Hanyu Pinyin - Part 2 - Spelling

To be useful, This post has to be viewed on your PC. As I think the videos won't play on gadget. But you can always try it out and see if it is working on your gadget. My iPhone definitely cannot play the videos. :(

Have you get yourselves familiar with the introduced phonics last week?

Do you know how to pronounce "b"? Yep, it is "po", how about "j"? Do I hear "ci"? you are right again.

Just like how we learn our own mother language, such as Bahasa Indonesia and English, we were introduced to the individual alphabets first, then the combination of those alphabets to make up sound and finally word! Same thing here in learning the Chinese phonics, hanyu pinyin.

In Bahasa Indonesia, when spell "buku", we separate it into 2 syllables:
1. we say: "be" + "u" = "Bu" NOT "beu"
2. Then, continue with "ka" + "u" = "Ku" NOT "kau".

Again, it is similar in Mandarin.

When we see "ba", we pronounce it as "po" + "a" = "pa", we do NOT end up saying "poa".
Then, "ji" is spelled as "ci" + "i", and pronounced as "ci", and NOT "cii"
"ku" is spelled as "khe" + "u", and pronounced as "khu", and NOT "kheu"
and so on and so forth.

That's the basic. Then, there are a few rules that you have to know:

1. vowel "i", "u" and "ü" do not stand by themselves.
For "i" and "ü", you have to add "y" in front, written as "yi" and "yu" (without the dots on top) and pronounced as "yi" and  "yü"
As for "u", is written and pronounced as "wu".

Other vowels can stand by themselves. Such as: a (啊，阿），o （哦，噢），e（鹅，饿）

2.  j, q, x (pronounced as ci, chi, si) have never been friend with phonic "u". So, whenever you see "ju", "qu", "xu" they should be pronounced as "jü", "qü" "xü". There is a poem for this rule to help kids remember. It goes like this:

ü has a hat.
When j, q, and x meets ü, they all want its hat
so when ü see j q x, ü quickly remove the hat.

Thus you don't see ü with its hat when it meets with j, q, and x. Again, they are written as "ju", "qu", "xu"

3. n and l (pronounced as ne and le) make friend with both "u" and "ü". So they have to be written as the sound they produce. "nu" is different from "nü" and "lu" is different from "lü".

4. Do you still remember how to pronounce the following phonics?
zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s

if you can't recall, please refer back to the previous post

There are many words with that kind of sound above, such as 只， 吃， 是， 日， 字， 词， 四， listen to the video below for the pronunciation of each character and the phonics that represent them.

Don't bother about the intonation for now, just focus on the sound it forms.

You might first think that each of the character is represent by zh or ch or sh alone, because they sound like it. But they don't. Consonant can't stand by themselves. they have to be followed by at least one vowel. In this case, the default vowel that follow them is "i".

You might question, why don't they be followed by "e" because it sounds closer. Listen to the following to compare the sound of zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s when they are followed by "i" and "e"

If you noticed there are ups and downs in the intonation. This what makes it different in Mandarin. Again, you are not supposed to focus on that for now. Just focus on the difference in the ending sounds. Intonation is coming in the next post!

If you can pronounce the phonics zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s correctly, then you will have no problem pronouncing zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si. (They are exactly the same sounds) Now to differentiate them with zhe, che, she, re, ze, ce, se, you just have to open up your mouth a little bit more but not as much as when you pronounce zha, cha, etc.

Listen to the following:

Try to read zhi, zhe, zha, chi, che, cha (as in the video above) and feel the difference in the shape of your mouth.

For now, those are the things that you have to remember. Actually there are lists of phonics combination that you can find, however, that's too much to remember. Knowing what matters are god enough for me. Hopefully it is good enough for you. However if you would like to find out more, then feel free to explore. Here is the link to a very informative and effective site to learn hanyu pinyin. However, it might overload you with information. So, don't finish it in one reading, one step at a time.

Try to read the following, without paying attention to the intonation, for now:

ma, pa, sha, le, ke,

po, fa, ta, zi, ze, lü,

zhu, zu, xu, da, wu,

wa, yu, sa, gu, qi, chi

Cross check your answer here:

Other than this, you can also do your own practice, by looking up words with simple phonics in Pleco to enrich your vocabularies.

Intonation next! :)

Happy Spelling,

Linda Tan

Introduction to Hanyu Pinyin - Part 1

Hanyu Pinyin is the romanization system of Chinese characters, or known as the Chinese Phonics. As I have mentioned before, the pronunciation is closer to our Bahasa Indonesia pronunciation than English. We read "mang", "shang", "lang", "ai", "mei", "fa" just like how we read it in Bahasa Indonesia, the only thing that will differentiate them with Bahasa Indonesia is the intonation. As for your reference, why I said it is different from English, because letter "a" in Chinese is read as "a" as in word "aku" or "father". We do not read the letter "a" as "ei" as how we spell in English alphabets and how it sounds in the word "say".

Another example, "lang" in Chinese doesn't sound like the first syllable of "language", instead, we read it as in the Bahasa Indonesia word "langsung"

There are 6 single vowels in Chinese. They are a, o, e, i, u, ü. Please try to memorize them in this order, because it will help in the future. Again, the order is:

a, o, e, i, u, ü.

Here is how they are pronounced

If you notice the only difference with English and Bahasa Indonesia is that in Chinese there is an additional vowel that is written as u with 2 dots on top. on your phone, you can use the letter "v" to represent this letter ü.

The next part is sheng mu 声母 or we can call them as the consonant in Mandarin.

Here is the list of sheng mu

b    p     m   f

d    t      n    l

g    k     h   

j     q     x

zh  ch   sh  r

z     c    s

y    w

I will want you to familiarize yourselves with the above pinyin for now. Try your very best to memorize it in the order given. Here is the compilation of the mentioned Chinese phonics / pinyin we learn above:

Once you are okay with it, read the following:

a o e i u ü b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c s y w

The sound of zh and z are almost the same. The difference is the shape of the mouth and position of your tongue.

For zh ch sh r, you have to fold your tongue and shape your mouth as when you pronounce the first syllable of "SH-ape"

For z c s, you have to keep your tongue flat down and shape your mouth as when you pronounce "cheese"

Once you know how each of the alphabet is pronounced in Chinese, then try to pronounce the following. (they are random!)

j, g , m , i ,  c ,  f

zh , b , s , y , k ,  p 

t, l, x, d, q , o

z, sh, r, u, w

ch, a, e  , n , h

See if you get them right. Here is the answer:

Cross check your answer...

Only when you can identify each of the alphabet with the correct sound when they appear randomly, then you can start "spelling" word.

There are actually other pinyins that we have to get ourselves familiar with (such as the double vowels, ei, ai, ou... etc), however, the above are the basic. Let's take it step by step. With this alone, you can already read quite a bunch of words. Next post we will try to apply this to words with simple pinyin such as: ma, ta, le, ke, he, cha, she, pa, ne, me, sha, etc.

There are a few rules that you have to know (such as "ri" is read as "re" in "resah", etc), but not now...

For now, familiarize yourselves with the above.

Happy Spelling,

Linda Tan

P.S. There is high chances that the video above is not supported in ios. It definitely doesn't work on my iPhone (not sure about android), however, it works fine on my laptop. So if you can't play the video (that shows you how to pronounce the phonics), then please check this video on Youtube. Click here

If you want to master the above first and take it step by step, then you can stop the video when it reaches the minute of 1:50. However, if you would like to explore more yourselves, then feel free to watch the whole video.

Bihua - Part 3 - Search Words based on Number of Strokes

This is the last feature for bihua website that you should know, search words based on number of strokes, 笔画数查字 bi hua shu cha zi.

Click on the circled part and you will see the following page

It will show you the categorization of words based on the numbers of strokes. As you can see, there are 10 words that has 1 stroke, 52 words that have 2 strokes, 99 words that have 3 strokes and so on. 

Let's look at the words with 6 strokes.

Here is the list of all Chinese characters that consist of 6 strokes.

From here, you should know what to do right? Are you looking for meaning? or are you looking for strokes order? Or are you looking for words formation?

You should know where to click to get the information that you need. if you don't please refresh your memory by referring to the first post on Bihua website.

That's pretty much about Bihua site. If you notice, the page is actually linked one to another.

The main thing to know is that you can search words based on pinyin （拼音查字 pinyin chazi）, radicals 部首查字 (bu shou cha zi) or the numbers of strokes （笔画数查字 bi hua shu cha zi）.

The second thing is you can look at 3 main aspects of each character that you found on bihua.com, they are:

1. Dictionary (CH - EN / CH - CH) 字典 zi dian

2. Chinese Strokes                           笔画 bi hua

3. Word formations                          组词 zu ci

Please do not rush things! Learning is a lifetime journey. Reread all the posts on how to use Pleco and Bihua website effectively and put it into practice.

Search for words that you might use often in your daily conversation, such as:

1. Hello

2. Good morning/afternoon/night

3. Good bye

4. Eat

5. Come

6. Pronouns (I, you, we, etc)

Hope you find the posts useful and practical. Would love to hear any constructive inputs :)

The real thing start next week.

Happy Exploring,

Linda Tan

Bihua - Part 2 - Components of Character (Search Words based on Radical)

Open up bihua website. Click here!

It will take you its homepage that looks roughly like the following. Today, we are going to look at 部首查字 bu shou cha zi, word search based on Radical. I have given a short simple explanation on radical. Please refer to the explained a little about Radical in the May 31st Post. Please revisit it to rephrase your memory.

Click on the circled and it will show you the following. There are about 268 radicals. It is categorized based on the number of stroke.

The question is how to use this?

1. Use this feature to enrich your vocabularies

You can click on the one that you interested the most (maybe something that you encounter often), such as the following:

Under the 2 strokes radical, please find the first one above, and click on it. It will take you the following page:

The circled part above is the name for it. Unfortunately, they don't give you the pin yin. At this point, you can use Pleco just to find out on how to pronounce it.

is known as 单人旁 dan ren pang. 单 dan means 'single' 人 ren 'human' 旁 pang comes from pang bian that means side (this is often found on the left side of the character). The shape of this radical is actually a modified 人 ren. Thus, if you notice, the first character that consists of 2 strokes (right underneath the circled part) is called "ren". We always write it in this form when we use it as a word by itself.

On this page, you can see all the words that carry this radical. It is usually used on the left hand side of the character.

From here, you learn each words by click on the blue hyperlinks that will give you either the meaning (CH - EN or CH - CH), the order of strokes or the words formation. If you need to refresh what I am talking about, please see the previous post.

2. Use this feature to search for words

If you ever need to use PRINTED Chinese Dictionary, the thing am about to mention below will come handy for you too

If you encounter new word, let say "花", and you want to know more about this word, the meaning, the strokes or the possible word formations, here is how to utilize the site to satisfy your need.

a. Find the radical.

I have mentioned that Chinese character has a few components, as what you can see on Pleco when you search for a word. Thus a Chinese character can consist of only the radical (the most basic word, such as; 一，人） or it can be formed by a radical + other parts which are non-radical.

So, if you look at 花 you will probably break it down to:

 + +

In which it is all possible for the 3 components above to act as "radical". So how? Try one by one! :)

If you decide that the radical for 花 is , then click on it and see if you can find it.

So you have to count the number of strokes for 花， which is 7 strokes. Scroll down to strokes 7 see if the character that you are looking for is there. In this case, it is NOT! So you know that you have got it wrong! The radical is not dan ren pang.

You will definitely find out that the correct radical is   草字头cao zi tou。

Don't worry if you are concern about the radical that is split in the middle (looks like 2 crosses instead of 1 joint fence). They are the same. They both come from the original character of cao (meaning: grass) that looks like this: "艸". 

So that is the 2 usage of "word search based on radical" 部首查字。

Please take your time to digest ALL the posts (about both Pleco and Bihua.com) and do the following exercise:

1. Using Pleco, please find the components for the 4 characters below:

鱼，猫，妈，上 (what is the radical and what other parts that you can find in those characters， how many strokes each and what is the total strokes for the character).

Then, Write down the meaning for each one of them and pronounce them.

For example: "神 "

Answer: I will use the simplified handwriting mode on my phone to find this word on Pleco (because  I do not know the pinyin). Then, once I found it, I know that this (神) is pronounced as shen that means "god/mind/..."

The components that form the characters are as followed.

The radical is shi or widely known as 示字旁 shi zi pang.  The other part of that form the character is shen (meaning: to state to a superior).

The radical has 4 strokes, while the other parts have 5 strokes. Total strokes for the character is 9 strokes.

2. Using Bihua.com, please find the components for the 4 characters below:

让 (rang)，收 (shou)，六 (liu)，胖 (pang)

(what is the radical and what other parts that you can find in those characters and how many strokes each and what is the total strokes for the character).

Then, Write down the meaning or each one of them and pronounce them.

Do the same like the sample above. In this case, please use Bihua.com

If I am looking for the same word on bihua 神. Here is what you can do.

1. Using the handwriting mode just like the above. I will get the following. Try your own!

The homepage

From the website URL we know that this site is intended for checking of bi shun (Chinese strokes). So by default your input, will return you with the page above. You can click on the blue bold character and it will take you the following page.

From here you can open up the 字典 （zi dian）= dictionary to show you the meaning of the word. See the screen result below.

2. Identify the radical yourself by guessing, just like what we do to the character 花 above. Try it yourself.

As a reminder, do not overwhelm yourself with all the information that you are trying to absorb now. The post may look long, but put into practice it is actually very brief. So, step by step!

What I am showing to you is the usage of the tools that might come useful for you now or in the future. So if you find that certain things are not relevant to the level you are in yet,  do not use it. But when you reach certain point and need it, you know where to look.

One more post on bihua.com's feature, then I might probably introduce you to hanyu pinyin. :)

加油 Jia you!      => Look up the meaning  and make yourself one phrase richer than you were!

Linda Tan

Bihua.com - Part 1 - The Introduction (Search Word based on Pin Yin)

Please bookmark this website

Bihua 笔画 means strokes. Each Chinese character is formed from one or more than one strokes. The stroke here refers to each movement of your pencil to form a Chinese character.

For example:

三 (san) consists of 3 strokes, to be exact 3 same stroke of horizontal line “一” that we know as 横 (heng) which are all different in length. 

十 (shi) consists of 2 strokes, 2 different strokes. The first is “一” that we know as 横 (heng) and the second is the vertical line“丨”, known as 竖 (shu) .

There is an order to follow when we write Chinese character and this is what we called 笔顺 (bishun). Thus, for 十 (shi), we CANNOT start with “丨”. We have to start with the horizontal stroke “一”, then followed by “丨”

This is the correct bishun (order of strokes) for 十 (shi) which means 10 (Ten)

There will be a post dedicated to bihua/bishun later on. As of now, Let's focus on the bihua.com The webpages look messy because there are many external links and ads on it. This is one of the way that they do to make sure that they can maintain good website for people like you and me. So, don't complain! Do not lose yourself in the sea of Chinese Characters that might seem alien to you. I will show you what to focus on and what to ignore.

This site will help you with your writing and structure of characters in Chinese. It also works as dictionary (Chinese to Chinese and Chinese to English).

First when you open the site, their homepage looks roughly like this:

Please focus on the circled part in the middle. That is where we are going to input our Chinese character. Underneath it, there are 3 blue hyperlinks in the square brackets:

1. 拼音查字    pin yin cha zi              Looking for characters based on pinyin

2. 部首查字    bu shou cha zi            Looking for characters based on the radical

3. 笔画数查字    bi hua shu cha zi     Looking for characters based on the numbers of strokes

Let's look at the first one: 拼音查字    pin yin cha zi     

When you click on it, it will take you to the following page

Just for example, you can click on "bai". This will show you ALL Chinese characters that are pronounced as "bai" in any tone.

I am gonna explore more on the circled character of 白 bai

As you can see there are 3 blue links beside each of the Chinese characters that say:

字典     zi dian     dictionary

笔画     bi hua      strokes

组词      zu ci       word formation

Let's click on the first one: 字典     zi dian     dictionary

This is what you are going to see.. It consists of a few parts. I will break it down for you further, so easy to understand.

The first to look at is the header part (the one on top!)

As you might have guessed, the black squared part is the pinyin. You can click on the speaker to listen to the recorded audio on how to pronounce it correctly.

The 3 red squares are (from the left)

1. Left: 简体部首 jian ti bu shou  

This is to show you the radical. Please read about the simple explanation about  radical on the previous post. Please click here

2. Middle: 部外笔画 bu wai bi hua  

This is to show you, after excluding the strokes for the radical, how many strokes are there. However, because 白 is radical itself and it doesn't contain any other parts, so it shows you 0 (zero)

3. Right: 总笔画 zong bu shou

This is to show you total strokes for the character 白

Moving on is the second part in the middle, this is the Chinese to Chinese translation for 白. Do you see the red part underneath, that is called 注音符号 (zhu yin fu hao) ths is the national phonetic alphabet (used before the current Chinese phonetic alphabets that we know as pinyin). From my knowledge, Taiwan is still using this.

For your information, here is how the old version phonetics represent the current hanyu pinyin

Last part of the dictionary page for 白 (bai) that might come useful for you is this:

The red squared parts above show us the translation for 白 in English.

The blue squared part is the words that are related to 白, it includes the antonym and synonyms.

Other than dictionary, this site also will show you the bihua or strokes for the character. If you still have this page open, click on the second one that say: 笔画

This link will take you the following page:

The part on top, the 6 boxes, are showing you the order of the strokes when you write 白. Underneath it, you should know what the first 2 rows refer to, the character and the pinyin. 3rd row is the radical, as shown in the dictionary page too. The 4th row shows you the total number of strokes, which is 5 (five). The 5th row shows you the order of the strokes. The 6th row is to show you the name of each strokes in row 5, respectively. There is even an animation on how to write the characters as you can see on the right side, the black character.

Last part you can either go back to the initial page here, or you can continue from the page above.

组词 (zu ci) means word formation. It will show you all the possible words formation that come from one character of "白"

You can click on either one of them and see the long explanation of the phrase. It is super detailed explanation. This will not come useful for beginner as of now. I try to click one, on the second row, 白水。It shows me this page:

The first paragraph shows you the explanation in simplified Chinese and the second paragraph in Traditional Chinese.

So, basically those are the things that yo have to pay attention to. The Chinese to Chinese translation is very useful for people who are already know Chinese and would like to explore more in depth. It works just like English to English dictionary.

End of this week, I will continue to part 2, where you can use bihua website to look for characters based on their radical

As of now, you explore more on the first item, search based on pinyin.

Happy Exploring,

Linda Tan

P.S. To get update and not to miss on any posts, please subscribe by email. All information (especially your email) will be treated confidentially.

Weekend Treat! Medaneses' Mandarin

source: standardmandarin.com

Medan is a city in Indonesia. To be exact, it is in Sumatera Island in the west side of Indonesia. It is the capital city of North Sumatera. Medan is one of the top 5 biggest cities in Indonesia.

Just like most of the cities in Indonesia, the residents that make up a city are very diverse. In Medan, we have Batak Karo (they are known for the word "Horas!" to express their greeting and will be good if it is accompanied with a raised fist to show your high spirit) , Javanese, and Chinese. Overall, Medanese is not very delicate when we speak Bahasa Indonesia. For example, we perceive the word "Kau" which means "you" as something common and not impolite. While people from other cities will think it is the uneducated form kind of "you" in Bahasa Indonesia, so they will choose to use words like "kamu", "anda" for more polite version of "YOU" in bahasa Indonesia or People in Jakarta choose to use "elo/loe/lu". It is a slang that commonly use among youngsters now, that has spread to Sumatera too. The word has to be pronounced with certain accent so that you sounds cooler and make you feel superior. (Ops! Am I being sarcastic?)

Okay move on...

It is something about Chinese Medanese.

I would always advise beginner to learn and practice the language properly from the very start. WE do not want to get into the habit of certain pronunciation or use of grammar, furthermore we have to understand that correct use of tone is crucial so that people can understand you. To avoid the trouble from having to unlearn the learned, let's just do it right from beginning. No point getting into certain higher level, but no one can understand you when you speak.

Most Medanese' Chinese know a little Mandarin because most of us understand and speak one of Chinese dialects known as Hokkien (福建话) , despite our family background. There is a little big of similarity in the structure of the language (not exactly the same) as well as the vocabularies. Also, in hokkien, we know that there are difference in tone. For example, when we say "tu", if we use the first tone in Chinese, we know it means "pig", 2nd tone means "cupboard", 3rd tone is normally used as preposition in phrases or sentences, and the 4th tone means "meet". So, we can definitely relate more and can pronounce the  words in Chinese more accurately. That's the advantage that Chinese in Medan has.

However, there is always the downside of that. In the 60s, there are still Chinese schools around Indonesia. My  parents attended that kind of primary school. I believe they taught the traditional Chinese. Along the way, my parents pick up the simplified Chinese which are widely used now. I do not how or why, but I notice one particular big difference in the Chinese that they know and the Chinese that we learn now is that they do not recognize the phonic "r" used in "rang", "ren", instead they pronounced it as "rang" or "jen".

Furthermore, they see no difference in "zh" and "z", "sh" and "s" and so on. That is one of the problem with the Mandarin that most Medanese, especially those who re it heir 50s or 60s of age.

So for people who speak that kind of Mandarin at home, there will be a challenge to break the habit and speak the correct version.

Another aspect that isn't always done properly in Medan is the use of vocabularies. There are words that we try to translate literally from Bahasa Indonesia, however it doesn't always work that way. One of the common example is: "up to you" or "do as you please". In formal Bahasa Indonesia, it means terserah kamu", however we often use "suka kamu" in our daily conversation. "Suka" means like. It is like saying " I don't have any preference, you can choose/do what you like." So many of us will end up translating "up to you" as "喜欢你" xi huan ni. This phrase has totally different meaning in Chinese. It means that you like the person whom you are talking to. Youngsters may use that phrase to confess their feeling to someone they like. You see how inappropriate that can be if used in certain situation.

Would you like to find the correct translation for "up to you" OR "do as you please" in Pleco?

Answer at the bottom, match with what you have found!

In summary, in learning a language, it is not always who start early. If you start young and learn it in the correct way, you definitely have so much advantage compared to others who don't. However, if you start young but do not do it in the right way, then you should know how difficult it is to get it right later on. It is not impossible, just need lot of effort and a broad open mind! Why the trouble right?

Happy Weekend,

Linda Tan

Answer:

The Mandarin for "up to you" or "do as you please" are 随你 sui ni / 随便 sui bian / 随你的便 sui ni de bian

Pleco - Translating Chinese to English - The Answers

Here is the answer to how you can find the answers for the following:

1. If you are in Taiwan, and you see a poster with Jacky Cheung's face on it and with his name "張學友" underneath it. How do you find out about the pronunciation of those words?

Answers

First, once you arrive in Taiwan (or HongKong or Macau) remember they use Traditional Chinese.

a. Open up Pleco

b.  Change your keyboard to  简体手写 (The handwriting mode). I know it is meant for the simplified version, but Pleco is good enough to detect the bracket words. So I don't want to add another handwriting mode specifically for the traditional characters. See the following

You cannot use 繁體拼音mode because the poster doesn’t provide you with pinyin.

c. Once you have found the correct character, open it up and play the audio to listen to the correct pronunciation

d. Repeat the same step for another two characters

e. Now, you know Jacky Cheung’s Chinese name.

Easy Peasy!

2. If you are watching CCTV channel in China and you see the word “中国”, what are you going to do to find out what the 2 words mean and how to pronounce it?

Answers

There are 2 possible ways in doing this. One is by following step like in no. 1 

a.     Change your keyboard to  简体手写 (The handwriting mode)

b.     Write 中 and it will prompt you the answer below (circled). Great right? You do not even have to write the second character. It provides you with the phrase, at once!

c.     Now you choose the correct phrase and open it up

d.     Play the speaker to know how to pronounce it correctly and see what the phrase means

While you are doing this, learn the pinyin too… The next time you see the 2 Chinese characters together or separately, you know how they are being pronounced!

中 zhong            middle

国 guo               country

Another way is to listen to the pronunciation of the person on TV. For this method, you will have to know about hanyu pinyin. Most of Chinese or Taiwanese channel come with subtitle. So pay attention to their dialogue and try your very best to match the words that comes out from their mouth to the subtitle. You don’t have to be able to match all, especially when it is a long sentence. Catch the first and last words! Before you know it you will start seeing those words more often and it will be there, stored in your long term memory.

So if you heard that the person is saying something like zhong guo, and see that two Chinese characters ”中国”, but you do not know what it means, here is what you can do:

a.     Change your keyboard to 简体拼音 mode (Chinese Pinyin – Simplified)  

b.     And key in the pinyin that you think you have heard. Sometimes, when I am not too sure of what I heard, I will input what I think is right:

You might key in “zong guo” – no correct result

Or, you might key in “zhong kuo” – and you find that the pinyin for the first character is correct zhong = 中, so you know that "zhong" is the correct pinyin for 中。 keep that, and just make adjustment to the second pinyin.

You will finally end up with “zhong guo” and found your answer.

Stay calm and do not get panic! I have said that the second method works only to those who are already know about pinyin. You will when the time comes!

3. Show me 2 ways of translating words / phrases that you encounter in a beginner book that you have just bought from China / Singapore, where normally characters will be accompanied by pinyin. Try these 3 phrases:

阳光 (Yang guang)，木瓜 (mu gua)， 大人 (da ren)

Answer

First way – Pinyin mode

a.     China uses simplified Chinese. So I will set my keyboard to the simplified mode, 简体拼音

b.     Key in “yang guang” “mu gua” and “da ren”

c.    You get what you are looking for!

Second way – handwriting mode

a.     Change it to this mode of 简体手写

b.     Start writing the first character of each word

c.     If the phrases are prompted after keying only the first character, then great!

d.     If it does not show us the phrases that we want, then do it one by one, write “大” choose it from the list and start writing the second character “人”. See… The answer is there!

Depending what you are trying to strengthen, pinyin or writing, then you should use that method more often.

I believe you have found the answers even before I show you here.

Next post will be an intro to another tool, the bihua.com website.

Happy Learning,

Linda Tan

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