After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century...
After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.
Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese language to a world designed for the Roman alphabet and requiring standardization, from an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language to the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today.
With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.
Jing Tsu is the John M. Schiff Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale. She specializes in Chinese literature, history, and culture from the nineteenth century to the present, and received her doctorate in Chinese studies from Harvard. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has held fellowships and d...
Jing Tsu is the John M. Schiff Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale. She specializes in Chinese literature, history, and culture from the nineteenth century to the present, and received her doctorate in Chinese studies from Harvard. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has held fellowships and distinctions from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton institutes.
目录
· · · · · ·
Introduction xi
1 A Mandarin in Revolution (1900) 1
2 Chinese Typewriters and America (1912) 43
3 Tipping the Scale of Telegraphy (1925) 89
4 The Librarian's Card Catalog (1938) 127
5 When "Peking" Became "Beijing" (1958) 169
· · · · · ·
(更多)
Introduction xi
1 A Mandarin in Revolution (1900) 1
2 Chinese Typewriters and America (1912) 43
3 Tipping the Scale of Telegraphy (1925) 89
4 The Librarian's Card Catalog (1938) 127
5 When "Peking" Became "Beijing" (1958) 169
6 Entering into the Computer (1979) 211
7 The Digital Sinosphere (2020) 249
Acknowledgments 281
Notes 283
Index 305
· · · · · · (收起)
然而，统一码1992年版并不完美，因为原来的国家或地区字符集并不完全符合这条规则。重复的字时有出现，还有些字在原来的国家和地区字符集中本应统一却没有统一。这类情况令表意文字工作组头痛不已。此外，又出现了各国或各地区字符集中原来没有的古字和专用字。在考古发掘现场、古籍、少数民族语言和地方方言里不断发现过去没有见过的汉字。最罕见的字大多是地名和人名。中国父母特别重视给孩子取名，取的名字越独特越吉祥就越好。例如，罕见字“䶮”上“龙”下“天”，语义为“龙翔在天”。如果父母只能用“龙”这个普通得多且已经编码的字，那就不够惊艳了。这些未列入目录的字的词源和历史常常尚未来得及整理出来做计算机编码，而整理工作需要时间。
必须对字做相关研究，在表意文字工作组开会前提交给小组成员审查。开会时，相关的字被投射在幕布上，成员们仔细检查字的结构是否准确，经过长时间讨论和辩论，最后决定是批准还是拒绝将该字纳入系统。目前，等待审查的字大量积压，致使表意文字工作组于2019年在成立26年后改名为表意文字研究组（Ideographic Research Group，缩写不变，因为它认识到，自己整理东亚表意文字的工作早已超过了与统一码联盟和国际标准化组织暂时合作的初衷。处理汉字表意文字成了重要的长期任务。仅中国大陆就提出了好几千个字。将汉字纳入统一码这项工作没完没了，无法清楚确定完成的日期。 (查看原文)
Case Studies of Character Revolutions in the 20th Century China. Focus on the cutting-edge revolutions to help adapt Chinese scripts to a modernized world in which all the technologies and discourses ...Case Studies of Character Revolutions in the 20th Century China. Focus on the cutting-edge revolutions to help adapt Chinese scripts to a modernized world in which all the technologies and discourses had already been set up by phonocentrism, both their cultures and languages. It does not give much on what I'm curious about in everyday language(展开)
石静远 作者
pensieve
琪琪
中信出版集团2023版
孙妮儿
燕晓小读
fulinlei
0 有用 第五大道东 2023-09-14 21:22:58 上海
Case Studies of Character Revolutions in the 20th Century China. Focus on the cutting-edge revolutions to help adapt Chinese scripts to a modernized world in which all the technologies and discourses ... Case Studies of Character Revolutions in the 20th Century China. Focus on the cutting-edge revolutions to help adapt Chinese scripts to a modernized world in which all the technologies and discourses had already been set up by phonocentrism, both their cultures and languages. It does not give much on what I'm curious about in everyday language (展开)
0 有用 Viola 2023-01-11 22:36:04 上海
话题比较吸引人，增加了很多的知识。写的其实一般般，平铺直叙的科普文，没啥观点。
0 有用 阿波 2025-01-01 23:18:39 美国
从原版读，读英文描述汉字还是吃力的。后面读完了中信的译本，体会到了文字作为“基础设施”和信息载体的意义。这部分突破了我的认知，是进步。 另外，作者介绍了历史忘记的伟大的边缘人们，这一点很喜欢。
5 有用 辛维木 2022-02-28 08:31:40
虽然石老师每次讲课都特别深奥但文字可读性却相当强，让汉字使用者了解了今天我们习以为常的输入输出是怎么来的，对不了解中国历史的读者也很友好。基调也很正能量，感觉蛮适合引进的……
0 有用 Jacqueline_琳 2023-02-24 03:07:30 美国
Audiobook, 3.5/5. Character一词双关，既指汉字也指汉字现代化之路上的各色人物。本书关于前者的写作是精彩的，包含了注音、打字机、图书索引、电子存储等不同话题的诸多细节又浑然成为一体；关于后者的写作是单薄的，给人一种图有宏大叙事的野心但笔力不足的感觉，相比之下没有系统学术研究的《甲骨文》对人物的刻画要强太多。