The qieyin 切音 Transcription Systems

The qieyin 切音 alphabets were the first attempts at creating a phonetic transcription of the Chinese script. These transcription systems were pathbreaking for the development of the Zhuyin alphabet 注音字母 developed during the 1920s.

Traditionally, the pronunciation of Chinese characters was indicated by the fanqie system 反切. The initial sound and the final sound of a word were represented by two other characters, like the [d-] of 德 [də] and the [-ʊŋ] of 紅 [hʊŋ] for the pronunciaton [dʊŋ] of the character 東. This approach still played a part in the creation of the qieyin alphabets as well as of the Zhuyin alphabet.

The intention of creating such alphabets was to raise literacy and to lift up the general standard of eduction, which could eventually contribute to a growing independence and strength of the Chinese nation. Texts written in Chinese characters and accompanied by a phonetic system could be read without consulting character dictionaries. Furthermore, easy-to-learn phonetic symbols could be used to replace characters and to express oneself in written form without relying on complicated characters. This method was compared with the Japanese syllabic scripts Katakana and Hiragana which are used besides the Chinese characters and are used to indicate the pronuncation of characters.

The different attempts at creating a phonetic alphabet for Chinese made use of the letters of the Latin alphabet, abbreviated Chinese characters, parts of characters, archaic forms of characters or shorthand characters. The most widespread of these transcription systems is Wang Zhao's 王照 (1859-1933) Mandarin alphabet (guanhua hesheng zimu 官話合聲字母) for the idom of Beijing. Yet the forerunner of these scholars was Song Shu 宋恕. In 1891 he wrote an essay called Liuzhai beiyi 六齋俾議 stressing the need of an advanced phonetic system to be used in schools, especially in southern China. The first alphabet was created by Lu Gangzhang 盧戇章 (1854-1928). In 1892 he published his book Yimu liaoran chujie 一目了然初階, in which he presented an alphabet consisting of original and altered Latin letters. It was to be used for the transcription of the idiom of Xiamen 廈門 and could also be used for the dialects of Quanzhou 泉州 and Zhangzhou 漳州. This publication was the starting point of a flood of books presenting transcription systems presented in the following table.

Although most of these alphabets made use of archaic characters, abbreviated characters and brush strokes as parts of characters (which was, of course, the influence of the Japanese kana alphabets), many others stressed that China needed an alphabet based on the internationally much more important Latin alphabet. While the first alphabets had been made for dialects or topolects, many later alphabets tried to create an alphabet for the language of Beijing as the standard language of the capital. Mandarin (guanhua) was not yet declared the national standard language, but these attempts already demonstrated the need for a standard language that had to be used nation-wide.

Wang Zhao's alphabet from 1901 shows clearly the influence of the kana syllable alphabets. Yet for the syllable endings, more symbols had to be created. In Japanese, there is only one vowel per syllable, yet in Chinese there are many diphtongs, and also some consonant endings. The four tone pitches were expressed by dots in the corners of the transcription. Like in the later Zhuyin alphabet, the transcription was written to the right side of the characters. It can be seen that the symbols were abbreviated characters, like 必 for [bi], 特 for [tə], or 木 for mu [mu], 夫 for [fu].

Figure 1. Wang Zhao's 王照 transcription alphabet Guanhua zimu 官話字母 from 1901

Liu Mengyang's alphabet used the Latin letters. For sounds not known in Western languages, he made diacritic marks. The letters were used to transcribe different sounds than in the modern Hanyu pinyin system 漢語拼音.

Figure 2. Liu Mengyang's 劉孟揚 transcription alphabet Zhonggu yinbiao zishu 中國音標字書 from 1908

Cai Xiyong used Western shorthand symbols for his alphabet. This was, compared to the other methods, the simplest one, yet for both Chinese and Westerners shorthand is a foreign transcription system that first had to be learned by both sides and was therefore not very attractive.

Figure 3. Cai Xiyong's 蔡錫勇 transcription alphabet Zhuanyin kuaizi 傳音快字 from 1896

The most widespread transcription systems were those of Wang Zhao and Lao Naixuan. Although both systems attracted the interest of scholars and were used in a large number of textbooks for elementary schools, Wang Zhao's guanhua zimu system was prohibited in 1910. Two years later, with the foundation of the Republic, new attempts were made at creating a transcription system for a standardized national language. The result was to be the Zhuyin alphabet.