Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation

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 an ancillary phonetic symbols for Mandarin Chinese (Zhuyin was the product) and set the standard Guoyu pronunciation of basic Chinese characters.

Table of contents

1 History 2 Members 3 Phonetic symbols 4 Programs

History

It was decided in a draft on August 7, 1912, a month after a conference led by the Cai Yuanpei in July 10, that a set of phonetic symbols are to be used for education purposes. The Commission was set up in December, led by Woo Tsin-hang. The Commission ended on May 22, 1913. A later similar organization that still exists, also headed by Woo Tsin-hang for a while, is the Mandarin Promotion Council.

Members

The first meeting took place on February 15, 1913 in Beijing, with 44 delegates. The chairman was Woo; vice-chairman Wang Zhao (王照). There were two representatives per each of the 26 provincess. The Tibetans, the Mongolians and the overseas Chinese each have one representative. Prominent members include:

• Cai Zhang (蔡璋)
• Chen Suiyi (陳遂意)
• Gao Kunnan (高鯤南)
• Hu Yuren (胡雨人)
• Li Liangcai (李良材)
• Liu Zishan (劉繼善)
• Lu Zhuanzhang (盧戇章)
• Ma Tigan (馬體乾)
• Wang Rongbao (汪榮寶)
• Wang Sui (王崔)
• Wang Yi'an (汪怡安)
• Xing Dao (邢島)
• Yang Qu (楊麴)
• Yang Zenghao (楊曾浩)

Phonetic symbols

There three main ideas of how the phonetic symbols should be:

• Using certain complete Chinese characters to symbolize other characters of the same sound
  • Supporters include Wang Zhao, Wang Rongbao, Wang Yi'an, and Cai.
• Using Latin alphabet letters
  • Supporters include Yang Zenghao and Liu
• Using non-existent symbols
  • Supporters include Woo, Lu, Ma, Li, Xing, Wang Sui, Hu, Yang Qu, Gao, Chen, and Zheng.

The three groups discussed for two months and adopted 15 symbols from Zhang Binglin's all-Zhuanshu Ziyin Zimu (記音字母), which was the proposal by the Zhejiang Committee. Ziyin Zimu was renamed to Zhuyin Fuhao.

After its proclamation, several aspects of Zhuyin were further modified, including:

• Rearrange the order of the symbols
• Add ㄜ (Pinyin e)
• ㄦ, originally just r, is now also er (a retroflex vowel)
• The three dialectal symbols -- 万 (v), 广 (gn), and 兀 (ng) -- are deleted
• Modify tone system

Programs

The Commission established the Seven Mandarin Sound Promotion Programs (《國音推行方法七條》 Guoyu Tuixing Fang'an Qi Tiao):

• Proclaim Zhuyin Zimu. [On November 23, 1918]
• All provinces are to establish places to promote and study the 6500 standardized Mandarin sounds (國音傳習所), where the county representatives will gather and return to their counties to spread the words. [Established in 1920, along with Summer Mandarin Seminars (暑期國語講習所)]
• Use gramophone to record the exact pronunciation. [Recorded in 1920]
• Have Mandarin be a compulsory subject in all elementary school. [Implemented in 19??]
• All teachers are to speak in Mandarin solely in elementary and middle schools. [Implemented in 19??]
• All textbooks and some official documents are to be annotated by Zhuyin. [Implemented in 19??]