Another user by the name of BIGKEV posted a question a few weeks ago about how to handle the problem of making flash cards that carry han zi , english, and pin yin.  I figured this one out for myself a while back and wanted to share what I came up with via DIY video.  This is  a .mov file and may need Quicktime to play. Poddies... enjoy:

Dear all,

after trying all sorts of keyboard drivers on my windows laptop and discussing with IT nerds, Chinese and Laowei firends snd considering psychotherapy instead I still have found no way of displaying the 4 tones in the Pinyin writing.

I am not very fond of writing numbers behind every syllable.

Anybody has any ideas for a software / Keyboard driver?

How do you folks in CHinesepod do it?

I'm curious in getting some feedback from people who have studied both pinyin and bopomofo for learning Chinese.  I recently picked up bopomofo to try and force myself out of some bad pronunciation habits I had when reading english letters in pinyin.

In my opinion, I find that studying bopomofo really helps in understanding the full vocal components of Chinese words.  Of course pinyin is still awesome for picking up pronunciation quickly, but I really think bopomofo helps you fine tune it and get as close to natural speech as possible.

Just throwing this out there to get some ideas, and see if anyone experienced in both can tell me if I am wasting my time or not.

I put together some small training excercises for myself that worked well and allowed me to pick it up in 3 weeks with only half an hour a day.  If anyone is interested I'd be happy to share.

I need to know how the phrase "this land" (referring to, basically, "this particular piece of property that's going to be a country, right here") in English would be said in Mandarin and written in pinyin.

(For those of you who're Browncoats might recognize my question. I need it for naming a project area.)

Your assistance is much appreciated, and thank you in advance!

Hi all, I'm Jon, inveterate Linux user, CPod Ellie (I guess) and hopeless with Han characters at the present.

I've found Microsoft's Chinese input method engine (IME; the way in which you type the characters from a Western keyboard) to be relatively intuitive.

Unfortunately, despite trying all of the multiplicity of IMEs offered as standard by Ubuntu (Hardy Heron, if anyone's interested), I haven't found one that lets me type Chinese the way I need.

What I'm after is some kind of IME that allows me to type in PinYin (unaccented, for preference), and offers me at each keystroke a selection of characters, each with a one- or two-word translation so that I can work out more easily which one I need.  The IMEs on offer all appear to expect the typist to know Chinese by sight, and don't help the struggling noobs like me!

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jon

Following is a really good website for better Mandarin pronunciation:

www.speakchineseonline.com

I've been looking for a site like this for a while.  What's so great about it is that it describes each pinyin initial and final, using animation with sound, step-by-step description (with visual of what the lips, mouth, tongue, etc. do), and video/audio of an actual native speaker.

It's similar to CPod's Pinyin Chart, but with video and better description of what the mouth does.  There's other good info. on this site as well.

Hello everyone,

Just to give a heads up - this is a rather long post.

Things are progressing well. I have had to scale back the study efforts a little bit on account of having to do full time college starting this week. I don't expect to make the types of gains in reading that I have been making in the past few weeks until Classes are over in the summer.

I have almost finished studying the 520 flashcards from last week, expecting to add the final ten today. I will begin to make the next batch either today or tomorrow. Last week I added 100 flashcards. Ten of which were words that I previously learned, but found myself having trouble with. The remaining 90 were new terms. This week, I am adding about half of that. Currently, I plan on adding 50 words. 45 new terms, and 5 are words that I learned already, but are mixing up with newer terms, or other things to that nature. I am also in the process of converting the worst of the handwritten cards to the printing method discussed in the last email.

This has been a marginally better week than normal for speaking Chinese for me. I made it through 5 lessons in 7 days. My ideal is to do more like 10 lessons in 7 days, but that may be unrealistic. What I have tried is doing a new lesson every day, and redoing a lesson that I have learned previously. Currently, I have my lessons arranged in something I call 'books'. Each book has 10 lessons. My first three books consist entirely of newbie lessons, and starting at the fourth I have one elementary lesson thrown in. I don't necessarily have one elementary lesson in every book, but I have no more than one elementary in each book up to book 13. Starting at book 13, I am adding both elementary and newbie lessons as they are added to the site.

As I just mentioned, I am attempting at least two lessons per day. One new lesson and one old lesson. I want to take a moment to describe this more specifically.

For the new lesson I do each day, I have two goals. The first goal is to be able to say all the vocabulary in the audio review when prompted with the english word. At this point, I am not trying to say it right away, I just am content with being able to say it even with a brief pause. So what I do is I listen to the word, pause the ipod, and say the chinese word. My focus here is to say the word paying attention to sound and tone to get it close as possible to the way the model says it. The second goal is to be able to understand the dialogue within the lesson. At this stage, I am less concerned with meeting the second goal than I am the first. This is all I am trying to do at this point when listening to new lessons, and I attempt to achieve this by listening to the entire show at least once, and typically listening to the audio reviews as many times as necessary to I reach the first goal.

For the old lesson I do each day, my goals are different than the new lesson. I find that I can usually state each of the terms in the audio review, after the first time through. I do the audio review with the goal of saying all the words perfectly without using the pause button on the ipod. I also, at this point, attempt the phrases. I am not necessarily concerned with being able to recall the phrases at this point, because the phrases often have vocabulary that I havent been introduced to yet. I just want to practice using the phrases. The goals for the old lesson I do each day are not as clearcut, but the overall intention is to be better at doing the lesson afterwards than I was before doing the lesson that day. For simplier lessons, I might be able to do it perfectly. For others, it may not go so well.

I have a system for keeping track on where I am in my lessons. My tracking system has a number of steps. Like I said earlier, I have the lessons arranged on my Ipod in books consisting of ten lessons each. So this means that the first step in the tracking method is to change the album name that is assigned by Itunes when I download a lesson from the site to a name that I select to arrange it into the books. For example, if the default album name is 'show' I change the name to 'Chinesepod.com book 01'. I do this for the audio review (fix), the show, and the dialogue. This makes for 30 files within one book (or album), and keeps the lessons in a managable manner.

The second step in the tracking system is to change the name of the lesson. There are three objectives that I am trying to reach by doing so. The first is that I want the three files for the lesson to be grouped together. The second is that I want to distinguish between the show, the fix, and the dialogue. The third is that I want to be able to remember what the lesson number is when I change the track number (Ill get to that in a minute). So I use a format that go something like this;

old file names might be -

Newbie - I'm cold!

Newbie - I'm cold! (Fix)

Newbie - I'm cold!

As can be seen, there is no indication of lesson number, or which is the show or dialogue. I might change the file names as such -

Newbie - 286s I'm cold!

Newbie - 286f I'm cold! (Fix)

Newbie - 286d I'm cold!

Notice how it is easy to tell what is what and what the lesson number is? I like it much better.

The third step is to change the track number. Now that the lesson number is listed in the file name, I can change the track number to a number that makes better sense. This allows me to arrange the lessons within a book as I see fit. For example, in book 6, I arranged all the internet related newbie lessons, I.E. (surfing the internet, sending emails, and chatting online) into a group by modifying track numbers.

The fourth and final step, which can be best taken after the previous three have been taken, is to utilize the rating system that is built into the Ipod to keep track of how many times I have reviewed a lesson. So after I do the new lesson in a given day, I would 'rate' that lesson with a 1-star. After doing the review of the old lesson each day, I would change the lesson from a 1-star to a 2-star.

All this may seem complicated, but it really is not. These changes can simply be done by using the 'get info' option that is found on the right mouse button menu when right clicking on a file. All these fields can then be changed as such. I hope this is helpful to someone. I can certainly say that having a book of ten lessons with thirty files is much more managable than having 300 lessons or more in an album.

I have also undertaken a plan on writing the characters, and studying the pinyin chart. As far as writing the characters, I plan to simply go through my 'learned' stack and practice writing the term on a sheet of paper. I might write only a few characters a day. For the pinyin chart, what I did is downloaded the chart from the website, and started making flashcards for the different sounds. I plan on buying a four sided dice, and adding five to ten sounds per day. What I would do each day is shuffle my stack of pinyin flash cards, and draw a card. After drawing the card, I would roll the four sided dice to see which tone I would attempt. Suppose I rolled a 3. I would then attempt to pronounce the term in the third term, and play back on the pinyin chart to see if I am correct. I would repeat until I get it correct. My plan is to master the pinyin chart by the end of April.

Well, I have written alot. I wanted to describe the work I have been doing on the site since I have started back in November. I must say that I have been at it everyday with the exception of a week during December when I was having difficulties. I am happy with my progress, especially my progress with reading chinese characters. The speaking stuff is coming around too, but it is slow and more difficult for me.

I guess at this point, I want to know if these weekly updates are meaningful and useful to anyone. I do these updates mainly for three reasons. First, it gives those who have been around for a bit an idea of the work I am doing and the results I am getting. I have received good feedback that has influenced my study habits thus far, and I hope to receive more. Secondly, I describe what I am doing in the hopes that newer people may read this and be able to use things that I have learned in my experience. I simply want to be helpful. Finally, I find it reinforcing to show my progress each week. It helps me keep going, knowing that I will give an update each week showing how I have improved.

With that being said, I don't mean to add clutter to the board. If these updates are not useful, or if they are irritating, I will stop doing them. Just send me a message through the chinesepod mail system, and if several people say that they are either not useful or irritating, I would promptly stop posting to the community. The last thing I want to do is be a nuisance.

Guess that is all for this week.

Please goto this link if you would like to see a screenshot that illustrates what I have been discussion in this post..

http://us.share.geocities.com/gcharestiii/untitled.bmp

Would it be possible to devise a vocabulary activity whereby students could match up all three words (Hanzi/PinYin/English)?

I find that I'm fine matching pinyin to English, but it's difficult to make the Hanzi symbols stick.

I need help,  I am trying to find a way to print out the dialogue lessons with pinyin and/or English only.  Reason being is I want to start reading the pinyin and start handwriting the chinese characters themselves.  I tried the cut/paste method from the pdf files but when I pasted it, it came out with just a bunch of garbage.   Any ideas?

ChinesePod is now offering some optional add-ons.  Find them under Resources in the Add-ons section.  Write now we've got Skritter Lite (for Premium and above subscribers) and Pinyin Tone Marks.

If you use the Activity section or if you've used Skritter already, you'll already be faimilar with these tools, but you'll just need to activate them to continue using them as normal.

I don’t know if anyone else figured this out already but you can write in Chinese on the iPhone!  I just figured it out.  You can write in Pinyin or draw the characters out on the screen and it recognizes them!  Super cool!!  Now I can practice my writing when I am not at my computer!

I am so excited about this!!  Can you tell?!?

You thought Mandarin had only five tones, including the neutral one? Well, you're wrong. There are, in fact, ten distinctly different tones in Standard Mandarin. ChinesePod just doesn't tell you about some of them (!). That's because they're not represented in the Pinyin, since they're predictable. That is, you can figure out which of the ten tones to use based on the five tone categories in Pinyin.

I've sort of picked most of this up as I went along, but looking into it more thoroughly, I found one tone that I hadn't picked up and that helped me a lot, so evidently, there's something to be said about spelling this out.

The neutral tones
Yes, plural. There are four of them, in fact. Which one it is doesn't need to be spelled out in Pinyin, as it's wholly predictable based on the previous tone. But fact remains that they are four different tones. In the order from highest to lowest, the neutral tones follow the third, second, first and fourth, respectively. So 桌子 (zhuōzi, table) has a lower neutral tone than that of 嗓子 (sǎngzi, throat).

The half-tones
So that's eight tones now (okay, you could claim that the high neutral tone is the same tone as the first tone, only shorter, but we're going for an even number here, so I'm counting it separately). What about the last two? Well, they're the half-tones. There are two of them, namely the half third and the half fourth.

The half third tone is a third tone that doesn't rise again after falling. It's used when the third tone is followed by a first, second or fourth tone (since it turns into a second tone when followed by another third). For example, in the word 好多 (hǎoduō, very much) uses a half third tone. Pronouncing it with a full third tone will sound a bit weird.

Then there's the half fourth tone. I hadn't really thought about this one before I read about it, so I'm really glad I discovered it. Makes pronounciation make more sense to me. You know how when a fourth tone (or any tone, really) character is redoubled, the second one goes neutral? Like in 谢谢 (xièxie, thanks). One of my earlier ChinesePod memories is of Ken saying this is because it sounds "choppy" to pronounce both the fourth tones. Makes sense, right? But then there are words with two fourth tones that aren't reduplicated, like 再见 (zàijiàn, thanks). You don't make the second one a neutral tone, so doesn't it sound choppy? It did when I said it. Then I read about half-tones and I understood that the first of the two is actually a half fourth tone. It's cut in the middle, sinking down just halfways before starting with the second character. So if a fourth tone goes in register from 5 to 1, a half fourth tone goes from 5 to 3. In practice, this sounds like you're de-emphasising the 再 and emphasising the 见, but what's really going on is a half tone.

That's it
So there you have it. The ten tones of Standard Mandarin. Besides improving your pronounciation, this can make you sound even more impressive when describing Mandarin to someone who doesn't study it.

"Yeah, it's kind of hard. It has ten different tones."