How convert kanji pronunciation to chinese pinyin?

[webmagnets]

I have this book: Kanji Pict-o-Graphix : Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0962813702/sr=8-2/qid=1143739684/ref=sr_1_2/103-7654730-4639837?%5Fencoding=UTF8

It is totally awesome for helping you remember what the character means in english.

However, I am wanting to write the pinyin pronunciation for each character, since I'm learning chinese not japanese.

Right now all I know to do is ask a chinese person for the pronuciation or look up the character in a dictionary.

Does anyone know how I can do this more quickly?

[stephanhodges]

You could try wakan http://wakan.manga.cz/, which supports both Japanese and Chinese.

It's free. I don't know if it will do what you want.

[webmagnets]

This is working wonderfully.

Anyone else have any other ideas that might work even better?

[yingguoguy]

I have the book you're talking about. It's interesting and a good way to learn the origin of some of the characters, but I'd be careful about using it for learning Chinese, the usage of characters is different and the 'importance' of characters is different in the two languages, so you may end up learning rarely used characters. Also Japan has a number of variants which are neither traditional or simplified characters. This thread has a spreadsheet detail the differences. You should be able to look up characters on it quite quickly by using search.

[atitarev]

Webmagnets, you're better off learning Chinese using Chinese textbooks, not Japanese. There are similar Chinese textbooks - "Having Fun with Chinese Characters", for example (3 volumes covering a few hundred characters).

I find the book "Kanji Pict-o-Graphix" a bit silly, sorry. They create associations for remembering characters, which are too far from their real meaning/origin, just because they look like something. It's OK if it helps you memorise, though. However, "Having Fun with Chinese Characters" explains you the origin of the characters, which will help you to understand more characters (not in the book).

That thread, Yingguoguy mentioned hasn't been updated for some time (planning to do it but didn't get around yet) but the list of characters that diverge from both simplified and traditional Chinese is not too small.

Sakura (ON-yomi: Ō, YŌ):

桜 = 樱 (simplified) 櫻 (traditional) [yīng]

Shitaga(u) (ON-yomi: JŪ, JU, SHŌ):

従 = 从 (simplified) 從 (traditional) [cóng]

従業 jūgyō - employment (Japanese)

从业[or 從業] cóngyè

Try these threads as well:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/7764-learning-chinese-after-japanese

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8020-to-my-friends-learning-more-than-chinese-at-the-same-time-out-there