Thread by @tsmullaney

There’s a deeper history to “Chinese Alphabets” like this. Much of it orientalist, exoticizing, racist. But some is ad admixture of eccentrism + brilliance, spear-headed by Chinese inventors—esp. ones interested in Telegraphy, Computing, and Chinese I.T. more broadly. THREAD/1

The exoticizing/racializing story is a bit better known, but essential to spotlight again. One need go no further than the infamous “Chinese Restaurant Font” (not its real name, but how it came to be known). A wonderful write-up in @qz by @annequito /2 cnn.com/style/article/…

There's a lesser known part of this history. Let’s start w/ Telegraphy. Since 1871, Chinese Morse Code (the backbone of telegraphy) was based on translating Chinese characters into 4-digit ciphers. Why? Because you can’t fit the 70,000+ characters into Standard Morse.

A base-10 system, Arabic numerals are inefficient info storage. Some thought “Why not use Latin letters *as* codes? The Latin alphabet is a 'base-26' system!" If 4 digits can store 10,000 characters, you can store 17,000+ in just 3 letters (26^3).

But a problem! Circa 1880 or 1890, Chinese telegraphers weren’t familiar w/ Latin letters. The ABCs were foreign. The solution? A “Chinese Alphabet” where each Latin letter was represented by a Chinese character that approximated its sound. Look at the picture.

So A = 愛 B = 比 C = 西...! (keep in mind: although the original 4-digit Chinese telegraph code was invented by foreigners, this idea of using a "Chinese Alphabet" was developed by Chinese telegraphers)

Fast forward to the age of Computing! Here the problem facing Chinese was similar: how to “fit” Chinese, not in Morse Code, but on QWERTY keyboard.

I’ve written a lot about this elsewhere, so just link or 2. psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so…

This one might also be of interest: techcrunch.com/2021/06/29/the…

1 solution 2 the “Chinese QWERTY problem” = what I call “Isomorphism” (or “same-shape-ism”). These were systems where Latin letters were paired with Chinese chars based on their *common shapes*! (Here’s where we come back to the picture that your kid brought home from school).

These "isomorphic" systems were invented by (brilliant and inventive) Chinese + Chinese-American inventors. One of these individuals was H.C. Tien, pictured on the far left.

Here are a few more examples from Tien's Chinese input system invented by H.C. Tien, where you can see a bunch of the pairings.

Notice how Tien linked "P" and 尸 just like on your son's sheet (!)

(Tien call it his “Chinese Transalphabet”)

Tien wasn’t alone, either. There are a # of other Chinese input systems from the late 80s/90s based on the same idea, pairing "o" and 口, D and 刀, etc. These were invented in the PRC by Chinese inventors, mind you, *not* individuals interested in lampooning Chinese script!

BTW, “isomorphism” shows up in every script. Like the practice of using the lowercase ‘x’ to represent the Hebrew aleph, of so-called “Homograph” attacks that using the Russian Cyrillic “H” (n) to “spoof” the Latin “H” (h), and then things like L33T Speak.

So, it’s true: images like the one from your child’s school are, 99x out a 100, results of ignorance/exoticization/persistent forms of structural racism. But there's also a fascinating “counter-history” tied to Chinese technological experimentation & cross-cultural exploration.

To conclude w/ a shameless plug, please check out my first book on all this stuff! amazon.com/Chinese-Typewr…

Don't take my work for it, though!

Ai Weiwei himself called it "a fascinating and extensive study into the characteristics of the Chinese language."