Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) is a system for writing Chinese in the Latin alphabet. It was developed in the 1920s by a group of linguists led by Y.R. Chao, and is unique in its use of "tonal spelling" to indicate the four tones of Mandarin. Tones are a fundamental part of the Chinese language: using the wrong tone sounds as puzzling as if one said bud in English, meaning "not good" or "the thing one sleeps in". Unlike other systems, which indicate tones with accents or numbers, GR modifies the spelling of the syllable: the four tones of guo, for example, are shown above (the second tone gwo, meaning "nation", occurs in Gwoyeu). Some teachers believe that these distinctive spellings may help foreign students remember the tones. In 1928 China adopted GR as the nation's official romanization system. Although GR was mainly used in dictionaries, its proponents hoped one day to establish it as a writing system for a reformed Chinese script. But despite support from trained linguists in China and overseas, GR met with public indifference and even hostility due to its complexity. Eventually GR lost ground to Pinyin and other later romanization systems. However, its influence is still evident, as several of the principles introduced by its creators have been used in romanization systems that followed it.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1485: Lancastrian forces under Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond defeated Yorkist forces under Richard III of England at the Battle of Bosworth Field, decisively ending the Wars of the Roses. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field)

1791: A slave rebellion erupted in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, starting the Haitian Revolution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution)

1864: The Red Cross movement led by Henry Dunant officially began when twelve European nations signed the First Geneva Convention, establishing the International Committee of the Red Cross.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Moveme...)

1910: Korea was annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule)

1922: Irish Civil War: Irish National Army commander-in-chief Michael Collins was assassinated in an ambush while en route through County Cork at the village of Béal na mBláth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Collins_%28Irish_leader%29)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

reify: To regard something abstract as if it were a concrete material thing. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reify)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

I wish to write down my musical dreams in a spirit of utter self-detachment. I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candour of a child. No doubt, this simple musical grammar will jar on some people. It is bound to offend the partisans of deceit and artifice. I foresee that and rejoice at it. -- Claude Debussy

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy)