Add tones to your Pinyin (or Yale-Cantonese)

[Guest]

Hello, all! Have you ever wanted to type "Bĕijīng" with tones instead of just "Beijing"? Some time ago, I was disappointed by the more popular pinyin tone tools such as the one on the fool's workshop. Nearly all of them require server requests, which means you have to wait a second or two every time you click "convert". The few sites out there which had javascript based tools were buggy and put the tones over the wrong vowels.

So, I wrote my own tool! It's fast, accurate and best of all you can download the javascript and put it in your site as long as you link back to me. My pinyin tone tool is at http://toshuo.com/?page_id=50

Users on two different forums requested a similar Cantonese tone tool, and so I made one with generous testing feedback from Anatoli. You can find my Cantonese tone tool at http://toshuo.com/?page_id=74

Enjoy, and if you find any problems or have any feedback regarding these tools, please comment on my blog.

[self-taught-mba]

Neat, thank you.

[binbin]

That is very cool. Nice work!

[atitarev]

Excellent work, Weixiaoma.

Just a comment about your comment nn your website you say:

For neutral tones, either type 4 or no number at all.

Tone number 4 is not neutral - it's level on the medium register. So, "ma" is pronounced similar to "mā", only lower and "mah" is pronounced lower still.

[Guest]

I've changed it to say, "for flat mid-level tones"

[atitarev]

Thanks again, Weixiaoma. I tried to PM you, not sure you recieved. I wonder if you can share your work and send me your JavaScript script, please? I promise to refer to you if you wish.

[Guest]

Atitarev, I replied to your question on my blog post about the tool. http://toshuo.com/?p=75#comment-195

Anybody can look at or download my scripts from my site. Anyone can copy them to their own sites, but please give me credit if you do so. Just go to the /scripts directory and browse to your heart's content.

[atitarev]

Thanks a lot, Mark. It looks very good.

[adrianlondon]

I just tried it, and some text was already there. I'm guessing it keeps what the last person typed. Cool - I can be nosey and find out what you're all typing

[atitarev]

I just tried it, and some text was already there. I'm guessing it keeps what the last person typed. Cool - I can be nosey and find out what you're all typing

I think Weixiaoma keeps a default test text there, that's all, saves you typing, if you need just a test.

[Guest]

Atitarev is right. It's just default text to make it clearer for first time users. The default text for the Mandarin pinyin tool is "shìjiè shàng de yŭyán zuì bàngde jiù shì zhōngwén!". That just means, "The greatest language in the world is Chinese!"

Now, Adrianlondon, I have a task for you if you really are nosey... Look at the default text for my Cantonese tool. It's "júng léuih cham tà chìn báak dòhk。" If you can figure that out, you deserve a buffalo nickel.

[adrianlondon]

So it does. How dull :-)