DeFrancis, John Francis 1911–

PERSONAL: Born August 31, 1911, in Bridgeport, CT; son of Frank and Rose DeFrancis; married Katharine Gerry Wilson, August 20, 1938; children: Charles Alexander. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1933; Columbia University, M.A., 1941, Ph.D., 1948.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Department of East Asian Languages, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1890 East-West Rd., Honolulu, HI 96822.

CAREER: Yale University, New Haven, CT, instructor in Chinese, 1943–45; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, assistant professor of Chinese, 1947–54; Quinnipiac College, Hamden, CT, associate professor of business mathematics, 1956–61; Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, assistant professor of Chinese, 1962–66; University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, professor of Chinese, 1966–76, professor emeritus, 1976–.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, American Oriental Society, Chinese Language Teachers Association, Linguistic Society of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from American Philosophical Society, 1951–52, Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies, 1959–63, and U.S. Office of Education, 1962–67.

WRITINGS:

Beginning Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1946, 2nd edition (with Yung Teng Chia-yee), 1976.

Nationalism and Language Reform in China, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1950.

(With Elizabeth Jen Young) Talks on Chinese History, two volumes, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1952.

(With E-tu Zen Sun) Bibliography on Chinese Social History: A Selected and Critical List of Chinese Periodical Sources, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1956.

(Editor and translator, with E-tu Zen Sun) Chinese Social History: Translations of Selected Studies, American Council of Learned Societies (Washington, DC), 1956.

Chinese-English Glossary of the Mathematical Sciences, American Mathematical Society (Providence, RI), 1964.

(With Yung Teng Chia-yee) Intermediate Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1964.

Character Text for Beginning Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1964, 2nd edition (with Yung Teng Chia-Yee), 1976.

Character Text for Intermediate Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1965.

(With Yung Teng Chia-yee and Yung Chih-sheng) Beginning Chinese Reader, two volumes, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1966, 2nd edition, 1977.

(With Yung Teng Chia-yee and Yung Chih-sheng) Advanced Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1966.

Character Text for Advanced Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1966.

(With Yung Teng Chia-yee and Yung Chih-sheng) Intermediate Chinese Reader, two volumes, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1967.

(With Yung Teng Chia-yee and Yung Chih-sheng) Advanced Chinese Reader, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1968.

Index Volume: Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Texts in Spoken and Written Chinese, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1970.

(With V.R. Lincoln) Things Japanese in Hawaii, University Press of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 1973.

Annotated Quotations from Chairman Mao, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1975.

(Editor) Supplementary Readers for Intermediate Chinese Reader, Volume 1: The White Haired Girl by Chi-Yu Ho, Volume 2: The Red Detachment of Women by Chi-Yu Ho, Volume 3: From the Dream of the Red Chamber by Louise H. Li, Volume 4: Sun Yat-sen by Yung Teng Chia-yee, Volume 5: Wu Sung Kills a Tiger by Yung Teng Chia-yee, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1976.

(Translator) Yung Teng Chia-Yee, The Bookworm/Mei liang hsin ti chang fu (supplementary reader; in Chinese and Pinyin), University Press of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 1975.

(Translator) Yung Teng Chia-Yee, The Heartless Husband/Chin yu-nu pang po ch'ing lang (supplementary reader; in Chinese and Pinyin), University Press of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 1975.

(Translator) Yung Teng Chia-Yee, The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maid/Niu lang chih nu (supplementary reader; in Chinese and Pinyin), University Press of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 1975.

(Translator) Yung Teng Chia-Yee, The Poet Li Po (supplementary reader; in Chinese and Pinyin), University Press of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 1975.

Colonialism and Language Policy in Vietnam, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1977.

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1984.

Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1989.

In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1993.

(Editor) ABC Chinese-English Dictionary: Alphabetically Based Computerized, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1996.

(Editor) ABC Chinese-English Computerized Dictionary: Alphabetically Based Computerized, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Linguistics, Word: Journal of the International Linguistic Association, and Visible Language. Associate editor, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1950–55; editor, Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, beginning 1968.

SIDELIGHTS: John Francis DeFrancis told CA: "Learning that China's greatest writer, Lu Xun, advocated replacing the Chinese character writing with an alphabetic script converted me to his point of view and led to much of my work on the Chinese language and writing system.

"I have three primary motivations for writing: to help Western students learn Chinese, to promote alphabetic writing of Chinese, and to correct the mistaken view that Chinese writing is ideographic."