拼音是谁发明的？
Who invented pinyin? The story of Zhou Youguang
Name: ________________ Date: ________
每个学中文的人，第一天学的往往不是汉字，而是拼音：b、p、m、f，还有那四个小小的声调符号。今天，从小学生的课本到手机上的输入法，到处都离不开拼音。可是你知道吗？牵头设计这套拼音的人，竟然是一位在华尔街工作过的银行家。
他叫周有光，1906年出生在江苏常州。他早年攻读经济学，毕业后进入了金融界。1946年，银行派他去了纽约，在华尔街待了一段时间。1949年以后，他回到上海，在复旦大学教经济学。倘若没有后来那次意想不到的调动，他大概会当一辈子经济学家。
那次调动发生在1955年。当时，中国的文盲非常多，政府希望找到一种更有效的途径，帮助大家认汉字、说普通话。周恩来总理想起周有光年轻时对语言文字颇有兴趣，就把他调到北京，参加文字改革的工作。周有光推辞说，自己只是个业余爱好者，得到的回答却是：“这是一项新工作，大家都是业余的。”
周有光和同事们花了大约三年时间。他们比较了以前各种用字母拼写汉语的方案，最后决定用世界上最常见的拉丁字母，再加上四个声调符号。1958年，《汉语拼音方案》正式通过。从那以后，拼音进了小学课堂，孩子们先学拼音，再靠拼音认字。1982年，它又成了国际标准，今天外国地图上印着的“Beijing”，就是这么来的。
人们叫他“汉语拼音之父”，他自己却总是很谦虚，说这点工作微不足道。更令人惊叹的是他的晚年：一百岁以后，他还出版了十多本书。109岁生日那天，他自嘲道：“上帝太忙了，把我忘了。”2017年1月，在过完111岁生日的第二天，周有光在北京去世。
下次你在手机上用拼音打出“你好”的时候，不妨想一想这位从华尔街回来的老人。正是他和同事们设计的这套字母和声调，让无数人更容易地走进了汉字的世界。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 往往 | wángwǎng | often; frequently; usually |
| 毕业 | bìyè | to graduate; graduation |
| 进入 | jìnrù | to enter; to get into |
| 待 | dāi | when; once (待…后) |
| 当 | dāng | when; at the time of |
| 拼音 | pīnyīn | pinyin (romanization of Chinese) |
| 套 | tào | cover; case; sheath (as in 手套) |
| 派 | pài | to send; to dispatch |
| 政府 | zhèngfǔ | government |
| 认 | rèn | to recognize; to know (as in 认得) |
| 调 | diào | to adjust; to tune |
| 业余 | yèyú | amateur |
English (for the teacher)
Anyone learning Chinese usually starts on day one not with characters but with pinyin: b, p, m, f, and those four little tone marks. Today pinyin is everywhere, from primary school textbooks to the input methods on our phones. But did you know? The man who led its design was, of all things, a banker who had worked on Wall Street.
His name was Zhou Youguang, and he was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu, in 1906. As a young man he studied economics, and after graduating he went into finance. In 1946 his bank sent him to New York, and he spent some time on Wall Street. After 1949 he went back to Shanghai and taught economics at Fudan University. If not for one unexpected transfer, he would probably have stayed an economist all his life.
That transfer came in 1955. At the time a great many people in China could not read, and the government wanted a more effective way to help everyone learn characters and speak Mandarin. Premier Zhou Enlai remembered that Zhou Youguang had been very interested in language and writing when he was young, so he moved him to Beijing to work on script reform. Zhou Youguang demurred that he was only an amateur, but the answer he got was: “This is a new job; everybody is an amateur.”
Zhou and his colleagues spent about three years on it. They compared all the earlier schemes for spelling Chinese with letters, and in the end chose the world's most common alphabet, the Latin one, plus four tone marks. In 1958 the Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet was officially adopted. From then on pinyin went into primary school classrooms: children learned pinyin first, then used it to learn characters. In 1982 it also became an international standard, and that is where the “Beijing” printed on foreign maps today comes from.
People call him the “father of pinyin”, but he himself was always modest and said this bit of work hardly mattered. Even more amazing was his old age: after turning a hundred he published more than ten books. On his 109th birthday he joked at his own expense: “God is too busy; he has forgotten me.” In January 2017, the day after his 111th birthday, Zhou Youguang died in Beijing.
Next time you type 你好 in pinyin on your phone, spare a thought for this old man who came back from Wall Street. It was the letters and tones he and his colleagues designed that made the world of Chinese characters easier to enter for countless people.