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Related Resources

Below are additional resources you may find interesting and helpful.

Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin Speakers.
To assist with the learning of pronunciation and to allow you to note down and keep track of language more easily, we teach, along with characters, the official phonetically based writing system known as Hanyu Pinyin. Students can visit Hanyu Pinyin to learn, if they have no knowledge.

The differences between jianti and fanti characters are not as significant as might be imagined, so we will get used to reading both. For writing, you may choose either one.

MIT-China Program of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives.

Online Chinese-English Dictionary

How to Browse Web Pages with Chinese Characters

IE: In most cases, the browser automatically detects the encoding of the characters and displays them correctly. But if it is gibberish, go to View, then Encoding, and then choose Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, or Unicode.

Netscape®: In most cases, the browser automatically detects the encoding of the characters and displays them correctly. But if it is gibberish, go to View, then Character Coding, and then choose Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, or Unicode.

Now: Give it a try! The Unknown Space, the first bbs for Chinese students studying abroad, and in fact, the favorite of many even today -- first started by, of course, MIT's International students from China in the early 1990s.

How to Input Chinese Characters with Pinyin

For our discussion board, you can input directly using Global IME. Or you can use one of the other systems and cut and paste.

Option 1: Unicode Global IME from Microsoft® (installation instructions)

 

Once you have the fonts and IME installed, nearly any Windows application is capable of interacting with the IME to accept unicode Chinese input.

Option 2: NJStar Chinese Word Processor 5.01 (free trial)

You can use NJStar Chinese Word Processor 5.01 to create an .njs file and edit it, but the font for the free trial version does not print well. If you are a perfectionist, copy and paste the content of your final version from the NJStar application to a Microsoft Word document and print it out. To display the characters properly in MS Word, make sure you use one of the following unicode fonts: SimSun, Arial, or Courier.

For neat formatting, you can cut and paste the text into a Microsoft Word document. To display the characters properly, you may need to use the unicode SimSun font or the Arial font.

Option 3: Wénlín®

A powerful software for learning chinese; highly recommended if you have the cash. Go to LLaRC and try it out. The LLaRC catalog number for Wénlín®is CH070. You will need to ask at the front desk for the text and the cd-rom - which you can use at any of the LLaRC computers.

How to Input Pinyin Tone Marks

Create Pinyin Conversion Macros in Word 2000 and up (Source: Dr. Tianwei Xie's website for learning Chinese on-line.)

  1. Save the following macro text file:
    unicodepinyin.txt (TXT) (convert pinyin with numbers to unicode pinyin font)
  2. Use notepad to open unicodepinyin.txt
  3. Edit, Select all, Copy
  4. Close notepad
  5. Open Word
  6. Click Tool, Macro, Macros
  7. Type 'unicodepinyin' in Macro name window
  8. Click Create
  9. Press Control and V at the same time to paste codes
  10. Click File, Close and return to Microsoft Word
    The macro unicodepinyin is created.

Testing

Convert pinyin with numbers to tones:
Type:1a2a3a4o1o2o3e1e2e3e4i1i2i3i4u1u2u3u4uu1uu2uu3uu4uu (FYI: use either "uu" or "v" for the "umlaut yu" sound)
Highlight the typed line, click Tools, Macro, Macros
Double click unicodepinyin and the line will be converted to pinyin with tones.