S: | 读音统一会 |
T: | 讀音統一會 |
P: | Dúyīn Tǒngyī Huì |
W: | Tuyin T'ungi Hui |
Gr: | Dwu'in Toong'i Huey |
Poj: | Tho̍k-im Thóng-it Hōe |
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The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation was established by the Republic of China in 1913 in order to address several aspects of Chinese language reform—including selecting an official phonetic transcription system for Mandarin Chinese, as well as standardizing pronunciations for basic Chinese characters. Delegates representing every Chinese province deliberated on the merits of numerous systems, ultimately selecting the design of Zhang Binglin (1869–1936). Zhang's system would serve as the prototype for bopomofo, and would be officially adopted by the Republican government in 1918.
It was decided in a draft on 7 August 1912, a month after a conference led by the Cai Yuanpei on July 10, that a set of phonetic symbols were to be used for education purposes. The commission was set up in December, led by Wu Zhihui (Woo Tsin-hang; Chinese: 吳稚暉). The Commission ended on 22 May 1913. A later similar organization that had been headed by Wu Zhihui for a while is the Mandarin Promotion Council.
The first meeting took place on 15 February 1913 in Beijing, with 44 delegates. The chairman was Wu; vice-chairman Wang Zhao (Chinese: 王照). There were two representatives per each of the 26 provinces. The Tibetans, the Mongolians and the overseas Chinese each had one representative. Prominent members included:
There were three main ideas of how the phonetic symbols should be:
The three groups discussed for two months and adopted 15 symbols from Zhang Binglin's all-Zhuanshu Jiyin Zimu, which was the proposal by the Zhejiang Committee. Jiyin Zimu was renamed to Zhuyin Fuhao.
After its proclamation, several aspects of Zhuyin were further modified, including:
The commission established the Seven Mandarin Sound Promotion Programs (Chinese: 《國音推行方法七條》; Guoyu Tuixing Fangfa Qi Tiao):