Gwoyeu Romatzyh

Gwoyeu Romatzyh (literally "National [Language] Romanization"), abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Y.R. Chao (Zhao Yuanren) and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using GR. In addition a small number of other textbooks and dictionaries in GR were published in Hong Kong and overseas from 1942 to 2000. GR is the better known of the two romanization systems which indicate the four tones of Mandarin by varying the spelling of syllables ("tonal spelling"). These tones are a fundamental part of the Chinese language: to a Chinese speaker they are no less a component of a word than vowels are to an English speaker. Tones in Chinese allow speakers to discriminate between otherwise identical syllables in other words they are phonemic. Other systems indicate the tones with either diacritics (for example Pinyin: i, ái, i and ài) or numbers (Wade-Giles: ai1, ai2, etc.). GR spells the same four tones ai, air, ae and ay.

Klappentext

Gwoyeu Romatzyh (literally "National [Language] Romanization"), abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Y.R. Chao (Zhao Yuanren) and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using GR. In addition a small number of other textbooks and dictionaries in GR were published in Hong Kong and overseas from 1942 to 2000. GR is the better known of the two romanization systems which indicate the four tones of Mandarin by varying the spelling of syllables ("tonal spelling"). These tones are a fundamental part of the Chinese language: to a Chinese speaker they are no less a component of a word than vowels are to an English speaker. Tones in Chinese allow speakers to discriminate between otherwise identical syllables-in other words they are phonemic. Other systems indicate the tones with either diacritics (for example Pinyin: ai, ái, ai and ài) or numbers (Wade-Giles: ai1, ai2, etc.). GR spells the same four tones ai, air, ae and ay.