1. Historical Background

In 1913, right after the collapse of the Qīng dynasty, the Qièyīnzì 切音字 or National Alphabet Movement, which had started in 1892, led to the development of a set of 39 phonetic symbols derived from Chinese characters, meant to be the national standard to phoneticize Standard Chinese pronunciation. They were called zhùyīn zìmǔ 注音字母 ‘sound notating letters’ and were also known a…