John DeFrancis was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in a family of modest Italian immigrant origins.
10 Facts About John DeFrancis
1.
2.
John DeFrancis's father, a laborer, died when DeFrancis was a young child.
3.
John DeFrancis returned to the United States in 1936 and did not visit China again until 1982.
4.
John DeFrancis received an MA from Columbia in 1941, then a PhD in 1948 with a dissertation entitled "Nationalism and Language Reform in China", which was published by Princeton University Press in 1950.
5.
John DeFrancis began his academic career teaching Chinese at Johns Hopkins University during the period of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, but was blacklisted for defending his colleague Owen Lattimore from unsubstantiated allegations of being a "Russian spy", and eventually laid off in 1954.
6.
John DeFrancis served as Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Oriental Society from 1950 to 1955 and the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association from 1966 to 1978.
7.
John DeFrancis retired from teaching in 1976, but remained an important figure in Chinese language pedagogy, Asian sociolinguistics, and language policy, as well as a prolific author.
8.
John DeFrancis spent his final years diligently working as Editor in Chief of the "ABC series" of Chinese dictionaries, which feature innovative collation by the pinyin romanization system.
9.
Around the 2009 New Year, celebrating Christmas at an Honolulu Chinese restaurant, John DeFrancis choked on a piece of Beijing duck.
10.
John DeFrancis was the author and editor of numerous publications.