charcaters with pinyin above

Hi,

Does anybody know a free (or at any rate cheaper than the $199 for Wenlin) input programme which will allow me to write characters with pinyin over the top of them? Im putting together a very basic course for complete beginners, but I dont want to just use pinyin, I would like to use it together with the characters right from the very beginning so that at least they can get used to seeing the most common ones together with the pronunciation, even if they dont get deep into studying the chracters until later in the course.

Thanks for your help

Hi, you don't need any special software for what you want, if you've got MS Word: Type out the Chinese characters, then go to "Format", then "Asian Layout" and then "Phonetic Guide", then "OK". Having done these steps, you'll see that the pinyin are output just above the line of characters where your cursor is (The pinyin output is only up to the next punctuation mark, so you'll need to repeat the process as you go along).

You might also want to check out this thread which lists several tools for generating the pinyin from characters.

And of course if you're looking for more than just automatic translation and want to be able to type freely in pinyin with tonemarks then follow the link in my signature

I've been using "pinyinput", which was created and posted by a member of these forums.

Works great.

Except, for one small bug that may be specific to me and my computer.

-While using OpenOffice Calc, if I select a cell, and then hit F2 to edit that cell, the ime doesn't act as I would expect.

-Other than that, works great for me.

Do a search on the forums, and you should find it easily enough.

Hi,

Thanks for all the advice everybody.

However, most of the stuff seems to be Hanzi to pinyin converters, which is not really what Im after.

The pinyinput programme seems great too, big backslap for that.

But what Im really after is some way of writing hanzi with pinyin over the top of them simultaneously, so that students whocan read the hanzi can read them, and those who cant can just read the pinyin above.

Any ideas?

Give NJStar Chinese Word Processor 5.20 a try. (shareware)

After Chinese Input you have to use tools convert Hanzi to Pinyin output tones on top.

hope it helps,

Ole

But what Im really after is some way of writing hanzi with pinyin over the top of them simultaneously, so that students whocan read the hanzi can read them, and those who cant can just read the pinyin above. Any ideas?

Have you tried the suggestion in post #2 ? The method doesn't convert, it just adds pinyin above the existing Hanzi.

I would try the thing with Word, only I dont have a copy, Im working with Open Office 2.2

Does anyone know any tricks for that programme?

There's exactly the same menu item in OO Well, Format -> Asian Phonetic Guide. It doesn't automatically generate the Pinyin though (not sure if word does either though).

Try Dimsum. Free and has Pinyin popups.