Use of Pinyin

Do Chinese people use/accept Pinyin in their writen communication with non-natives? Is this appropriate in a business context?

Hi there, Pin Yin, also spelled as Pinyin, is the westernized (Romanized) pronunciation system and it literally means "form pronunciation." It's a way that give you the possibility to read Chinese without recognizing the characters. The Pin Yin system helps the standardization in translating Chinese characters such as people's names, street names, and city names into English. It also helps Chinese data entry and computerization of Chinese language in general using the common English keyboards. Nowadays it's used in the business environment as in many international organizations. I hope to have been helpful. All the best for your Chinese learning ! :)

Nihao! I wouldn't say it is not acceptable, especially if non-native speakers know nothing about Chinese character writing. With the pinyin version, the two parties can still communicate, which is better than no pinyin, no character, thus no communication at all. The thing is, pinyin without chinese characters can be confusing and misleading, especially given that each pinyin combination with a particcular tone, can have so many different matchy characters that have completely different meaning, not to mention the four different tones! Confusion and misundertanding wouldn't be what people would like to see, especially in doing business. Using characters is always recommended. If that is not achievable, what we could do is to put tones on top of the pinyin to indicate the precise word. That can be helpful, especially if it is just daily communication. Hope that helps.

In my experience Pinyin is a great way to practice especially if you can communicate with someone who is fluent in Mandarin. I had private lessons some time ago and when my teacher moved interstate we would write to each other in Pinyin. Some of the words that I did not know, I would look up and it became a good example of the way in which the words were used ie: grammar. He would then correct the errors in my letters and return them. This proved to be most helpful. :) Barryh

wǒ hén báoqiàn...wǒ yīngāi xiě Zhōngwén. Wǒ yīdìng xīwàng nǐ míngbai.

How do you type the tones in Pinyin easily? All I have found is using codes, which seems to just add another layer of complexity.

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php This is a great website for anyone learning, practising, or just using Chinese. You can type Pinyin with the tones added by the appropriate number. eg: hao3 will be typed with the tone indicator for third tone. You can also type characters by selecting the student option and by typing the Pinyin it will give you several options to select the correct character. eg: should you select "ma" it will show the characters for each "ma" with translations and you just select the correct number (1,2,3,4 etc) and the character is typed. It has a good result but really helps your learning progress.

http://pinyinput.sourceforge.net/ Download this program called pinyinput. You can type offline and in any program you wish. It is equivalent to switching input languages that come with Windows and is very easy if you have already played around with the Chinese character IME then you already know how to switch between input languages. This being said there was one small hiccup for me in installation: right click the file and click "run as administrator". Any other setup woes feel free to contact me here. Pinyinput lets you type pinyin then pick a number 1-4 and immediately inputs pinyin. During installation please pick the "English Keyboard" family tree because otherwise MS Word can have problems in using the program properly. Lastly, you can setup a hotkey for quick changing between English, Pinyin and Chinese characters for enhanced user-friendliness. edit:::: use Mac? check out the links in the first post here. Same program but Mac OS http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/20890-macpinyin-pinyinput-for-mac/

there is no other computing website to this , all the needed are included . but i can't found the chinese alphabet pronunciation b/c i am begginer to this , so help me where i can get it and other neccessery things to me & like me? thanks !! hagos tesfay ethiopia

Re: Kevin, I don't know if this works in Windows, but in Linux using the "compose" key allows you to type pinyin really easy. This is the same key that allows you to type accented characters such as à and ö in other languages. By default I believe it is Shift+Right-Alt, but it is configurable. What you do is type the "Compose" key, then the tone mark, and then the letter. For 2nd and 4th tone, it's just like typing an accent, i.e.: "compose" ' a gives á "compose" ` e gives è For the 1st and 3rd tone, use _ (underscore) and c (the letter c) as the accent, so: "compose" _ a gives ā "compose" c e gives ě "compose" c " u gives ǚ as in nǚ (女) Hope this helps.

What does the "compose" key look like?

谢谢！

Hi everyone (especially those who are interested in typing Pinyin with tones on their devices),

I've be benefiting from this free website that makes things super easy:

http://web.csulb.edu/~txie/Itool/pinyintextfield.swf

Simply type in the alphabets and tones and ... that's it! For example, an input of "wo3 xi3huan1 xue2 Zhong1wen2" will render "wǒ xǐhuān xué Zhōngwén" for you to copy and paste. It works best on Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

Hope this was helpful & have fun typing! :)

Eleanor