CHINAEUROPE AFRICAASIA 中文双语Français
China\People

Father of Chinese Pinyin dies at 111

Crienglish.com | Updated: 2017-01-14 15:10

Father of Chinese Pinyin dies at 111

Born in Changzhou of East China's Jiangsu province on January 13 1906, Zhou was previously an economist working on Wall Street before becoming a linguist.[Photo/IC]

Renowned Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang, the creator of Pinyin writing system, died on January 14th, one day after his 111th birthday.

The Hinabook publishing house, which published several of Zhou's books in recent years, confirmed Zhou's death.

Born in Changzhou of East China's Jiangsu province on January 13 1906, Zhou was previously an economist working on Wall Street before becoming a linguist. In the 1950s, he chaired the committee which came up with Pinyin, a system to make it easier to transcribe Chinese characters using the western alphabet.

He said the speed of the popularization of Pinyin was amazing, used not only in education but also industry and commerce. It became a key to understanding Chinese culture, and has evolved into a bridge linking China to the whole world.

Zhou enjoyed watching English-language TV news. He noted that English news is often equipped with captions, making it easier to understand the main idea of every news item.

BACK TO THE TOP
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US