readings about Chinese characters and romanization
Almost all of the readings below are from the books recommended on this site.
- Appropriateness [of Chinese Characters] to East Asian Languages. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- Basic Rules of Hanyu Pinyin Orthography, from The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing.
- Breakup of Homophones, from The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing.
- Chinese, from Visible Speech, by John DeFrancis.
- Chinese Characters and the Lexicon. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- Chinese Writing. From The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity, by William Hannas.
- Confusing Language with Writing, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
- Cultural Independence, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
- A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing, by Peter S. Du Ponceau.
- Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character, from The Selected Works of George A. Kennedy.
- The Function of Phonophores (sound-bearing elements of characters), from The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing.
- The Homonym Problem. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- The Ideographic Myth, from The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.
- Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform, by Victor Mair.
- Introduction to Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning, by J. Marshall Unger.
- Kanji and Literacy, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
- The Modern Japanese Writing System, from Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines, by J. Marshall Unger.
- Modifier-Modified Adjectives [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
- 'Monosyllabic' Chinese. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- Morphemes versus Words. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- One State, One People, One Language, from Nationalism and Language Reform in China, by John DeFrancis.
- Personal Names [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
- Political Maneuvering, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
- The Price of Tradition, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
- Rationale: why investigate Chinese words?. From The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach, by Jerome L. Packard.
- Scholarly Neglect, from Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines, by J. Marshall Unger.
- Sound and Meaning in the History of Characters: Views of China's Earliest Script Reformers, by Victor Mair. From Difficult Characters: Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese and Japanese Writing, edited by Mary S. Erbaugh.
- Transitivity across Languages. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- Transliteration of Foreign Place Names and Personal Names [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
- Unification of Chinese 'Dialects'. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
- Use of the Hyphen; Abbreviations and Short Forms [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
- Verb-Complement Constructions [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
- Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, by David Moser. From Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday (Sino-Platonic Papers No. 27), edited by Victor Mair.
