Recent Readings

KINGDOM OF CHARACTERS, BY JING TSU

Jing Tsu book paints a fascinating story about the evolution of 普通话, the Mandarin language. It is especially interesting to think about the relatively short lifespan of the language and how it has changed so rapidly in such a short amount of time. The book is both told as a story following the main actors who helped to 'industrialize' the Chinese language into what it is today, as well as a historical account of events and stories, that you may be familiar with already, and how they impacted the linguistics development of happening in China.