Typing Pinyin

Hi sballa, ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ ā ē ī ō ū á é í ó ú à è ì ò ù one way it can be done by using the windows charmap feature http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/charmap.html If you know the unicode for the symbol you can type it directly in. Cntrl accent mark and then the vowel will give you the 4th tone and cntrl apostophe and then the vowel will give you the second tone. I would love to have an easier way myself. Im sure there is software and if anybody knows any easier way please share it. This may not work writing on this website - you will need to write it in word perhaps and then cut and paste. Hope that gets you started

Hi all. Thanks for steering me (and others) toward Pinyinput, which seems to be just what I was looking for when I posted my initial inquiry. Steve

It's easy if you have a Mac. Just use the U.S. extended keyboard. 1st tone is option + a + vowel 2nd tone is option + e + vowel 3rd tone is option + v + vowel 4th tone is option + ` + vowel Also, if you have the Wenlin dictionary, just type the tone number after the pinyin and it converts the tone mark automatically for you. Then you can just cut and paste your pinyin.

It's easy if you have a Mac. Just use the U.S. extended keyboard. 1st tone is option + a + vowel 2nd tone is option + e + vowel 3rd tone is option + v + vowel 4th tone is option + ` + vowel Also, if you have the Wenlin dictionary, just type the tone number after the pinyin and it converts the tone mark automatically for you. Then you can just cut and paste your pinyin.

God bless Apple! They do a great job making sure the Mac comes standard with everything you need plus so much you may never need but it's SO COOL that it's there!

xiaohu: I agree! Macs are great for Chinese language learning! Everything you need is in - really cool. GET A MAC!

yes, a mac is definitely on my someday list.

Bazza, thank you! I had a hunch you would know where the goodies were. This is great. Steve - try the link Bazza offered. Here are the instructions for use. I think you need to have the chinese IME turned on already but you are going to want that for typing chinese characters anyway. This is in windows you just need to turn it on and I think there are some instructions in the cpod help section if you dont have this running already. The pinyin may run alone - Im not sure. http://chinalinks.osu.edu/computing/pinyinput.pdf

Better yet Steve, buy a Mac (if you have one already you are home free)

I have the IME Bazza recommended. I went to systemcontrol,languageoptions( don´t know if that short translation of "Regions und Sprachoptionen" works...), languages, details(a little button) and then changed the key-combination ("keybord"-button) to left ALT+(the left button with the arrow upwards)+F5. To toggle it of I press ALT+(the left button with the arrow upwards)+F1 (normal writing) or ALT+(the left button with the arrow upwards)+F8 (for chinese symplified characters).

Try this: http://www.chinese-forums.com/pinyinput-install.zip

The default keyboard shortcuts are alt+shift to switch from English to Chinese, then you can use ctrl+shift to switch between Character and Pinyin input. :)

So, I have a similar question. I have a Mac, but I find typing characters in a little frustrating. I can change the language setting to Chinese (ITABC) in the right hand top corner of the computer and type pinyin and choose stuff fine. But... there's this huge blank gap that appears after each character, but not directly after each character (I'm sure that doesn't make sense). Can mac users explain whether this can be changed?

I'm not sure why you'd want to actually type pinyin? I do a fair amount of typing but hardly ever need pinyin other than to have it trigger hanzi (Chinese characters). Wenlin does this very well, and if you still want to keep pinyin you can copy paste it back, with number or tones. You can also get it to convert a whole Chinese text back to pinyin, numbered to accented and vice versa. You can use NJStar too, or ChinesePera-kun.

With Windows you can just switch to using Pinyinput and thus write lovely things like: wǒ hěn xǐhuān xué zhōngwén (我很喜欢学中文) just by entering wo3 hen3 etc. Here's a picture of how to select it: [http://blogs.chinesepod.com/de/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/pinyinput.jpg]

No I said typing characters, by typing pinyin, then selecting the character. But when I do this in Microsoft Word, it seems to allow a big gap of space after the character. The more characters you write the larger the space. Any mac users know about this one?

If you have a version of MS Word prior to 2004, it's not compatible with 2-byte characters or unicode. Upgrade to 2004 9or now 2008) or better yet, get the vastly superior Pages program from Apple.

If you have a version of MS Word prior to 2004, it's not compatible with 2-byte characters or unicode. Upgrade to 2004 9or now 2008) or better yet, get the vastly superior Pages program from Apple.

Thanks Laodai, I have the 2001 version... looks like I'll need to upgrade :(

ňōs̀é 哈哈normal...(just a demonstration...) ;-)