Pinyin to Characters

[Yezze]

Now that i am in my third year of Chinese, we have to learn characters. This first week we only learned 3, and had to use them in coherence with our pinyin from now on, but i wanted to see if i could try to learn some others, and it didn't go so well i am guessing.

Here is the pinyin, each sound was separated, so i couldn't tell which made up a whole word, which is why i had trouble using my character editor to learn them.

chūn jié shì zhōnɡ ɡuó rén zuì zhònɡ yào de jié rì

春节是中国人最最终要的节日.

zài chūn jié ， hái yǒu yí jiàn zhònɡ yào de shì jiù shì tiē chūn lián he fú

在春节，还有一见重要的事就是铁春联和幅.

chūn jié kuài lè

春节快乐

Could you proofread these and tell me what i did wrong?

Thanks a ton!

[Don_Horhe]

chūn jié shì zhōnɡ ɡuó rén zuì zhònɡ yào de jié rì

春节是中国人最重要的节日.

zài chūn jié ， hái yǒu yí jiàn zhònɡ yào de shì jiù shì tiē chūn lián he fú

在春节，还有一件重要的事就是贴春联和福.

The third one's fine.

If you don't mind me asking, why does your school start teaching characters that late?

[Chinadoog]

You should start separating the words you use in pinyin into individual syllables. It's a good habit. Every Chinese person that I've ever seen write in pinyin or send me a text message in pinyin separates the words into individual syllables. It will also make it easier for you to transition into reading characters.

[Yezze]

Thanks for the help!

It is an online class that i took at my high school (offered through Michigan Virtual High School), and as you could imagine, it would be hard to teach to read and write, when we only talk for 1 hour a week in adobe connect. This year, we had to get a textbook, to help us with out reading and writing (http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Chinese-Me-Students-Book/dp/7107177192).

Also, the advice about separating makes more sense the more i think about it, thanks for pointing that out to me!

[imron]

Also, the advice about separating makes more sense the more i think about it,

In my opinion, you should try to think about it less then Pinyin should be written as words, rather than individual syllables, and I don't think it's a good idea to split them up (and technically speaking, according to the rules of pinyin, it is incorrect to do this anyway). Knowing the word boundaries makes it easier to understand a given sentence. For example, if you know the pinyin of a sentence is:

Chūnjié shì zhōnɡɡuórén zuì zhònɡyào de jiérì

Then when you see the sentence

春节是中国人最重要的节日

it's easy to realise the words boundaries as:

春节 是 中国人 最 重要 的 节日

Which makes it simpler if you encounter unknown words in the sentence because it makes it easier to identify them then look them up in a dictionary etc.

As your Chinese improves and you want to increase your reading speed, it is also important to be looking "words" at a time rather than going character by character.

[msittig]

Also, the advice about separating makes more sense the more i think about it,

In my opinion, you should try to think about it less

I'll second imron.