Yuen Ren Chao (Traditional Chinese: 趙元任; Pinyin: Zhào Yuánrèn; WG: Chao Yüan-jen; Gwoyeu Romatzyh: Jaw Yuanrenn) (November 3, 1892 - February 25, 1982) was a Chinese linguist and amateur composer who shaped Gwoyeu Romatzyh and the scientific studies, especially the phonology, of the Chinese language. Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Pinyin (拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin. ... Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on Mandarin. ... Gwoyeu Romatzyh (國語羅馬字 Pinyin: Guóyǔ Luómǎzì), abbreviated GR, is a romanization (formerly used officially in the Republic of China) with complex spelling rules which allow for tonal distinctions (unlike most other Romanizations, which require additional diacritics or numerals). ... November 3 is the 307th day of the year (308th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 58 days remaining. ... 1892 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. ... The word amateur has at least two connotations. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... Gwoyeu Romatzyh (國語羅馬字 Pinyin: Guóyǔ Luómǎzì), abbreviated GR, is a romanization (formerly used officially in the Republic of China) with complex spelling rules which allow for tonal distinctions (unlike most other Romanizations, which require additional diacritics or numerals). ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ...

Life

Born in Tianjin with ancestry in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, Chao went to the United States with a scholarship in 1910 to study mathematics at Cornell University, and switched to philosophy later. He would later gain his doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University. Tianjin (Chinese: 天津; pinyin: ; Postal System Pinyin: Tientsin) is one of the four municipalities of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Changzhou (Chinese: 常州) is a prefecture-level city in the Jiang Nan region of the Jiangsu province of China, population up to 4 million. ... Jiangsu (Simplified Chinese: 江苏; Traditional Chinese: 江蘇; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chiang-su; Postal System Pinyin: Kiangsu) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. ... 1910 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Math sucks. ... For other uses of the name Cornell, see Cornell (disambiguation). ... Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ...

During his college days, his interests has already turned to music and languages. He is known to have spoken German, French, and Japanese fluently, and have a reading knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin. He served as Bertrand Russell's interpreter when the renowned British philosopher visited China in 1920. In his My Linguistic Autobiography, he happily writes of his ability to pick up a Chinese dialect quickly, without much effort. Ancient Greek refers to the stage in the history of the Greek language corresponding to Classical Antiquity, which normally applies on two ancient periods of Greek history: Archaic and Classic Greece. ... Latin is an Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Bertrand Russell The Right Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872—2 February 1970), was an influential British mathematician, philosopher, and logician, working mostly in the 20th century. ... 1920 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ...

In 1945, he was president of the Linguistic Society of America, and a special issue of the society's journal Language was dedicated to him in 1966. 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is an organization devoted the scientific study of human language, and is the major professional society for linguistic researchers in North America and beyond. ...

He was married to the physician Buwei Yang Chao (née Yang Buwei; TC: 楊步偉), perhaps best known as author of How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, a veritable treatise on Chinese cuisine (Asia Press, from the John Day Company), first published in 1945. Yuen Ren Chao offers his insights liberally throughout the book, and making intriguing glimpses into the kind of relationship they had together. Physician examining a child The word physician should not be confused with physicist, which means a scientist in the area of physics. ... Buwei Yang Chao was the wife of the eminent Chinese dialectologist and linguist, Yuen Ren Chao. ... 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His daughter Rulan Chao Pian (TC: 趙如蘭), born in 1922, is Professor Emerita of East Asian Studies and Music at Harvard. City Hall - Cambridge MA Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. ...

Works

When in U.S. in 1921, Chao recorded the standard Mandarin pronunciation gramophone records distributed nationally, as proposed by Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation. Edison cylinder phonograph from about 1899 The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. ... The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation (讀音統一會 Pinyin: Dúyīn Tǒngyī Huì) was established in the Republic of China (then still based in Nanjing) from 1912 to 1913 to select ancillary phonetic symbols for Mandarin, (Zhuyin was the product) and set the standard Guoyu pronunciation of basic Chinese characters. ...

He is the author of one of the most important standard modern works on Chinese grammar, A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Berkeley, University of California Press 1968), which was translated into Chinese separately by Lü Shuxiang (TC: 呂叔湘) in 1979 and by Ding Bangxin (TC: 丁邦新) in 1980, and republished in English by the Commercial Press in Beijing in 2004 (ISBN 7-100-03345-4). This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ...

His translation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in the Wonderland, where he tried his best to preserve all the word plays of the original, is still considered a classic. A natural punster, he also wrote the essay the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, which is often wrongly used as an argument against Romanization of Chinese (Chao was actually pro-Romanization). The essay consists of 92 characters all with the sound shi (in the four different tones of Mandarin), and sounds incomprehensible when romanized. Photograph of Lewis Carroll taken by himself, with assistance Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was a British author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer. ... John Tenniels illustration for A Mad Tea-Party, 1865 Alices Adventures in Wonderland is a work of childrens literature by the British mathematician and author Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. ... Word play is a literary technique in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work. ... A pun (also known as paronomasia) is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. ... This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ...

His composition How could I help thinking of her (TC: 《教我如何不想她》) was a "pop hit" in the 1930s in China. The lyric is by Liu Bannong (TC: 劉半農), another linguist who is famous for coining the Chinese feminine pronoun 她. // Events and trends The 1930s were spent struggling for a solution to the global depression. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ...