As soon as 2021 kicked off, NetEase launched a realistic three-dimensional fantasy world mobile game "Celestial Oracle" with high-quality terminal equipment. Among them, the game race Shio created a unique "elf language" that triggered a group of curious players to decipher it. And the sharp-eyed Netizens in Taiwan found that the set of "genie language" is just the phonetic symbols they use every day! I couldn't help but laugh, "I really didn't expect that I would know elf language since I was a child!" "Turns out I'm an elf I didn't even know!"
This set of phonetic symbols that have been abolished on the mainland but are still used in Taiwan was brought to Taiwan by linguists such as Wei Jiangong after Japan's defeat in the war. In order to enable the Taiwan compatriots after the restoration to quickly "speak the Chinese, understand the Chinese language, and understand the history of the country" (Chen Yi) in a short period of time, Chen Yi hired Wei Jiangong as the chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Chinese Promotion Committee, responsible for the language restoration movement. After Arriving in Taipei in January 1946, Wei Jiangong immediately began preparatory work for the Taiwan Provincial Chinese Promotion Committee, and the fifth article of the Program for the Chinese Movement in Taiwan Province emphasized "the use of phonetic symbols to communicate the will of all ethnic groups and accommodate Chinese culture." Next, Wei Jiangong compiled the "Compilation of National Sound Standards", founded the "Chinese Weekly", set up the "Chinese Demonstration Implementation Institute", returned to Beiping to recruit "Chinese promoters", and organized the "Chinese Daily". After Wei Jiangong returned to Peking University in October 1948, the Chinese movement essentially continued his policy, and zhuyin also took root in Taiwan.
When it comes to the history of Phonetic Symbols in China, it began in 1892 at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Since that year, a revolution in Chinese pronunciation education has been launched, known in history as the "Cut Phonetic Character Movement", fujian has Had Lu Shuzhang and Cai Xiyong, Guangdong has Wang Bingyao, Wang Zhao is directly subordinate to Wang Zhao, and Zhejiang has Lao Naixuan, each of which is popular for a while. After the establishment of the Republic of China, the Ministry of Education established the "Pronunciation Unification Association" in view of the inconsistencies in pinyin created by various localities and the confusion of local dialects, in addition to the extension of phonologists as members, two representatives from each province, one representative from each Mongolian, Tibetan and overseas Chinese, and a total of more than 80 new people to discuss together. As late as 1918, Qian Xuantong revived the discussion of abolishing Chinese in New Youth magazine, and with the strong wind of the new cultural movement, it was only in November of that year that the Ministry of Education published the thirty-nine Zhuyin letters that had been finally formulated after years of discussion; the following year, the Zhuyin alphabet was increased to 40. Fu Sinian, Qian Xuantong, Wei Jiangong and other Chinese character reformers launched a fierce attack on the preservation of the nationalist faction, and gradually promoted the Pinyin script movement. In April 1930, the 88th executive meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang decided to change the name of "Zhuyin Alphabet" to "Zhuyin Symbol". Abandoning the position of "character" and renaming it "symbol" is regarded as the product of revolutionary defeat and political compromise in the history of the Chinese Pinyin script movement, because this symbol is "a semi-new and unused thing between pinyin characters and the improvement of Chinese characters, and becomes an appendage of Chinese characters" (Ni Haishu: Compendium of the History of the Chinese Pinyin Character Movement, Times Books and Newspaper Publishing House, 1948, p. 89), in which concessions are seen as resonance with political compromises.
A Compendium of the History of the Chinese Pinyin Character Movement, by Ni Haishu
In the history of the modern Chinese movement, if Qian Xuantong is a fierce general, Wei Jiangong calls himself a "pawn" who follows this fierce general. In the "Chinese Weekly" founded by teacher Qian Xuantong, there were many articles published by Wei Jiangong calling for the abolition of square characters, he said, "I often hope that our publications can achieve a 'square word' on the paper", and even directly related the meaning of abolishing square characters to national liberation. Wei Jiangong hated the old-fashioned faction that was "obsessed with bones" and accused them of being cruel and wanted to eat China's promising youth. He called on everyone to be Sun Xing, to fully protect the "master" of the modern Chinese, in order to rescue all poor sentient beings in the netherworld.
In 1927, on the recommendation of Zhang Fengju and Shen Yinmo of Peking University, Wei Jiangong went to the Korean Emperor Dafa Literature Department as a Chinese teacher. As the first person in North Korea to teach modern Chinese, he changed the old Method of Koreans learning Chinese, teaching phonology with the help of Zhuyin letters, clearly explaining the pronunciation of each Zhuyin letter, and even using highly specialized Chinese phonological nouns such as "open mouth" and "hekou hu". Qi Yongxiang provided the draft lesson preparation left by Wei Jiangong in his article "Mr. Wei Jiangong's Teaching Strategy for Korea", which shows his firm belief in promoting the Zhuyin alphabet. In December 1928, Wei participated in the work of the "Preparatory Committee for the Unification of the Chinese of the Ministry of Education" and was elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the Association.
Draft lesson preparation left by Wei Jiangong (Qi Yongxiang's "Mr. Wei Jiangong's Teaching Strategy in Korea")
The most peculiar creative act of Wei Jiangong's promotion of zhuyin letters was to engrave zhuyin letters into seals for promotion. In the ninth issue of the Chinese Weekly (1931), there was a notice entitled "Introduction to the Inscription of Phonetic Symbols on behalf of the Ghosts of Tianxing Mountain", which stipulated: "First, no remuneration" and "Second, the engraving of Phonetic names is limited." One person and one stone; bad stones and other materials are not engraved"; "Third, Zhuyin uses standard Chinese; those who want to annotate dialects write it themselves, and only with the consent of the engraver are substitute carvings. He also published a guessing campaign in the Chinese Weekly, in which the guesser gave a seal. In the eighteenth issue of Chinese Weekly (January 16, 1932), the following seals were published:
"Chinese Weekly" also specifically stated:
In order to let people know that phonetic symbols are not only a weapon for popularizing education, but also have considerable value in art, these five stamps are printed in print, but in order to arouse the interest of readers, Chinese characters are not translated for the time being. Please know the phonetic symbols of the gong guess a guess. If the first person guesses correctly, this magazine will give a piece of the phonetic stamp engraved by the Tianxing Mountain Ghost; the second place or less will also announce the name of Fang in this magazine. ...... (Note: One of them has a Chinese character.) ）
In the twentieth issue (January 30, 1932), Chinese Weekly revealed the answer:
(Top left) Zhou Zuoren (with Chinese characters)
(Upper middle) New National Culture Society
(Top right) Lai Kam Hee
(Bottom left) Bai Di Chau
(Bottom right) Suspected Ancient Xuantong
Next, in the "Chinese Weekly", which promoted the modern Chinese, the phonological symbol guessing activities of Wei Jiangong's engraved seals continued, and the readers were extremely enthusiastic, so that Wei Jiangong was overwhelmed. So the twenty-ninth issue of the Chinese Weekly (April 9, 1932) re-published the following:
The journal has been held twice, and the readers enthusiastically sponsored and enthusiastically submitted letters, and this journal is deeply honored. However, recently, there have been too many customers of Tianxing Mountain Ghost, and this magazine is embarrassed to bother him for the prizes, so it will publish the phonetic symbol seal in the future and no longer hold a quiz. However, the Indian Characters will still be published in the next issue, and if you are interested in guessing, you can still guess at your own discretion.
It is said that the white name medal of "Zhou Zuoren" mentioned earlier is the "seal of the combination of Chinese characters and Zhuyin letters engraved by Jian Jiangong" that Zhou Zuoren recorded in his diary on July 1, 1929. On the right are the three Chinese characters for "Zhou Zuoren", and on the left are the Phonetic letters "ㄓㄡㄗㄨㄛ ㄖㄣ". Zhou Shi was very fond of using it, and sometimes used it as a collection of chapters. When Zhou Yun inspected the longitude and latitude of Zhou Zuoren's collection of books, he attached this seal to his book "Collected Wild Geese" (published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House in November 2021). Unfortunately, Zhou Yun thought that the Zhuyin letter was a Chinese character, and mistakenly marked the inscription as "Zhou Zuoren Temple (Holding) Dao".
"Collected Wild Geese", by Zhou Yun, published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House in November 2021
Wei listened to Zhou Zuoren's classes during his studies at Peking University from 1919 to 1925, and then stayed on to teach at the school, and was still close to Zhou Zuoren. According to my statistics, Wei once engraved twelve pieces for Zhou Zuoren. In addition to the above one, there is also one:
On September 6, 1964, in a letter to Bao Yaoming, Zhou Shi explained the one-sided seal in the seal spectrum, and the third article of it said:
The upper Gezhu Zhuyin letter "Zhou" (ㄓㄡ) is written on the right, the right of the lower grid is "作人" (ㄗ ㄨ ㄛ ㄖㄣ), and the left is "Qiming" (ㄑㄧ ㄇ一ㄣ). (Zhou Zuoren and Bao Yaoming Correspondence Collection, 1960-1965, pp. 351)
Although such a detailed explanation was given for Bao Yaoming, Zhou Zuoren did not mention who the person was engraved. In 1937, the July 7 Incident broke out, and in November Wei Jiangong went south, and Zhou Shi stayed in Ping. In 1942, feeling that the Zhou clan was fake, Wei Jiangong wrote an article entitled "The Fruit of Zhou Zuoren's "Xie Benshi"", announcing that he and Zhou Zuoren had a teacher-student relationship. Since then, the two have been separated by a businessman.
Zhou Zuoren has been concerned with the modernization of linguistics and Chinese since the time of rapid progress, and such issues are still often present in his writings until the 1950s. In his lifetime, Wei Jiangong never stopped Chinese modernization cause. Although phonetic symbols have completely withered away from our living world, transformed ideas by transforming writing and language, and linked the implementation of Chinese to discussions on the boundaries of modern state governance, the efforts of linguists such as Wei Jiangong should not be forgotten, because the modernization of Chinese is still on the way.