Any place on the forum for beginner, "baby" first-year Mandarin students?

[xiexieniii]

A lot of the posts here seem to be in the second year Chinese level and up. Is there a section anywhere on these forums for not-so-advanced students? I want to browse posts at my same level of comprehension but they are all mixed together.

If not, the admins should really consider adding a new category for "beginners" as well as "intermediate/advanced"!

[crazy-meiguoren]

I'll third that idea. I had two quarters of classes, and I feel like 95% of it hasn't sunk in yet.

Meanwhile, think of this site as the world's largest one-room school.

[DrZero]

At the very least I would like to see posts done with both characters and pinyin. So much of this forum is inaccessible to me because my hanzi reading is terrible, though my speaking and listening are tolerable. My pinyin is excellent, though.

Maybe if a beginner's area were started, we could make it a convention that examples include pinyin? That way they would be more accessible for lower-level students.

[xiexieniii]

Maybe we can start a convention for beginners to write in the title "Question about X (Beginner/Level 1/First Year, etc)". That way any Level 1 passer-by students will know it's a thread they can comprehend.

I write in pinyin because I do not know which program lets you write Chinese characters or if there is already a program installed in the Mac. Otherwise there is a really great online source at www.yellowbridge.com that translates between pinyin, simplified, traditional, and English. Even shows you the radicals, character origins, and stroke order. Amazing. You have to copy and paste the individual character though, so it's a bit time consuming. But essential if you want to learn how to write the character.

They also seem to have a program that lets you hover your pointer over word and an english and pinyin translation shows up. Have not downloaded this yet but might check it out soon.

[russmeier]

Yes, the Mac includes built-in Chinese language support.

1. Open System Preferences

2. Select International

3. Select Input Menu

4. Turn on Simplified Chinese -- if it's not there, you may need to insert your Mac OS X disc and add it as an option (this will not reinstall your OS -- you'll be presented with an "add/update" option screen)

5. Search the Help library for information on ITABC -- simplified chinese.

Once you research ITABC a bit, you'll be able to do this:

您好朋友！好久不见！（ni hao pengyou! haojiubujian!)

Pinyin support is not built-into Mac OS. But, there are add-on tools available on-line to allow you to do pinyin. I have not installed those so I cannot comment on a good one.

[renzhe]

www.mdbg.net offers excellent online tools for traditional/simplified/pinyin. It's still preferable to have a native input method, but this is a very good substitute for a quick message or two on a computer without Chinese input.

[imron]

So much of this forum is inaccessible to me because my hanzi reading is terrible

Something like Chinese perapera-kun would solve that problem, and probably more conveniently than putting pinyin next to everything.

[Lu]

From the very bottom of this page, it seems there already is a tag for 'beginners'. That might go a long way in helping you all.

Good luck!

[imron]

Once you research ITABC a bit, you'll be able to do this:

In my not so humble opinion, ITABC is barely usable. The best Chinese IME for the Mac is definitely QIM. Although it costs money, it's absolutely worth it and it also has a 10,000 character trial, which is more than enough to decide if you like it or not. For free alternatives, consider FIT. Both of these input methods are far superior to ITABC.