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[Melagius]

Hey bay12ers. I decided I don't have enough to do in life, and I need a challenge to keep myself occupied and my mind sharp. And because of the fact that I have a few friends from the middle kingdom, I decided to try to understand their language. Not only that, but I find the history, especially that of post-revolution communist China quite fascinating. (I probably sound like a total weeaboo obsessed with a culture that is not my own by now :p ) Anyways, on to my point. Because I am trying to teach myself through books, software, and websites such as busuu.com, I was wondering if anybody had some software that could assist me in typing out Chinese characters. I would prefer one that used the pinyin method, where one types out the pinyin word and presses space to make a character. For example, I would type qiú and press space, and 球 would appear.

Thanks for the help, and if you have any other advice about learning a tonal language for the first time (I have not strayed far from the latin alphabet yet), feel free to tell me. I understand that Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn, with many different dialects, but it was either that or Russian, and I have much more Chinese pals than comrades.

[darkflagrance]

If you have a Microsoft operating system, just enable a Chinese keyboard and you should be able to type in Chinese by toggling the right language in the language tool bar that will appear (or just press alt+shift). You almost certainly will not need to download anything, even. There are guides as to how to do so on the internet if you google for them.

[Blargityblarg]

Remember accents; a bei fang ren will end many words (particularly nouns, IIRC) in a drawn out -arrr sound, whene a nan fang ren would just end in -ian.

[Melagius]

If you have a Microsoft operating system, just enable a Chinese keyboard and you should be able to type in Chinese by toggling the right language in the language tool bar that will appear (or just press alt+shift). You almost certainly will not need to download anything, even. There are guides as to how to do so on the internet if you google for them.

Oh really? That's awesome. Hopefully it can be enabled and disabled with ease so I can type in both English and Chinese without going into some annoying menu all the time.

[RedKing]

http://www.mandarintools.com/ is your friend. Be sure to download DimSum -- it's a Java-based app that takes almost all of their web tools and makes it accessible offline. And it's free!

@Blarg: Oh gods....I will still never get fully used to the Beijing -arrr thing. Especially since that gets taught as the "standard" dialect. My first teacher was from the Dongbei, but she didn't really have a strong northern accent. Then my first RL immersion was in Zhejiang province, with a melodic, gentle Wu accent. Massive accent shock when I traveled up to Beijing. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is being down in the Southern US most of my life and taking that first trip up to New Jersey.

It's the initial shock of "OMG you people really DO sound like that...." followed by "Okay, what do I need to do to make you stop talking to/near/around me?" 


EDIT: Also, if you're willing to spend a little money, NJStar.com has a slew of CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) software, such as word processors and instant messengers. I've used their word processor for years now. They also have a 30-day free trial so you can test it out to see if it's what you're looking for. The pricetag is a bit steep if you're just using it as a learning tool, so the free trial may be one route, obtaining it from....shall we say, less-than-white-market sources may be another option.

Their WP software supports multiple input methods, including pinyin. Bear in mind that even in your example, typing in qiu would net you 37 different possibilities, and even if you narrow it down to qiu2 you'd have 26 possibilities, from 球 (ball) to 犰 (armadillo) to 鯄 (a very specific species of lionfish). Isn't Mandarin awesome? 

The really nice part of NJStar's word processor is that it's integrated with a dictionary, so when type a word in pinyin and it gives you all your potential choices, you can mouse over them and get the definition in English so you know you're picking the right one. Plus, that gives you insight into all of the amazing puns/euphemisms/slang that Mandarin is capable of. It also does some predictive input based on really common words/phrases, so if you typed in "da q" it would offer up da qiu (play ball).

[Sir Finkus]

I find google IME better than the one built into Windows.  It makes guesses based on their massive database, so it's remarkably accurate.  Sometimes I only need to type a few characters and it will pick up an entire phrase.  It also has more slang and specialised vocabulary, along with pop culture stuff like the titles of books and movies.

Also, good job on learning the characters.  Many people just skip them altogether because "they're hard", which is a load of trash.

[Glowcat]

Also, good job on learning the characters.  Many people just skip them altogether because "they're hard", which is a load of trash.

You can't get far in Chinese without learning the characters due to the large number of homonyms.

[RedKing]

Also, good job on learning the characters.  Many people just skip them altogether because "they're hard", which is a load of trash.

You can't get far in Chinese without learning the characters due to the large number of homonyms.

Depends on what you're learning it for. If all you want is speaking and listening, you can get by without characters, although knowing characters certainly helps.

They're really not that hard once you learn the weird internal logic to them. Animals all tend to have the same "animal-stick-figure" squiggle on the left side, insects have a different squiggle, things that live in the water or words that have to do with water tend to have the shui radical on the left, etc. IMHO, there's only about 70 or 80 "pieces" that you really need to learn, and then the most common few thousand characters are just composed of those pieces stuck together in different ways. I joke that Chinese characters are like Tex-Mex food: it's the same basic ingredients over and over, just wrapped together in different ways.

And most obscure characters have some recognizable character buried inside them that gives you a clue to the pronunciation. It's a fairly insane way to write a language, but then it's fairly insane to have a non-agglutinative language with no more than 1000 or so distinct "words".
Y U SO CRAZY, CHINA? 

[Melagius]

Thanks for the advice, Redking. I used qiu as an example because it's really simple. I'll try to find some good software. Hopefully something that would allow me to type characters in MSN messenger and skype exists. I also need to get around to binding keys that have the tonal symbols over them, unless I want to memorize a ton of alt codes. I wish I had a better keyboard. :p

[darkflagrance]

Actually, I use the Microsoft IME for skype and google chat. It works perfectly without needing to bind tonal keys; I just use the standard layout. No expensive software needed - although, if that is your preference, then acquire whatever works.

非常容易！

[Sir Finkus]

Also, good job on learning the characters.  Many people just skip them altogether because "they're hard", which is a load of trash.

You can't get far in Chinese without learning the characters due to the large number of homonyms.

It certainly would make it easier to study, but Chinese people manage to speak to each other without subtitles just fine.  It's not at all bad as long as the words are in context.

The problem is that many people try to study languages by drilling wordlists, which doesn't really work with a bunch of homonyms.

[RedKing]

Also, good job on learning the characters.  Many people just skip them altogether because "they're hard", which is a load of trash.

You can't get far in Chinese without learning the characters due to the large number of homonyms.

It certainly would make it easier to study, but Chinese people manage to speak to each other without subtitles just fine.  It's not at all bad as long as the words are in context.

The problem is that many people try to study languages by drilling wordlists, which doesn't really work with a bunch of homonyms.

Hey, all you need to know is shi. 

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十字狮。
氏时时适市视狮。
十时，适十字狮适市。
是时，适施。氏适市。
氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使什么十字狮逝世。
氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。
石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始试食是十字狮。
食时，始识是十字狮，实十字石狮尸。
试释是事

[Glowcat]

这是什么？ 不错。

If you made that up yourself, kudos. I can hardly put together simple sentences at my level.

[Melagius]

Which of the following keyboards should I enable?



Also, would there be any ways to enable/disable them without having to go into the control panel (I'd like to type in English on facebook without having pinyin dialog boxes come up)?

[Glowcat]

I went with the first option. You can always switch it on and off from the language bar, itself something that can be placed on your taskbar. All you have to do change between EN <-> CH.