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Victor H. Mair (born 1943) is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States. Professor Mair has edited the standard Columbia History of Chinese Literature and the Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature.

Dr. Mair received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania since 1979. He is also founder and editor of Sino-Platonic Papers, an academic journal examining Chinese, East Asian and Central Asian linguistics and literature.

Dr. Mair specializes in early vernacular Chinese, and is responsible for translations of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi. He has also collaborated on interdisciplinary research on the archeology of Eastern Central Asia. The American Philosophical Society awarded him membership in 2007.

Pinyin advocacy

Professor Mair is known for his advocacy of wider use of an alphabetic script (i.e., in practice, pinyin) for the Chinese language, in education and otherwise.

In the first edition of Sino-Platonic papers (1986), he suggested that one should publish a Chinese dictionary arranged exactly the way English, French, or Dungan dictionaries usually are: in a "single-sort alphabetical arrangement", i.e. purely based on the alphabetic spelling of a word, regardless of its morphological structure. For example,

家 [jia 1] - home/family
间 [jian 1] - between
间谍 [jiandie 42] - spy 
江 [jiang 1] - river
间隔 [jiange 42] - compartment/gap/interval
建构 [jiangou 44] - construct
间接税 [jianjieshui 414] - indirect tax
家属 [jiashu 13] - family member
加甜 [jiatian 12] - sweeten
家庭 [jiating 12] - family/household
极大 [jida 24] - enormous
鸡蛋 [jidan 14] - egg
记得 [jide 45] - to remember
机动 [jidong 14] - flexible
季度 [jidu 44] - quarter of a year
基辅 [Jifu 13] - Kiev
脊骨 [jigu 23] - backbone

This differs from the arrangement of a typical pinyin-based dictionary, where morphemes (corresponding to single Chinese characters) are arranged alphabetically, but multisyllable words beginning with a given morpheme (Chinese character) are grouped under that character. Single-sort alphabetic ordering makes it easy to find a word if the pronunciation is known, while the traditional ("sorted morpheme") ordering is more suitable if the appearance of the character is known but not the pronunciation of e.g. the second character of a two-syllable word.

In 1996, a general-use Chinese-English single-sort dictionary on the model advocated by Mair was finally published in the USA, by a team lead by John Defrancis, who acknowledged Mair's role as an early promoter of the arrangement.

References

Boucher, Daniel, Neil Schmid, and Tansen Sen. 2006. "The Scholarly Contributions of Professor Victor H. Mair", Asia Major 3.6:1-12.
DeFrancis, John, ed. The ABC [Alphabetically Based Computerized] Chinese-English Dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 1996. ISBN 0-8248-2766-X
Mair, Victor H. 1986. "The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects". Sino-Platonic Papers 1:1-31.

Works written or edited by Victor H. Mair

Sino-Platonic Papers
danger + opportunity ≠ crisis -- an essay by Mair debunking a common saying about Chinese characters
The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair (2000). Thames & Hudson. London. ISBN 0-500-05101-1

External links

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 '''Victor H. Mair''' (born 1943) is [[Professor]] of [[Chinese Language]] and [[Chinese literature|Literature]] in the Department of [[East Asia]]n Languages and Civilizations at the [[University of Pennsylvania]], [[Philadelphia]], [[United States]]. Professor Mair has edited the standard ''Columbia History of Chinese Literature'' and the ''Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature''.
-Dr. Mair received his [[Ph.D.]] from [[Harvard University]] in [[1976]]. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania since [[1979]]. Dr. Mair is also founder and editor of ''[[Sino-Platonic Papers]]'', an [[academic journal]] examining Chinese, East Asian and Central Asian linguistics and  literature.
+Dr. Mair received his [[Ph.D.]] from [[Harvard University]] in [[1976]]. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania since [[1979]]. He is also founder and editor of ''[[Sino-Platonic Papers]]'', an [[academic journal]] examining Chinese, East Asian and Central Asian linguistics and  literature.
 Dr. Mair specializes in early [[vernacular Chinese]], and is responsible for translations of the ''[[Dao De Jing]]'' and the ''[[Zhuangzi]]''. He has also collaborated on interdisciplinary research on the [[archeology]] of Eastern [[Central Asia]]. The [[American Philosophical Society]] awarded him membership in 2007.
-Three of Mair's former students characterize his wide-ranging scholarship.
-<blockquote>Victor has always cast his nets widely, and he could routinely amaze us with observations far afield from the Chinese text we were reading in class. Today people often attempt to simulate this cosmopolitanism under the rubric of interdisciplinary study, but for Victor, it was quite untrendy: he simply had an insatiable appetite for knowledge and pushing boundaries. Indeed, border-crossing has been our mentor's dominant mode of scholarship, a mode that has constantly interrogated where those very borders are both geographically and categorically. Though never sporting fashionable jargon, Victor has always taken on phenomena and issues that engage aspects of multiculturalism, hybridity, alterity, and the subaltern, while remarkably grounding his work in painstaking philological analysis. Victor demonstrates the success of philology, often dismissed as a nineteenth-century holdover, for investigating twenty-first-century concerns. (Boucher, Schmid, and Sen 2006:1) </blockquote>
 ==Pinyin advocacy==
-Professor Mair is well known for his advocating of wider use of an alphabetic script (i.e., in practice, [[pinyin]]) for the Chinese language, in education and otherwise.
+Professor Mair is known for his advocacy of wider use of an alphabetic script (i.e., in practice, [[pinyin]]) for the Chinese language, in education and otherwise.
-In the very first edition of ''Sino-Platonic papers'' (1986), he suggested that one should publish a [[Chinese dictionary]] arranged exactly the way English, French, or [[Dungan language|Dungan]] dictionaries usually are: in a "single-sort alphabetical arrangement", i.e. purely based on the alphabetic spelling of a word, regardless of its [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] structure. For example,
+In the first edition of ''Sino-Platonic papers'' (1986), he suggested that one should publish a [[Chinese dictionary]] arranged exactly the way English, French, or [[Dungan language|Dungan]] dictionaries usually are: in a "single-sort alphabetical arrangement", i.e. purely based on the alphabetic spelling of a word, regardless of its [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] structure. For example,
  家 [jia 1] - home/family
  间 [jian 1] - between
@@ Line 29: / Line 26: @@
  基辅 [Jifu 13] - Kiev
  脊骨 [jigu 23] - backbone
-This differs from the arrangement of a typical pinyin-based dictionary, where ''[[morphemes]]'' (corresponding to single [[Hanzi|Chinese characters]]) are arranged alphabetically, but multisyllable words beginning with a given morpheme (Chinese character) are grouped under that character. Single-sort alphabetic ordering makes it easy to find a word if you know how it is pronounced, while the traditional ("sorted morpheme") ordering is more suitable if you know the appearance of the character but don't know the pronunciation of e.g. the second character of a two-syllable word.
+This differs from the arrangement of a typical pinyin-based dictionary, where ''[[morphemes]]'' (corresponding to single [[Hanzi|Chinese characters]]) are arranged alphabetically, but multisyllable words beginning with a given morpheme (Chinese character) are grouped under that character. Single-sort alphabetic ordering makes it easy to find a word if the pronunciation is known, while the traditional ("sorted morpheme") ordering is more suitable if the appearance of the character is known but not the pronunciation of e.g. the second character of a two-syllable word.
 In 1996, a general-use Chinese-English single-sort dictionary on the model advocated by Mair was finally published in the USA, by a team lead by [[John Defrancis]], who acknowledged Mair's role as an early promoter of the arrangement.