晚清来华西方人与汉字拼音方案的发展及演变——以《中国丛报》为中心

The Contributions of Westerners in China to the Evolution of Orthography of Chinese Language in the Late Qing Dynasty——Based on the Discussion in “the Chinese Repository”（《中国丛报》）

汉字发音历来是西方人汉语学习的难点之一.相对西方人而言,学习汉语语音最自然、便捷的方式莫过于借助他们原本熟悉的拉丁字母拼读汉字发音.为此,以马儒翰、卫三畏等人为代表的晚清来华西方人以《中国丛报》为交流平台,先后在该刊物上发表多篇文章及评论,不仅大胆提出汉字拼音化的设想,并就马儒翰公布的汉字拼音方案中的变音符号、元音和辅音的分类与编排、音调等具体问题展开较为深入地讨论.尽管最终并未就汉字拼音方案形成统一的标准模式,但这一讨论在很大程度上代表了当时来华西方人对汉语语音认识和研究的最高水平,亦为日后威妥玛、翟理斯制定“威-翟”拼音体系提供了有益的借鉴.

The pronunciation of Chinese words is one of difficulties for Westerners in learning Chinese. To Westerners, the most natural and convenient way of learning Chinese pronunciation is to use Latin alphabets to pronounce Chinese words. Therefore, some Westerners in China represented by J. R. Morrison and S. W. William published a series of papers and remarks in the Chinese Repository not only to propose the hypothesis of Romanization of Chinese, but also initiate a thorough discussion on certain problems such as diacritical marks, the classification of consonants and vowels and tones, etc. Although the discussion didn’t eventually put forward a standard system of orthography of Chinese language, it, to a great extent, represented the highest level of Westerners’ understanding and research on Chinese phonetics at that time, and also offered useful inspirations for the formation of Wade-Gile’s System.