Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone knows of any non-Chinese references
(e.g., English, Japanese, other Western, etc) about WANG Zhao's
\u738b\u7167 Guanhua Zimu \u5b98\u8a71\u5b57\u6bcd 'Mandarin letters'
alphabet/syllabary invented in 1900 to write Mandarin Chinese (later
adapted and expanded by LAO Naixuan \u52de\u4e43\u5ba3 for other Chinese
languages).

This scan is from p. 82 of Eugene A. Nida, ed., _The Book of a Thousand
Tongues_, 2nd ed. (London: United Bible Societies, 1972), one of four
illustrations of Guanhua Zimu in the book, and incidently all used to
write some variety of Mandarin:
http://deall.ohio-state.edu/grads/chan.200/misc/guanhua_zimu.jpg

Nida 1972 calls them by various names: "Wang Chao Phonetic Character",
"Wang Chao Phonetic System", "Wang Chao Phonetics". The references he
gives (Bible ones, but use of Guanhua Zimu was not limited to
that) date from 1918-1925, and all are various varieties of Mandarin.

Thanks,


Thomas Chan
tc31@...