Yale romanization of Mandarin

The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Standard Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.^[1] It was devised in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy for a course teaching Chinese to American soldiers, and was popularized by continued development of that course at Yale.^[2]^[3] The system approximated Chinese sounds using English spelling conventions, in order to accelerate acquisition of correct pronunciation by English speakers.^[4]

The Yale romanization was widely used in Western textbooks until the late 1970s. In fact, during the height of the Cold War, the use outside of China of pinyin rather than Yale romanization, was regarded as a political statement or identification with the communist Chinese regime.^[5] The situation was reversed once relations between the People's Republic of China and the West had improved. Communist China (PRC) became a member of the United Nations in 1971 by replacing Nationalist China (ROC). By 1979, much of the world adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for Chinese geographical names. In 1982, pinyin became an ISO standard, and interest in Yale Mandarin declined rapidly thereafter.

^ Dictionary of Spoken Chinese. War Department Technical Manual TM 30-933. War Department. 1945. pp. 1, 8. (also Dictionary of Spoken Chinese at the HathiTrust Digital Library)
^ Tewksbury, M. Gardner (1948). Speak Chinese. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. vii.
^ Fenn, Henry C.; Tewksbury, M. Gardner (1967). Speak Mandarin. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. xi. ISBN 0-300-00453-2.
^ Fenn and Tewksbury (1967), p. xii.
^ Wiedenhof, Jeroen (Leiden University) (2004). "Purpose and effect in the transcription of Mandarin" (PDF). Proceedings of the International Conference on Chinese Studies 2004 (漢學研究國際學術研討會論文集). National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. pp. 387–402. ISBN 9860040117. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-01. Retrieved 2009-07-18. In the Cold War era, the use of this system outside China was typically regarded as a political statement, or a deliberate identification with the Chinese communist regime. (p390)

[1] Dictionary of Spoken Chinese. War Department Technical Manual TM 30-933. War Department. 1945. pp. 1, 8. (also Dictionary of Spoken Chinese at the HathiTrust Digital Library)

[2] Tewksbury, M. Gardner (1948). Speak Chinese. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. vii.

[3] Fenn, Henry C.; Tewksbury, M. Gardner (1967). Speak Mandarin. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. xi. ISBN 0-300-00453-2.

[Fenn_and_Tewksbury_xii-4] Fenn and Tewksbury (1967), p. xii.

[5] Wiedenhof, Jeroen (Leiden University) (2004). "Purpose and effect in the transcription of Mandarin" (PDF). Proceedings of the International Conference on Chinese Studies 2004 (漢學研究國際學術研討會論文集). National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. pp. 387–402. ISBN 9860040117. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-01. Retrieved 2009-07-18. In the Cold War era, the use of this system outside China was typically regarded as a political statement, or a deliberate identification with the Chinese communist regime. (p390)

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