Pinyin: the proof is in the pudding
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Mok Ling sent me an article from China Times with the following percipient observations:
Today I'm bringing you this short article for LL. A Korean pop idol, Solar — that's her stage name, Mandarinized as 頌樂; her real name is 김용선 (Hanja: 金容仙), romanized Kim Yongsun) — has made headlines for speaking very fluent Mandarin after just 7 months of learning it. She has also released a full song in Mandarin with Taiwanese artist 9m88 and taken countless interviews with Taiwanese media in Mandarin as well (see this "What's in My Bag" interview with Vogue Taiwan.)
Solar's secret (other than apparently practising 4 hours every day) is, of course, bypassing characters altogether. On this Weibo post (3rd image [click to open and enlarge]) she reveals that she's been learning Mandarin purely using Pinyin all this time, and even strictly observing the spelling rules!
It's certainly a feat, and another mark on the scoreboard for the "ZT" method.
I wouldn't say that Solar's Mandarin is perfect, but after learning it for just seven months, I would have to declare that her command of the language is amazing. Her delivery is fluent, natural, and confident. Solar's Mandarin doesn't sound "foreign" at all. She is able to express herself freely and with wit.
This is how Mandarin could become a rival to English as the world language, but I doubt that it will ever come close to challenging English in the coming decades. The Chinese people — including those who teach Mandarin as a foreign / second language — are too viscerally wedded to the cumbersome, hard-to-learn sinographs as the only proper way to write Sinitic languages. Never mind that Dungan and POJ Taigi have proven that you don't need the Chinese characters to command a spoken Sinitic language at native level, and you can use alphabetic scripts for writing too.
John Rohsenow, who is a regular reader and commenter on Language Log, is the authority on the ZT experiment, and Mark Swofford, long-time webmaster of Pinyin.info and the site's blog, Pinyin News, is also a contributor to Language Log.
Selected readings
- "How to learn to read Chinese" (5/25/08) — includes an explanation of ZT
- "Pinyin resurgent" (3/7/24)
- "Pinyin vs. English" (10/20/23)
- "Dissension over the role of the alphabet in literacy acquisition in the PRC" (4/11/21) — with extensive bibliography of relevant works
- "'They're not learning how to write characters!'" (11/5/21)
- John DeFrancis, "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform", Sino-Platonic Papers, 171 (June, 2006), 1-26, with 3 exhibits, including the famous shopping list with pinyin used for common forgotten characters ("egg; shrimp; chives"); reprinted as an HTML version in Pinyin.info here. This outstanding article by the doyen of Chinese language teachers during the second half of the 20th century lays out clearly and systematically the past, present, and future of scipt reform as they stood at the beginning of the 21st century.
Anubis Bard said,
July 8, 2025 @ 2:51 pm
I actually found spoken Mandarin a delightful language to study my last year of college. But thanks to the pedagogues' insistence on me learning characters, it was like learning to swim with an anchor strapped to my leg, so I gave it up. Alas.
CuConnacht said,
July 8, 2025 @ 3:10 pm
I know that this cause was lost long ago, but I will go ahead anyway. In my youth there was a proverb "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," which makes sense. You don't judge a pudding by appearance or smell; etc; you have to eat it to know how good it is
Somehow that has become what is in the header of this LL post, which to me has never made sense.
Victor Mair said,
July 8, 2025 @ 3:21 pm
AI overview:
"Proof is in the pudding" is an idiom meaning that the real value or quality of something can only be judged after it has been tried, experienced, or tested. It's a shortened version of the older saying, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". This original saying highlights that the best way to determine if something is good is to experience it directly.
Here's a breakdown:
Original saying: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
Meaning: The true quality of something (like a pudding) can only be assessed by experiencing it (eating it).
"Proof" in this context: Refers to a test or trial.
"Pudding" in this context: In the original saying, "pudding" referred to a traditional British dessert, often a steamed cake that needed to hold its shape when turned out.
Modern usage: The shortened version, "proof is in the pudding," is widely used to emphasize that the success or failure of something is determined by its actual results, rather than by its appearance or how it's described.
VHM: Pinyin works.
David Morris said,
July 8, 2025 @ 3:24 pm
Google Ngram Viewer shows that 'proof is in the pudding' is now more common than 'proof of the pudding' in American English but not in British English or overall.
Further, usage of 'proof of the pudding' has two clear peaks in the early 1920s (American) and 1940s (both). The early 1940s correlates with World War 2, but the early 1920s was after World War 1 but before the Great Depression. Even with correlation/causation etc, it leaves the question of why people would use that phrase during wartime.