Comments on: Focusing on Chinese tones without being distracted by Pinyin

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 10:20:25 +0000

In reply to Max. To each his own, I think. I sometimes use numbers because it's clearer and easier to see. It works well if you've studied for a long time and the time it takes to associate numbers with tones is close to zero, as it is for me. However, I normally don't do that when writing anything for students, and I don't actually recall why I did it there. I should probably go back and fix the list!

By: Max

Max — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 00:01:19 +0000

I noticed that your Anki deck of the 100 most frequent radicals uses tone numbers (1 for first tone etc).

Do you recommend using tone numbers instead of tone marks for learning new characters with Pinyin? I can usually remember the Pinyin text but I have huge problems recalling those little tone marks.

By: Enrico Brasil

Enrico Brasil — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:56:59 +0000

OMG! You (and Purple Culture) are life savers!

Thank you very much for the converter tools!

By: Betty Choi

Betty Choi — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 19:51:30 +0000

Thank you for this helpful post. The Pinyin addiction is real – I have been studying Chinese with my children for 3 years and I still have a hard time ignoring Pinyin when it’s present. I love the idea of just including tone-marks. At first, I was concerned that the marks could be result in the character being memorized incorrectly (eg, confusing the tone mark as part of the character when you are trying to write from memory). But I think the use of a different color (as you have shown) should prevent that confusion. I will try using Purple Culture for this feature!

By: Erin

Erin — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 07:24:19 +0000

The tone marking method was very useful to me when working through 盲人国 from the Mandarin Companion Graded Reader series (on recommendation of your article on that series, so thank you)! I want to mark up the rest for subsequent readthroughs, but for my first time through I focused on putting the tone marks over all the identified critical words every time they appeared, and also over any other words I had to look up, to reinforce them but still allow me to just focus on general comprehension. Super useful. That said I’m very spatially/color-…ly? oriented so maybe I’ll try that method out if I’m reading digital texts…

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 20:10:57 +0000

In reply to nanpyn. Oh, thanks for reminding me about this! I totally forgot about it, but I relied heavily on that when responding to student feedback for Skritter vocabulary. For example 现代汉语词典 uses the annotation with the dot.

By: nanpyn

nanpyn — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 12:46:56 +0000

In reply to Olle Linge.

Olle, Thank you very much for the great update! Your effort is so admirable! Good to see the neutral tone mark back. XD
In fact, according to The Flexible/Adaptive Rules (变通规则) in the PRC’s Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabetic Orthography (汉语拼音正词法基本规则 in Simplified Chinese Characters; lit. Hanyu-Pinyin[-Romanization]-Orthography Basic-Rules), it is legitimate to put a middle-round dot (perhaps a middle dot in Unicode) as the neutral tone mark preceding a bound or free unstressed syllable.
Possible Example of Rule 7.2: 清楚 qīng·chu
Possible Example of Rule 7.3: 知道 zhī·dào
Official File URL http://www.moe.gov.cn/ewebeditor/uploadfile/2015/01/13/20150113091717604.pdf
Similarly but in a different way, according to the Chinese version of the Explanatory Table of Tonal Marks (調號說明表) in the ROC’s Manual of the Phonetic Symbols of Mandarin Chinese (國語注音符號手冊 in Traditional Chinese Characters; lit. Mandarin-Phonetic-Symbols Handbook), it is legitimate to put a short horizontal (perhaps a macron in Unicode) as the first tone mark in the upper right corner of the last symbol.
However, the Unicode characters of the neutral tone mark in Hanyu Pinyin and the first tone mark in MPS have NOT been officially defined. (Hanyu Pinyin’s tone marks 1 to 4 and Bopomofo’s tone marks 1 to 4 plus 0 are imperfectly defined and have some display problems of recognizing the correct glyphs.)
Possible Example of Table D: 知道ㄓ ˙ㄉㄠ or ㄓ¯ ˙ㄉㄠ
Official Page URL https://language.moe.gov.tw/001/Upload/files/site_content/M0001/juyin/index.html

By: Tina

Tina — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 08:35:53 +0000

I am only at HSK 2 level but find colors helpful when learning the characters. I marked my flashcards with dark colors (lighter ones are harder to read/remember) and I do remember the color/tone right away with the word. I even use the color coding with my pinyin despite the fact that it already has the tones. However, I am a very visual learner, it might not be helpful for everyone.

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 09:34:23 +0000

In reply to Fearchar. I e-mailed Purple Culture about this and they replied almost immediately saying that they have now added that feature. Neutral tones now have dots! They are still slightly misaligned, but not enough to be a real issue, I think.

By: pdwalker

pdwalker — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 02:50:59 +0000

I’ve reached the point where I find the pinyin to be a distraction because it’s so easy to read. I find myself often covering up the pinyin row while reading.

The tone marks are an excellent idea, because I’ve not reached the point where I can be 100% sure of my tone, even if I know the character and meaning.

I will definitely check out that tool.