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How Chinese Characters Almost Died 

Once again, Julesy tells it like it is.

As usual, Julesy aims to finish in 20 minutes, but runs out of steam, even though she took forty extra seconds.  She knows what the essential problems are and is well versed in the history of how efforts to deal with them were made during the last three millennia.  However, as she nears the 20 minute mark, Julesy fully realizes that the QUESTION OF THE CHARACTERS (Hànzì wèntí 漢字問題 / 汉字问题) is just too hot of a potato to handle, even for someone as bright and learned as her.

Julesy recognizes the importance of phoneticism and what that entails for script reform in China.  Three times she refers to the Chinese writing system as "crazy", but, then, before she signs off, she feels the need to say that it is a thing of "beauty", as she did at the end of the MingKwai typewriter fiasco video.

All that talk leading up to pinyin, but she says little about pinyin itself, and doesn't mention a single word about Zhou Youguang, the "Father of Pinyin".  I have a secret suspicion that, if Julesy keeps making these wonderful videos about Chinese language and script, sooner or later she might devote an entire episode to Zhou Youguang and pinyin. 

Meanwhile, her videos are so successful that she has added ads and various cute bells and whistles (can't really blame her; everybody else seems to do it).  However, there's one embellishment that the latest videos feature, patching in of other voices for short sequences of sound, that I don't think are necessary.  Her own Mandarin is certainly good enough that she doesn't have to do that for what seems to be her mother tongue.  In most cases, she probably doesn't have to do it for Korean and short snatches of Cantonese either, though she is enough of a perfectionist that I can understand why she would want to do it for other topolects (e.g., Min and Wu languages).  Speaking of which, I was delighted to hear her use the word "topolect" quite smoothly and smoothly.

Selected readings

• "A brief literary linguistic analysis of the Gettysburg Address" (1/19/25) — John DeFrancis, Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1989)
• "Rime dictionary / rhyme dictionary / rime book (yùnshū 韻書)
• Victor H. Mair, "A Hypothesis Concerning the Origin of the Term fanqie ('Countertomy)", Sino-Platonic Papers, 34 (October, 1992).
• "Sinographic inputting:  'it's nothing' — not" (2/22/21) — with extensive bibliography on pinyin and typewriter / computer inputting
• "New expressions for karaoke: the phoneticization of Chinese" (9/25/21)
• "Zhou Youguang 1906-2017" (1/14/17)
• "Zhou Youguang, 109 and going strong" (1/13/15)
• "Zhou Youguang, Father of Pinyin" (1/14/14)
• "Another chapter in the history of the Chinese typewriter" (8/14/21)
• The historical evolution of Chinese languages and scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing (Chang Li-ching).  Pathways to advanced skill ; 8  Columbus, Ohio: National East Asian Languages Resource Center, Ohio State University, 2003
  Description:    xix, xix, 198, 213 p. ; 23 cm
• "Pinyin in practice" (10/13/11) — read the o.p. and the comments carefully; you may be surprised at what is being said
• Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present (alternative subtitle: A Journey Through Time in China) (New York:  HarperCollins, 2006)
• "Nomadic affinity with oracle bone divination" (11/25/20)

Julesy videos:

• "The difficulty of borrowing in Chinese" (10/24/25)
• "The many myths about the Chinese typewriter" (9/7/25)
• "Fundamental Sinitic linguistic issues solved through analysis of Chinese rap" (8/13/25)
• "Tones and intonation in Sinitic languages" (53025)
• "The conundrum of singing with tones" (5/30/25)
• "Japanese lexical influence on other East Asian languages" (7/23/25)
• "Words, morphemes, collocations, characters" (7/23/25)

October 7, 2025 @ 6:33 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language reform, Romanization, Writing systems

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