[AlchemistCamp]

> The introduction of pinyin revolutionised Chinese language teaching and had a near-miraculous effect on literacy rates;

This is inaccurate. Taiwan continued using Zhuyin, the native syllabary China used prior to the 60s, and Taiwan's literacy rates have never lagged.

Pinyin and Zhuyin have a one-to-one mapping at the syllable level, but Zhuyin is more accurate at the single character scale. E.g., the sounds for both ㄜ and ㄝ are written as an e in Pinyin and ㄨ and ㄩ are both always written as u. Worse still, the ㄩ sound is also sometimes represented as ü in Pinyin (when preceded by an l).

Pinyin requires more context (and rules) to distinguish which vowel sound is being represented.

Zhuyin isn't perfect either. It's definitely a better representation of single consonant or vowel sounds but it still has its own warts around diphthongs and triphthongs.

Pinyin is definitely a flawed phonetic system, but it's usable and widespread. That's it's real strength, along with being less alien to non-Chinese speakers.

[fiblye]

Zhuyin is also relatively new, at around 100 years old. Historically, the closest thing Chinese had to phonics was fanqie, which was a comparatively obtuse way of representing sounds with other hanzi.[1] Basically, any hint of a true phonetic system probably helped literacy rates during the 1900s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanqie

[jdietrich]

>Pinyin is definitely a flawed phonetic system, but it's usable and widespread. That's it's real strength

I don't disagree. There's nothing particularly special about pinyin, but it was revolutionary precisely because it rapidly became ubiquitous in Mandarin instruction.

I don't think I can reasonably address the issue of zhuyin vs tongyong vs hanyu without stepping into a political minefield, but I will say that there's a world of difference between achieving full literacy on a small and prosperous island versus achieving full literacy in a vast nation with substantial poverty and under-development.

[uranusjr]

I argue that China would still reach the current literacy rate had they continued to use Zhuyin. The switch from Zhuyin to Pinyin was entirely political, and the two are basically the same to L1 learners. The significance of Pinyin is that it drastically lowers the initial learning barrier for L2+ learners from Europe and Americas (which has trade-offs, but that’s another whole topic).

[SuperNinKenDo]

I think Pinyin has had a bigger impact than Zhuyin simply by its use in China and in the broader Huaren communities. That said, Zhuyin is also a recent innovation, and so the point about having some kind of phonemic/phonic/phonetic system of spelling as your basis for literacy probably still stands, at least with whatever strength it has, I think the other poster might be overstating it to some degree, although it's definitely a godsend to have in Chinese now, whether it be Hanyu Pinyin, Zhuyin, or whatever.

[tgb]

I think you're overstating the complexities of pinyin, even if Zhuyin is better. The context pinyin requires is extremely limited, being exactly only the rest of the syllable. It's simple if one just thinks of it as a set of initials/finals and not as letters. The whole thing can be learned in a day, so there's not much to be gained in an improved system.

[AlchemistCamp]

I regularly meet people who have been using it for months and still keep using the wrong vowels.

It's not insurmountable by any means. However, if Pinyin came in on a code review, I'd have a lot of comments on it :D