China’s Zhou Youguang, father of Pinyin essay system, dies aged 111



Zhou YouguangImage copyright
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Image caption

Zhou Youguang was innate is 1906 during a Qing Dynasty

Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang, who combined a essay complement that turns Chinese characters into difference regulating letters from a Roman alphabet, has died aged 111.

Mr Zhou and a Communist celebration cabinet spent 3 years building a Pinyin complement in a 1950s.

It altered a approach a denunciation was taught and helped lift education rates.

Mr Zhou, who was innate in 1906 during a Qing Dynasty, after became a extreme censor of China’s comrade rulers.

He died in Beijing on Saturday a day after his birthday, Chinese media reported.

As a immature male Mr Zhou spent time in a US and worked as a Wall Street banker.

He returned to China after a comrade feat in 1949 and was put in assign of formulating a new essay complement regulating a Roman alphabet.

“We spent 3 years building Pinyin. People done fun of us, joking that it had taken us a prolonged time to understanding with only 26 letters,” he told a BBC in 2012.



Image copyright
Getty Images

Image caption

Pinyin is now used to learn Chinese around a world

Before Pinyin was developed, 85% of Chinese people could not read, now roughly all can.

Pinyin has given turn a many ordinarily used complement globally, nonetheless some Chinese communities – quite in Hong Kong and Taiwan – continue to use alternatives.

It is also widely used to form Chinese characters on computers and smartphones, heading some to fear it could finish adult replacing Chinese characters altogether.



Image caption

The TV uncover Character Hero was partial of a debate to stop people forgetful Chinese characters

The feat stable Mr Zhou from some of a harm that took place underneath former personality Mao Zedong.

However, he was after sent to a panorama for re-education during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

In his after years he became strongly vicious of a Chinese authorities and wrote a series of books, many of that were banned.

In a 2011 talk with NPR he pronounced he hoped he would live prolonged adequate to see a Chinese authorities acknowledge that a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had been a mistake.

He pronounced typical people no longer believed in a Communist Party, and that a immeasurable infancy of Chinese intellectuals were in foster of democracy.

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