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A History of the Romanisation Interdialectique Transcription System for Chinese (1931â1952)
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A study of how the science of diachronic linguistics merged with the will to reform language in the Catholic missionary milieu of Republican China. In focus is a romanization of the Chinese language that was proposed in 1931 by two missionaries in Manchuria. The inventors of the new system claimed that their so-called called Romanisation Interdialectique (R.I.) could spell all dialects of Chinese using a single orthography. This feat was, allegedly, made possible by the reliance on the latest achievements of historical linguistics. R.I. quickly gained traction in missionary circles, but its history came to an end when the Communist authorities expelled foreign missionaries after 1949.
Mårten Söderblom Saarela, PhD (2015), is a historian of early modern and modern China working as a special collections librarian at the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College. His research so far has focused on language in history, especially the Manchu language in the Qing empire. His books include The Early Modern Travels of Manchu: A Script and Its Study in East Asia and Europe (2020), The Manchu Language at Court and in the Bureaucracy under the Qianlong Emperor (2024), and, with He Bian, The Manchu Mirrors and the Knowledge of Plants and Animals in High Qing China (2025).
Historians of modern China, the history of science (especially linguistics), and Sino-European contacts, as well as linguists.