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MA MENG
In 1956, a new term, p'u-t'ung-hua, meaning common language, became the official term for the standard language used on the Chinese mainland. Henceforth the term Kuo-yü fell into disuse, except on Taiwan and among the overseas Chinese. Strictly speaking, p'u-t'ung-hua is not a new term, having been used over many years to denote any form of the language that approximated the standard spoken language. Though now the official term, p'u-t'ung-hua thus has essentially the same meaning as Kuo-yü, for like Kuo-yü it is based on the Peking pronunciation and on a grammatical structure close to that of the modern vernacular. It will thus serve to bring about the complete unification of the Chinese language, accomplishing the process already begun by the adoption of kuan-hua and Kuo-yü.
Since 1949 the Chinese Communists have taken two major steps to reform the traditional character script. In 1955 they put out a series of lists containing altogether 798 simplified characters and 54 simplified radicals. These simplified characters and radicals have been used ever since. Thus it has not only been made easier to learn how to write, but the simplified characters already in use have also been standardized. This standardization has ended a tradition which allowed anyone to improvise his own simplifications of the script. As a result, many characters could be written in different forms. This freedom to improvise had naturally asserted itself most in times of confusion, as after the last war.
The Communists have now tried at least to limit this freedom; but they have not succeeded in wholly stopping spontaneous improvisation of simplified characters. Pages of the People's Daily frequently contain critical comments on such unauthorized simplifications.
Originally, character simplification was considered only a stop-gap measure to be abandoned as soon as a final solution could be found in a romanised script. Attempts to transcribe the sounds of the Chinese language by using the Roman alphabet had already been made by Western missionaries in the late Ming dynasty. In the late nineteenth century, other systems of romanization were developed. Some of these—notably the Wade-Giles system—remain in use to the present day. But none of these systems served more than a limited purpose; none of them constituted a final solution of the problems of language reform. The first