Confused on Translation Sites with Pinyin

[LilShippo]

well to start i wish to say Hello to everyone and i am very happy to have found this site ^.^

i'm having troubles with finding the Correct ways to spell pinyin as i want to learn Pinyin first then jump to Symbols. the problem is that i have a few web sites that can translate English to Chinese Pinyin but when i talk to my friends on QQ Messenger some say i'm right and others say i'm spelling them wrong.

so if i can get someones advice on this i would be Greatly Happy and continue my Studies on learning more words. the following 4 is what i'm using to look up words can anyone tell me which are giving me the right way to spell the words?

http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html

http://www.instantspeakchinese.com/

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

http://translate.google.com/#en|zh-CN|shippo

i know there not perfect any but i'm Eager to learn chinese more. anyways Thanks Everyone in Advance! ^.^

[jbradfor]

Could you post some examples that people have said are errors? When it comes to pinyin, native speakers are not always correct.

Of the four you list, I've used only MDGB, and I think it is relatively errors free, but probably may contain some errors for some of the rare cases.

[LilShippo]

well for example the words ruhe and jinre. when i checked both of those they are like this but i'm being told that they are ru he and jin ri.

so i started looking at the sites back to back and i noticed there are some that have the spaces while others aren't spaced. and i'm not 100% with the words already so i just want to make certain that the words i find are spelled right. the meanings may not be perfect but i want to learn how to spell the words that i find.

so from the sites i have posted any one of them better then the other when it comes to finding Pinyin?

and thanks again by the way ^.^

[jbradfor]

Are you only worried about differences in the use of spaces? If so....

Short answer: don't be worried, you'll see both.

Long answer: there are several "rules" to pinyin that seem to be broken so often that they might as well not be rules. The use of spaces is one. Internal capitalization is another. And don't get me started on the apostrophe!

So you have two choices: accept that some people will not do pinyin correctly and move on to more important things, or get upset and make yourself miserable.

I personally follow these rules, because they seem pretty reasonable to me. But being too cheap to actually go and buy the pinyin ISO standard to see what the official rules are, I can't say whether they are all correct.

OTOH, if you actually find cases in which different letters are used, then that is likely an error on someone's part.

[Yezze]

http://www.purpleculture.net/Chinese-Character-Pinyin-Converter-Online.asp or http://www.chinesetopinyin.com/

I used both of those.

i want to learn Pinyin first then jump to Symbols.

Personally, i would only spend a little while on pinyin. My first 2 years of Chinese was all pinyin, and i think that only doing 6-12 months on it would have been fine. It came back to hurt me when it was time to finally start learning characters.

when i talk to my friends on QQ Messenger some say i'm right and others say i'm spelling them wrong.

As jbradfor said, yeah, that will always happen. I just got used to it. Ex- 谁 (Shei2 or Shui2)。

[Hofmann]

I recommend that you only learn how sounds are represented in Pinyin. After that, unless you're planning on writing textbooks or something, don't worry about it. Get on to studying Chinese characters ASAP.

[Yezze]

unless you're planning on writing textbooks or something, don't worry about it. Get on to studying Chinese characters ASAP.

Words of Wisdom.

[LilShippo]

writing a book no but getting used to a daily usage of some common used words like nihao and xiexie. you see i'm planing on visting China to meet my online girl friend and the way it might happen i might end up living in China to stay.

so i want to at least Speak Chinese with my voice at least. least till i can grasp Chinese Symbols and be able to read them. my girl friend Huan says there are many English Speakers in China and i respect her but i know that not everyone speaks English and not every sign is going to have English. but that is the Goal here anyways.

thanks Yezze for the web sites i will look them over, and everyone here thanks!. such a friendly and helpfull place

and i will look over the words more and thanks for letting me know that pinyin no matter the person won't be perfection ^.^

[renzhe]

Pinyin is very important for learning proper pronunciation. Well, any consistent romanisation method, really, but pinyin is the most widespread. I'd recommend moving on to characters soon, but getting a good grounding in pinyin is a must. You will also want to follow a proper textbook or a course. Translating things online will really not get you far.

For the record, it is rúhé and jīnrì. Properly written pinyin is grouped by words, not by characters.