new Pinyin Guide is online

John
April 17, 2007, 10:28 AM posted in General Discussion

My "masterpiece," the new Pinyin Guide is now complete and online. It includes a downloadable pinyin chart. Check it out.

Feel free to give me any feedback directly. 

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brian
April 17, 2007, 12:34 PM

The mac version is working fine for me. Very impressive; I especially like how each section links back to the text explanation online.

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brian
April 20, 2007, 11:13 AM

I second david's suggestion for a option to vary between speakers, of both sexes, as this will help people get an idea of just what the tones sound like from a variety of voices. I have a few friends that picked their Chinese up from females tutors that have ridiculous high 1st tones, probably because that was their primary exposure. Various sexes (although I don't agree with varying accents - lets keep it standard) would help clarify natural variation to those outside of China.

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taylor04
April 17, 2007, 03:07 PM

i could be wrong but i think the ji qi xi lines are a bit off, jiang is like jin or something jiu is like jian, lots of mistakes, as i said, im expert and could be wrong but im pretty sure!

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taylor04
April 17, 2007, 03:09 PM

oh ps, im using macromedia flash on the windows version

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davidhallgren
April 17, 2007, 03:09 PM

First of all I would just like to say that this looks great and I think that this chart combined with your excellent written guide gives learners an amazing tool. However, I have noted two strange things: First, the -ü section has you, not yü at the top. Second, unpacking pinyinchart_win.zip gives me two folder, both pinyinchart_win and __MACOSX which seems a little strange.

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John
April 17, 2007, 03:14 PM

Hmmm, yeah, my link above totally doesn't work. Sorry about that. There's a "Pronunciation" link on your Study page. If there are any problems with the chart, they will be fixed tomorrow.

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bazza
April 17, 2007, 05:32 PM

Pretty cool, I like the single page layout. There are currently lots of errors though. I've been them on all and I think there are errors on the following: bao pa pai man fo fou fen ni li si shi ri ji xi lia jia xia yao niao liao jiao xiao ye nie lie jie xie tiu niu liu jiu xiu tian nian lian jian xian niang

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bazza
April 17, 2007, 05:33 PM

oops missed a few there: liang jiang xiang yn nin lin jin xin yng ping ming ding ting ning ling jing qing chuo

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taylor04
April 17, 2007, 07:04 PM

i think what the problem is, you got a misplaced one and it screwed the whole order up, on the i section for example, ting is ni, and then every single other one in the section is one off. no offense or anything, but its not just one or 2 pinyin parts that were mistakes, there is a rediculous amount of them, quite frankly i dont see how it wasnt caught before it was released.

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bazza
April 17, 2007, 01:54 PM

I think that link is wrong, it works if you go to the Pronunication page.

I will have to wait until I get home, I can't really install it at work. ;)

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John
April 18, 2007, 09:15 AM

The downloadable Pinyin Chart is fixed. Let me know if it still has issues. We are currently working on the HTML pages.

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John
April 18, 2007, 09:20 AM

Man2Toe, I'm definitely not getting enough sleep... :( Hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon.

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bazza
April 18, 2007, 10:21 AM

Are there any plans have a Palm OS version of the Pinyin Chart? ;)

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rich
April 18, 2007, 10:21 AM

John, I just downloaded your Pinyin Chart, first time, but I still hear many of the mistakes Bazza mentioned... I listend to "bao" and it gave me "ban" (and will all tones checked, it only played "ban"'s first-tone sound file), but some are fixed.

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bazza
April 19, 2007, 11:37 PM

I think there's still problems with pa pai fo fou fen yao ye ying xing

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davidhallgren
April 20, 2007, 05:14 AM

I agree with you Bazza, except for perhaps ying. It does sound differently from the "normal" ying and the file you can listen to inside the written guide. I`m far from sure but I think this might be a dialectal thing. I've heard 欢迎 huānyíng being pronounced the same way by some speakers and when asking about it being told that it`s just a different way of pronouncing it. Ying sounds more like a mix between yong and yang in that case. If this is the case it should perhaps be commented upon in the written guide. Furthermore I think that having more than one voice to choose from, just as you can change tone, would be a nice feature. Which for example would let you listen to both a male and a female speaker, perhaps from different parts of China. A female voice is already recorded and used on the website so I don`t think adding it to the file should be too difficult. Sorry for bringing up ideas that mean even more work for you John! It`s just that seeing great developments inspires ideas for even more change.

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John
April 20, 2007, 05:31 AM

davidhallgren, I agree that the "ying" issue should be mentioned in the Pinyin Guide. I actually already have plans to add in a discussion of it, but I first need to iron out all the errors! Thanks for your patience, everybody.

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man2toe
April 17, 2007, 08:19 PM

John, are you going to sleep tonight? The Honey at home and you still at work? Please take care, we need you around for the long haul.