Yuen Ren Chao
Yuen Ren Chao (3 November 189225 February 1982), also known as
Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese
phonology and grammar. Chao was born and raised in China, then attended university in the United States, where he earned degrees from
Cornell University and
Harvard University. A naturally gifted
polyglot and linguist, his ''Mandarin Primer'' was one of the most widely used Mandarin Chinese textbooks in the 20th century. He invented the
Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization scheme, which, unlike
pinyin and other romanization systems, transcribes Mandarin Chinese pronunciation without
diacritics or numbers to indicate
tones.
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