Status Updates From Kingdom of Characters: The ...

‘Tones—vary from place to place—depending on the dialect—difference between two dialects—can be greater than that between Spanish and Italian. The tonal variety that has to be corralled into a single phonetic system under a single standard is daunting—But there is a hidden prelude to this—story of linguistic struggle—in a brief safe window in early 1958—Zhou Enlai upheld the goals of writing reform—Pinyin was born.’

‘—1949—the speech he delivered was in a rustic Hunanese accent as thick as the earth he stood on—did not speak a word of Putonghua—derived from the northern-based Beijing Mandarin—An important monument in the history of simplified Chinese writing—created by women—gave women both literacy & a means of private communication with one another—stitching in embroidery—for instance, was persecuted as witchcraft for a time—’