Two Steps Toward Digraphia in China

Xieyan Hincha

Pinyin (Hanyu Pinyin Fang'an) is a reasonable and workable phonographic script for encoding modern standard Chinese (Putonghua). It is neither an "auxiliary instrument for transcribing Chinese characters" nor a "phonetic system for Chinese", as ISO and the PRC government put it.
The allegedly overwhelming homophony of monosyllabic morphemes and the resulting ambiguity (rendering the application of a Latin-based writing system impossible) do not exist. Whatever a blind Chinese is able to understand, can be encoded and reproduced, using a phonographic system of writing.
Homophonous morphemes are distinguished by the fact that they.belong to different word-classes or other functional categories, or they are bound morphemes. Within a given word-class, they are not true homophones, but near-homophones, differentiated by tone change, rhotacization, the neutral tone, and other supra-segmental features. Homophony in modern Chinese is as peripheral as in other languages.
The means to differentiate near-homophonous morphemes are invisible with traditional Chinese characters, but they are (or could be) clearly indicated in Pinyin. Therefore, Pinyin is superior to Chinese characters in writing modern Chinese.