Please help, how to type efficiently Pinyin, Hanzi and English... together

[AngeloMa]

Hi to all,

 

I am new to this forum and also to the Chinese language

 

to facilitate my lerning I would love to take notes to improve my vocabulary. Like in this example

 

 

the challenge is how to type this efficiently on my work Windows 10 or (God's forbids) my private Mac

 

I am testing quickpinyin and also Pyninput. They both actually work, but do not solve my problem of switching to a Chinese keyboard to type the Hanzi (and to make it worse, Microsoft Chinese keyboard is not QWERTZ like my German keyboard so I have to change keyboard and remember the different positons of the letters every time)

 

Before I try every possible combinations is there somebody out there who has a more elegant solution ? Ideally, a keyboard with a quick switch between english/pinyin and Chinese/kanzi

 

or somebody who can teach me how to setup the right combination of tools ?

 

I tried a few things....

Microsoft Chinese keyboard allows a quick toggle between Hanzi and English, does not support Pinyinput or Quickpinyin

other keyboards support both Pinyinput or Quickpinyin but of course do not allow Hanzi

 

as I said above I can try to fix it on Windows, or on Mac. Or both 🙂

 

any idea is really welcome !

Keep the forum going strongly!

Angelo

 

 

 

 

[honglam]

The majority of Chinese keyboards provide a CHN/ENG switch. You could look up in the manual of your keyboard for instuctions.

And many times we don't really type letters with the symbol of tones above. We put a number at the end of each syllable to express the tone. E.g. 这是 zhe4 shi4, 时间 shi2 jian1

[AngeloMa]

@honglam thanks for the advise. interesting to know you use simply the numbers, I guess it is because you know it "anyway". It would work but it is not so elegant, chinese characters are so pretty it is a pity to use "zhe4" for pinyin 🙂 yes I can toggle the keyboard, maybe one way is to try to edit che chinese keyboard to make it more similar to my physical qwertz keyboard... then use the english toggle with pyninput or quickpinyin on top... 

 

in a quick test right now with a fresh brain, microsoft pinyin + quickpinyin seem to work, by toggling the chinese keyboard to English it works with pinyin, then back to Chinese for Hanzi

 

maybe I just need to venture into key mappings to make it qwertz 🙂

 

any additional idea is welcome, thanks !

 

[Zeppa]

On a Mac - this needs practising.

Select keyboard e.g. Pinyin-Simplified.

To get the character, enter the pinyin and choose it by number （as usual）

To get the pinyin, enter the pinyin and then press the tab key. Press tab key once gives first tone, twice gives second tone etc.

Once you have the correct pinyin with tone mark, press enter.

这 zhè 是 shì

 

[AngeloMa]

@Zeppa thanks I need to test this. When typing and pressing enter will it stay like that or convert ? Happy to try, I tried using the ABC extended keyboard but that was painful 😀😀😀 thaaaanksss !

[Zeppa]

Try it! Press enter - it converts. Press tab and then press enter - it remains pinyin, with the tone mark. I don't know the ABC extended keyboard.

I was happy to find this really works - I only discovered it today by googling...