DeFrancis 1977

DeFrancis, John. 1977. "Language and script reform in China: Section III: The revision of classical writing systems." In Fishman 1977. (Originally published in 1967, in Current Trends 2, 130–150.) Interest level: academic.

Gives history of Chinese activities in script reform beginning with 1892. Summarizes the following language policies instituted in 1949:

• Simplification of characters by reducing the number of strokes in complicated characters.
• Promotion throughout the country of a standard language based on the Peking dialect.
• Creation of a phonetic system to annotate Chinese characters, to promote the common language, and to create alphabetic scripts for non-Chinese speaking minorities of China. Possibly at some unspecified date in the future to replace the traditional characters with a phonetic system of writing.

Details

• significant linguistic discussions
• political influences
• popular attitudes and trends in the reform of language
• writing, and
• education from 1949 to 1973.

• Bibliography module: DeFrancis 1977
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): D
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 18 May 1999

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