Pinyinput - Type Pinyin with Tone Marks

[imron]

24 minutes ago, Pall said:

I don't think that an English-speaker would pronounce sonds like "z", "c", "q", "j", "zh" to be understandable without preliminary learning how to do that, whereas the Russian female had no idea how it should be pronounce, she was just reading it as if in Russian. 

Sure, but she had mistakes in other areas that an English speaker wouldn't make.  So there are some sounds in Pinyin that an English reader will misread, and some (different) sounds in Mupin that a Russian speaker would make, but the overall intelligibility of a passage of text will be the same (it's that the mistakes will be in different places).

[Pall]

2 minutes ago, imron said:

So there are some sounds in Pinyin that an English reader will misread, and some (different) sounds in Mupin that a Russian speaker would make, but the overall intelligibility of a passage of text will be the same (it's that the mistakes will be in different places).

That's an interesting observation! Probably, one could have the best results if he used both methods parallely.

[imron]

1 hour ago, Pall said:

one could have the best results if he used both methods parallely.

Unless you had the mistakes from both methods, then you'd have the worst results.

[Shelley]

What provisions are made for indicating the tone?

In both readings especially the girls, tones seemed nonexistent. I could be wrong and just being confused by the unusual pronunciation.

[Pall]

43 minutes ago, Shelley said:

What provisions are made for indicating the tone?

In both readings especially the girls, tones seemed nonexistent. I could be wrong and just being confused by the unusual pronunciation.

Presently there is an opportunity to show tones by numbers only, since there aren't Cyrillic letters with all the tone sympols. I didn't put tones in the text on purpose not to confuse the girl. I have  a hope that Imron can agree to adopt his Pinuinput program for the mupin, with my  contribution, then it'll be possible to show tones above the words.  

[Shelley]

10 minutes ago, Pall said:

Presently there is an opportunity to show tones by numbers only, since there aren't Cyrillic letters with all the tone sympols. I didn't put tones in the text on purpose not to confuse the girl.

 

If there were no tones in the text then its not really a true test of how easy/natural it is to use. Pinyin uses the tone marks but numbers are also used with no problems, I agree the numbers look clumsy but the information is there.

 

I think that for someone who grew up with the Cyrillic alphabet then it may well be easier to read.

 

I would not want to have go through another new set of characters to get to Chinese when as an English speaker I can just use Pinyin.

 

Besides I expect you and me and most students of Chinese to start with Pinyin but then very quickly move on to characters only, using Pinyin only as a means of using dictionary or to learn new words. Pinyin or Mupin are not what you should be aiming to learn, you should be learning characters.

[imron]

It might be confusing for syllables like aй as you'd have two diacritics (which may or may look similar)

 

āй

áй

ǎй

àй

[imron]

It also might not look that good for non latin vowels.  Things like 'a' will work well.  Things like 'э' less so, e.g.

 

цэ̄н

цэ́н

цэ̌н

цэ̀н

[Pall]

1 hour ago, Shelley said:

Pinyin or Mupin are not what you should be aiming to learn, you should be learning characters.

In some section of this forum I encountered on a very interesting idea. Someone wrote, that Chinese teachers did insist that characters had to be learnt simultanuously in three aspects: meaning< pronuncation and hand-writing. But for foreigners it takes years to learn required number of characters by this way. At the same time Chinese kids learn characters with much less difficulty, for they have mastered basics of oral speaking by the time to go to school. They need only to connect their knowledge of the oral language with writing corresponding characters. So, the idea is to split the task in two steps: first, to learn oral language  and then, second, to put it on paper (and computer, but without handwriting it's not a guarantee to remember characters). Therefore I learn firstly how words sound and written in mupin/pinyin, use them in speaking and writing (in transcription), and only then try to remember proper characters. But new words come from books mainly. 

 

I do it by stages. When I mastered first 500 words in speaking and writing with them (in transcription), I learnt them in characters. Now I'm moving towards a level of about HSK-4 in the  same sequence. 

[Pall]

47 minutes ago, imron said:

confusing for syllables like aй as you'd have two diacritics (which may or may look similar)

 

āй

áй

ǎй

àй

I agree, I should think if it's possible to overcome that. But as to the below disadvantage, it looks good enough for me
 

42 minutes ago, imron said:

It also might not look that good for non latin vowels.  Things like 'a' will work well.  Things like 'э' less so, e.g.

 

цэ̄н

цэ́н

цэ̌н

цэ̀н

 

[Pall]

I have a female Chinese student, who was raised in Kazakhstan and finished a Russian school. She doesn't know characters at all, but can speak Mandarin fluently - I witnesed how she was talking with Chinese students that had just come from China. I think, for her it's not a big problem to learn characters if she needs it.

[Shelley]

36 minutes ago, Pall said:

Therefore I learn firstly how words sound and written in mupin/pinyin, and only then try to remember proper characters. But new words come from books mainly. 

 

This is where we will have agree to disagree.

 

I am a firm believer in learning characters from the start, within the first 5 lessons or so characters should be introduced and learnt along side Pinyin for a while, then Pinyin should come second and characters the main focus.

It also feels like I would be starting all over again if I spent a long time with just Pinyin and then started characters, seems a waste of time to me.

[Pall]

10 minutes ago, Shelley said:

I am a firm believer in learning characters from the start,

In my case it was like that, too, but in stages. Sorry, I edited my post above and wrote about that, but you might not see it. It is: I do it by stages. When I mastered first 500 words in speaking and writing with them (in transcription), I learnt them in characters to be able to write on my own within this range (dairy, messages, etc.). Now I'm moving towards a level of about HSK-4 in the  same sequence. 

[Pall]

I believe, it's important to learn a languague from an active side, to speak it and write in it on one's own. Not just to read. But new words come from reading mainly.

[Publius]

There are Chinese sounds that are easier for Russian speakers and there are Chinese sounds that are easier for English speakers. How you spell them doesn't really matter.

And nobody wants to learn a third language just so they can get better at their second language. Pinyin 'j', 'q', 'x', for instance, are no problem for Japanese speakers, because they have identical or near identical sounds in Japanese (じ, ち, し respectively). Do all Chinese learners have to learn Japanese first? I hardly think so. And native Japanese speakers most certainly will struggle with Chinese 'r', which is a cinch for English speakers.

As for characters, sure, language is primarily a spoken thing. Half of the world's living languages do not have a written form. A hybrid form of Mandarin Chinese is spoken natively and written in Cyrillic script by 東干/дунгане/Dungan people in former Soviet republics. But I don't think learning Chinese characters later on is significantly easier. There are ABCs and BBCs in these forums who have learned spoken Chinese at home but not how to read and write. Just ask them.

[imron]

2 minutes ago, Publius said:

which is a cinch for English speakers.

I know many native English speakers who would disagree with that statement

[Publius]

19 minutes ago, imron said:

I know many native English speakers who would disagree with that statement

But at least they can tell 'r' and 'l' apart, right?

[Pall]

On 7/12/2019 at 5:29 AM, Publius said:

六点一刻回地铁站，又走（？）了站。

In the dialogue this phrase is: 六点一刻回地铁站，又坐错了站。

The rest is absolutely the same, I'm happy. 
Thank you very much for your efforts to make out what I was saying!

[Pall]

On 7/12/2019 at 2:43 PM, Shelley said:

I am a firm believer in learning characters from the start, within the first 5 lessons or so characters should be introduced and learnt along side Pinyin for a while, then Pinyin should come second and characters the main focus.

The post was deleted, as I found a more effective way to learn oral Mandarin and characters. I do not want to guide others along the wrong path.

 

Edited August 5, 2019 at 06:42 AM by Pall
lost relevance

[Pall]

@imron

Hi Imron, the Pinyinput doesn't type the 3rd tone in the dia3 syllable in the word 发嗲。