, as there are too many homophones.

[@edwardfowble9429]

@@xuexizhongwen there, they’re, their? Some ambiguity is there in spoken English but I understand from context. This concern of the homophones makes sense 100 years ago when Chinese literature was very dense wenyan and not vernacular. It’s not good for the abbreviated wenyan Classical Chinese but maybe it works well enough for vernacular.

[@xuexizhongwen]

@@edwardfowble9429 It would work for a very limited style of writing on very basic topics with basic vocabulary. You couldn't publish a newspaper that way. It would just take more effort to try to figure out what is being said.

[@Theo-oh3jk]

Nothing was lost not watching cartoons on a Saturday. What weak drivel is this? Also, David Moser is a western chauvinist buffoon, which is how westerners like their "experts" of China.

[@972aida]

changing the T-shirt while the hat stays in place is a neat trick I wanna learn to do someday)

[@Zakgo_]

Do a video on Cantonese Romanization cuz i wanna why there's numbers on it like it's an algebra equations.

[@chasemartin5733]

I can't believe you went to ball state 😂watching from indy love the content

[@terrybrawlstarsaddict]

Wow, my mom bought me the youdao dictionary pen before I watched this vid and here it is in this vid

[@vandrareg2]

pretty good , now what about Mathematic and Science in pinyin or chinese characters?

[@ABChinese]

Animal names can get wild but most science terms and math terms are just compound words with somewhat common characters. I actually think they’re easier to comprehend in Chinese because you see the meaning by the individual characters!

[@koitsukiaya8454]

I need that youdao dictionary so I don't have to write hanzi every time I want to find 新词 😅 save time!

[@yangshen2427]

不错

[@lohphat]

What about the phonetic system with numerical tone markers for Cantonese?

[@orderoftheday7981]

pls *like* this video. it is so *_important_* and *_educational_* 👍👍👍👍

[@hugoalbertomanzanarezramir8428]

¡Gracias!

[@ABChinese]

De nada!

[@Pokephosgene]

The part of the video that spoke about an English-influenced romanization being unsuitable for Frenchmen echoes my personal feelings. I've seen pinyin, together with hearing words written in it. Often the vowel chosen in pinyin seemed odd. Yes, they sometimes have tonal diacritics, but if I, a Slavic native speaker with knowledge of several other languages, hear a Chinese word, and had to write it down, it could look quite different to how it is written in pinyin.

[@babyhello478]

good❤

[@michimacho73]

in my experience to learn the right pronunciation of chinese standard putonghua the best method is to learn zhuyin fuhao. Foreigners tend to associate the latin letters to their own mother tongues, thus misspronouncing chinese. But if you learn optically new letters you learn the right pronunciation from the beginning. I agree with the use of pinyin to standarize chinese for international pourposes, it very useful. But for learning the language or pronunciation zhuyin is much better. It is also more chinese in its aesthetics.

[@Luboman411]

When I first encountered pinyin, it was so logical that I suspected a linguist didn't come up with it. Linguists take things too literally, hence why they came up with overly-complex systems like Wade-Giles, Zhuyin and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. The genius of the pinyin system is in the diacritics to connote the four tones of Mandarin, and the very small number of Latin letters used to transcribe Mandarin Chinese phonemes. It's exceptionally streamlined and easy to learn. So when you said that the guy who came up with pinyin was an economist, it made perfect sense to me. Pinyin's inventor was just too rational for him to be a linguist.

[@mollof7893]

I like Pinyin, it's very aesthetical compaired to most other romanization I've seen imo.

[@hebneh]

6:51 - I was interested to see that the zhuyin fuhao symbols were similar, or identical, to some of the Japanese kana. And while the latter were based on kanji, of course, they came into use a long time before 1913.

[@hirokokueh3541]

it's interesting that 乃 was teared apart into ㄋ (N) and ノ (no), and 力 developed into ㄌ (L) and カ (ka)

[@woud3404]

Doesn't taiwan have a different phonetic writting system that's functionally the same as pinyin?

[@PierreMiniggio]

5:00 French not wanting English to have it its way ? This is so us ! :D

[@ABChinese]

LOL so petty

[@PierreMiniggio]

@@ABChinese The whole history of France VS UK could be summurarized in both not wanting the other to have it its own way. So it's kinda funny that it's even represented in the Chinese script's history 🤣

[@The_Art_of_AI_888]

@@PierreMiniggio but France ended up having to learn English for global communication...which is kinda hurt France's national pride, no?

[@PierreMiniggio]

@@The_Art_of_AI_888 Actually, English becoming the Lingua Franca is a consequence of the US supremacy, not related to England. 😁 For most of European history, French was the Lingua Franca. And actually yes there is among some (very few) people a pride thing about not using English. But it's mostly due to the multiplication of English words imported into the French language, which really pains people who are more on the conservative / nationalistic sides of the political spectrum.

[@HughJazz13]

Leave it to Yale to miss a golden opportunity to use "tray" for 吹！!

[@BobFrTube]

Apparently, there was serious consideration given to going further and making the Latin alphabet the norm as Vietnam did. But the introduction of fax made it possible to communicate in Hanzi thus reducing the need. Too bad Pinyin did not include tone marks in normal writing.

[@michimacho73]

the worst that can happen to a language is to get so colonized that they use the ugliest letters in the world, the latin letters. Vietnamese lost the conecction to their history and culture when they adopted the latin alphabet (young vietnamese can't read what is written in old books or the inscriptions in temples and cultural sites). A writing system based on chu' nôm would have been much more better. They even could have used and adapted version of thai of khmer. This eurocentrical, white supremacy, macho vew that all have to follow the west, sucks!

[@samgyeopsal569]

@@michimacho73 Latin letters are not ugly, but I agree that China and Vietnam should not use them because Chinese characters are cooler

[@michimacho73]

@@samgyeopsal569 of all scripts I know, read and write, aesthetically the ugliest one is the latin script aswell as the cyrillic script... they look like soulless, without Life. At least I perceive it so, and I am not the only one ...

[@raulepure9840]

@@michimacho73 Ugly is just the way you think, latin alphabet is efficient for it's main scope to easily write and read so it easier to be learned by everyday people not just some elite, sametime it is efficient to preserve pronunciation troughtime. As well there are many variants of latin characters like ghotic that are focused on estetic but they are used just in some specific writtings (some books or advertise, etc) as people want to be efficient most of the time. Latin was succesful as it was a good way to simplify and standardize communication, like metric systems. People now make fun of USA using imperial systems but do not understand is the same as other nations using some old painstaking characters made by elites to control the communication and keep reading just for them, aka not efficient but makes you "special". There is a natural law of selection so the best practice will prevail in time, it has nothing to do with whitesupremacy or other scarecrows frustrated peole tend to put as arguments, people that use that "ugly" latin script to convey their frustration to other people from different cultures, pathetic!

[@michimacho73]

@@raulepure9840 This comment is western chauvinism in its pristine form ...

[@mr.imperial8721]

8:20 Tch-ray, nee-ohng, tsung, j-uhr

[@justinianthegreat1444]

Imagine Han Wudi's reaction to modern Chinese people using the alphabet of the Da Qin(Rome) to write the Chinese language

[@MedX16]

With pinyin you can improve and keep track on your pronunciation skills

[@kiwijuice78]

im gonna make one based in serbian cyrilllic

[@cathys2307]

强烈推荐何解读up的西方人如何看几百年前的中国系列的几个视频，里面就讲到了早期汉字注音。另外，古汉语是有注音教人怎么念的，要不别人怎么学…… 最后，小时候学过五笔，那可比拼音快多了，可惜忘了……

[@smalls5001]

谢谢你 voor deze informative vidéo omtrent pinyin et son histoire, mais ich weiß nicht почему я praat in tant andere Sprachen.

[@ABChinese]

Thank you 🙏 What language is this btw? It looks like of German but Google translate says it’s luxembourgish?

[@frechjo]

@@ABChinese it looks like a mix of Chinese, Dutch, French, German and Russian. I don't think they are trying to be understood ;)

[@ABChinese]

@@frechjo Oh, I think you're right haha

[@mariosr29]

@@ABChinese "Thank you for this informative video about pinyin and its history, but I don't know why I speak other languages" I think that's what he said LOL

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Japanese pinyin vowels:a o e u labials:p b f dentals:t d s r palatals:c z velars:k g h uvulars:q j glides:y w l nasals:m n x

[@yimveerasak3543]

Pinyin is way simpler than ideograms. I can read ideograms but i have forgotten how to write so pinyin comes handy.

[@shoshomr8946]

ارجو اضافة خيار الترجمة للغه العربية

[@sivispacemparabellum-th1iz]

I always wanted to learn chinese but I think I lack intelligence to learn :( seems so hard, I'm myself a native portuguese speaker and also speak spanish and english, but really feel that chinese seems impossible ;(

[@damienlynch4533]

The problem with pinyin is the x, q, c. I work with a lot of Chinese people and the difficulty people have of saying any name with an x or q or zh is never ending. “Bingqi” is said as “bing kwee” , “yike” is said as “yike” in english, not “Yee ke “ and don’t even start on zhezheng. It really defeats the purpose when studying characters, the book has pinyin but I see people writing their own pinyin because the pinyin doesn’t sound right. Wade Giles is a lot easier for pronouncing as a native English speaker.

[@janmcleod6727]

Who is this guy? HE" s adorable!

[@thomaskember4628]

Why does the letter 'i' have two different pronunciations in pinyin? For instance, the vowel in 'ni' is not the same as the vowel in 'shi'.

[@mariosr29]

That's a really good question. Actually the 'i' in zhi, chi, shi is not really pronounced. There's a great video on this by YoYo Chinese, I recommend watching it as it will be a total game changer if you're struggling with this specific feature of pronunciation.

[@vivientakacs5599]

That depends on the tone and what letter is before it. After z, s, c, zh, sh and ch, you kind of "swallow" the sound of the "i", making it sound kind of like a French "r". But it also depends on the "i" being 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/neutral tone as well.

[@Woodman-Spare-that-tree]

Giles should be pronounced to rhyme with Piles, NOT to rhyme with Hills. Also the G is soft not hard.

[@yuegonghuamei6685]

I wonder how local Chinese language pass down how each word sound?

[@henrysilvio8693]

good review but with one big mistake: Chinese character is not phonetic...

[@gingeral253]

5:27 Southern accent what?

[@ohajohaha]

0:27 That was Soviet Union not russia

[@DavidYoung-uu3yj]

確實如果沒有拼音的話我沒辦法留給你這條評論

[@yunchiahnsena2883]

Wade-"Giles" should pronounce /ʤaıǝlz/

[@haihe324]

Actually, only 25 letters of the alphabets are used, not 26. The letter v is not used in hanyu pinyin.

[@user-fp4vw3fy6x]

actually, v is used in pinyin, and its standard form is ü, with two dots on u. But when we type, we will input v

[@haihe324]

@@user-fp4vw3fy6x Have you ever seen in a Chinese textbook that uses pin yin above Chinese characters contains the letter v? I don't think so.

[@ABChinese]

@user-fp4vw3fy6x is right in this case. The 26th letter I allude to is the v/ü, which are interchangeable.@@haihe324

[@user-hq8wm8giyujcg]

just adapt our alpha syllabary writing system, its the best system and created by us, adapt it just like the world adapt our numbering system

[@colosistvan]

Bro, Chinese letters are liek Linux distros :D Infinite varieties adnd lack of common dominator :D

[@apollo1055]

So Chinese characters are that hard? I was planning to learn Chinese characters after Japanese Kanji. So far so good. Do you think I should be scared of Chinese characters?

[@SyM-Prisoner627]

Kanji are Chinese characters but pronounced in Japanese. It may help you remember meanings, but you'll have to relearn the pronunciations.

[@atsukorichards1675]

And some Japanese and Chinese characters have different meanings. A same two-letter compound word might have different meanings, too. Some Chinese letters are now simplified.

[@Quigger_for20]

Skibidi toilet shall be mine yuh ohio town yuh

[@mahuhude]

Are Chinese able to read Pinyin? Can two Chinese write letters to each other just in Pinyin?

[@hanhan1313]

We can read pinyin but mostly for individual characters or phrases Reading a text in pinyin is a lot harder cuz so many characters have the same pronunciation, its just easier to read hanzi characters

[@mathiaslist6705]

Early Tibetan attempts and the alphabetization attempt under Mongol rules are predating the Jesuites. Unfortunately the line between the different versions of spoken Chineses during the centuries are not drawn that clearly. Thus it is all like proposing a common writing system for Old English, Proto-Germanic and Modern English and it is obvious that this won't work. Modern English has more than ten vowels but just 5 or 6 letters represent vowels in the Latin script and thus pronunciation is funny guess work. German isn't there much better either (14 or 17 vowels) and just nine characters to write them and it is guess work too. I never understood why there's so much emphasize on tonal distinction when there's in most cases more than tonal distinction between vowels. ì and í are not only different in tone and nearly all speakers of other languages can hear the difference between them.

[@phillipfoster4580]

🤯

[@juicemanjenje677]

Just a compliment.To be Chinese your 🥵 🔥

[@theredbar-cross8515]

Fun fact: Josef Stalin advised Mao not to give up on Chinese characters and switch to a Latin or even Cyrillic alphabet.

[@friendlyanomaly6109]

Why'd he do that?

[@asdkotable]

I love the drunken *hic* of Russia lol

[@ashes7948]

有道广告现在做的这么广（doge）

[@frechjo]

Zhou Youguang was an Esperantist, so of course he was a great dude. 每个人都知道世界语是最好的语言。 Kaj mi ne diras tion ĉar mi mem estas Esperantisto, tute ne! ;P

[@krk29]

It doesn't matter if it's the best or not. Esperanto, until it's adopted by everybody, will remain obscure to everyone but the linguists.

[@frechjo]

@@krk29 There's always someone like you... See, I'm not here to convince you of anything, you do you. But I'm willing to bet you don't speak it, you don't know much at all about its world, history, nor culture, and yet feel compelled to speak against it. If I were you, I'd revise my priorities. It also makes no sense. Was Chinese "adopted by everyone"? Here you are, learning about a language that, following your logic, is obscure to everyone but the linguists.

[@krk29]

@@frechjo You're misunderstanding me. I myself am studying linguistics and I do know it's history and the effort it's creators gave. And how effective and useful it would be to use it more everywhere. I just pointed out the reality, that as any language, unless it's widespread, and used by living speakers in everyday exchanges, it's not going to mean much to anyone but the ones who study linguistics, including me. It's not going to be even like mandarin, which I do know is somewhat artificial like Esperanto is. But unlike Esperanto,it has been used in China for hundreds of years even before the govt initiatives. And yes, mandarin chinese gained acceptance at the very least in more than one region of China, which is enough to become a sociolect, if not a dialect. I just pointed out the difference and the lack of recognition from general public. Esperanto's recognition and use is limited to a few circle of scholars. Maybe my tone wasn't clear, which created miscommunication.

[@frechjo]

@@krk29 Okay, I'm sorry if I misjudged your intentions. Let me just clear something up: the language is not just a linguistic curiosity. I understand why it is that way for you, and it's perfectly fine. It's different for me. I'm not a linguist. I'm not in any scholarly circle. I'm part of the community of Esperanto speakers. For us, who adopted it and use it to communicate with real people all around the world, every day, it's a real, living language.

[@krk29]

@@frechjo it's okay, don't be so defensive all the time. People don't always intend to be negative. I am now a little curious as to your use of Esperanto in daily life. Is there a website or publication through which I can know more about your community? I'd be glad if you shared.

[@kingdom1872]

Ba read Pa Pa read Pha Ge read Ke Ke read Khe Why oh why oh why 😭

[@typetyper5548]

Do u love Philippines?

[@ahmadsantoso9712]

everyone love the philippines, don't worry bro

[@mathiaslist6705]

A simple space between words would boost Chinese readability .... however that is the most resisted part

[@hlim431]

If attempting to reach the North Pole... No matter how much effort China expends to "improve" the language... ONLY limited progress will be made UNTIL Chinese admits the existing language is the #1 problem because it is NOT phonetic. Pin Yin will NOT be the last because even with Pin Yin it's like running a 100m race carry 50kg more. In technology there is always a danger the first one who succeeds hits a dead-end, that's exactly what happened in China! If you build cars today it makes sense to go straight to EVs why start with ICE first?

[@RechtmanDon]

Chinese cannot be that difficult: more than 1.5 billion people speak and read it! 😉

[@simonrosengarten2939]

Did you know it's actually pronounced Wade-Jiles but spelt Wade-Giles?

[@scorpio252000]

Well done video. Pinyin has a disadvantage where 2 chinese characters are homonyms but written and mean completely different things. Mandarin as a whole is has FAR MORE homonyms than some dialects which makes it a bit inefficient for communications. (Meaning they need to create longer compound words to distinguish their meaning). The other dialects, let's say the next popular Chinese dialect Cantonese, has far less homonyms and more tones, making it much less likely for these confusions and has generally shorter sentences.

[@xuexizhongwen]

Cantonese is not the next most popular dialect. It comes after Min and Wu.

[@samgyeopsal569]

@@xuexizhongwen Cantonese will outlast Wu because people in Guangzhou and HK are proud of their language, unlike ppl in Shanghai where many kids don’t learn the language.

[@xuexizhongwen]

@@samgyeopsal569 I don't know anything about that. I just know that Min and Wu are currently the most popular languages in China after Mandarin.

[@samgyeopsal569]

@@xuexizhongwen go read about Shanghainese, fewer young people in Shanghai are learning their native language

[@xuexizhongwen]

@@samgyeopsal569 I'm sure they are. I'm not really interested in it enough to look into it, though. I was just pointing out the current situation.

[@Woodman-Spare-that-tree]

You need to look up the meaning of the word “verbally “ because you are misusing it.

[@microcolonel]

I spat out my 熱水 at 孫中山的 “mostly peaceful protest”.

[@microcolonel]

Personally I like 注音 a lot from the perspective of a non-native learner, and it makes a bit more sense of sounds that would be more obvious to a native Chinese learner. For me, it has served a similar purpose to kana in Japanese. Kana aid foreign learners of Japanese, because they are specific to Japanese, and should be pronounced like Japanese rather than like whatever the equivalent 羅馬字 (lol) sound like in your native language.

[@bluessoul1286]

ㄅㄆㄇㄈ！

[@mathiaslist6705]

Sh*! when your history is a five digit number of characters written on an infinite square of paper .... probably you should ask yourself of how much history you want to keep as no one is willing to make infinite strokes to write one character ... Actually why did not no one public propose a stroke limit for characters like an acceptable number like 6 or 7. Actually we could do this for every wirting system in use today and it probably would have made things easier for Unicode. Something like first 32 000 glyphs should not have more than 7 strokes or so and should be readable in a grid of 8 times 16 pixels. And Unicode Consortium answer with "we don't do font design".

[@zollen123]

There is no proof simplifying the Chinese characters help improving the literacy rate.

[@vivientakacs5599]

Maybe but it's definitely better for us dumbass foreigners (lol) to learn less strokes on a character. Though I can see it being easier for Chinese people as well.

[@zollen123]

@@vivientakacs5599 More strokes may give you more information about the meaning of a word.

[@lesthermiranda1794]

So how did Chinese people learn to read their own characters before the 1500s?

[@ahmadsantoso9712]

they don't need to learn, it's all in their head since birth

[@btlim4316]

No. Its called illiteracy. It was common.

[@kennywong4239]

They used a system known as sounds like. Eg. The word 昶, a rarely seen character, there will be a note saying "sounds like 长”. When Buddhism was introduced, around the 4th or 5th century AD, the Chinese got the inspiration from Sanskrit pronunciation, and started to use a different type of sounds like notation, which goes something like 昶，吃常反，ie the word has the starting sound of 吃，ch, and the tone and vowel sound of 常，eg ang，2nd tone. This was in used until the Zhuyin took over.

[@lesthermiranda1794]

@@kennywong4239 Finally someone answered that question. Thank you infinitely.

[@SamianHQuazi]

Can you learn Chinese with just pinyin and not bother with the Chinese characters?

[@mathiaslist6705]

So in Pinyin 24 vowels are commonly written with 6 different characters ... in Serbian 20 different vowels (two lengths, two accents/tones ) are written with 5 characters , in German around 16 vowels are written with mostly 7 different characters , and thus it vowel indication thus not seem to be the main problem here

[@hockng5610]

It should be Italian. At his time, modern English has not been invented yet. How about Korean? It is not a Romanization. There is really a simple solution. Make English a second language, just as India did. False pride prevents the Chinese from doing so. It worked in HK.

[@ItsKorea29]

Im gonna type some random chinese 了没的事的确保养着你说你是在是否了的我啊大啊飒娃大顶大啊多大啊我顶我顶我我顶顶我顶我级大啊哈是你否啊我者决心定了策我马的吧哦不哈嗯一起一下一个号是 Whats its meaning?

[@mr.imperial8721]

Lol the Russians are vodka bottle

[@bumpercoach]

its an abomination that could well be replaced as people become more ashamed of how its the linguistic wall btwn them and English competence