Renowned Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang celebrated his 109th birthday on Monday and is still in good health.

Although Zhou was born in 1906, he is regarded as 109 due to the traditional Chinese system of calculating ages.

He chaired the invention of pinyin in the 1950s, a system to make it easier to transcribe Chinese characters using the alphabet.

He was previously an economist and worked on Wall Street before becoming a linguist in his late 40s during the 1950s.

Global Times