Pinyin, Zhuyin, and Mandarin Resources
-
Zhongwen.com is a great
interactive dictionary of characters. The flexible organization of
characters used on the site makes it incredibly easy to look up an
unfamiliar character! (Uses traditional character images and pinyin.)
-
Popup Chinese has a
variety of free tools and Mandarin lesson recordings. Subscribe
for transcripts and other materials.
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Pinyin.info has a lot of
information about pinyin.
-
Chinese tools provides
some other useful tools for working with Chinese characters.
-
This
cross-reference table explains how to convert
pīnyīn
to
zhùyīn.
-
The CEDICT
Chinese dictionary is used on this site to provide
interactive definitions of words.
-
The Unihan
Database was used to create this website. It is a very useful
database of Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean characters,
linking the Unicode to BIG5 and GB2312 character sets, and giving the
pin1yin1 pronunciations for every character.
-
See this huge
chengyu index for help with Chinese four-character sayings.
Chinese on your Computer
Microsoft Windows
Linux
-
The Chinese-HOWTO
will help you get started. Install the TTF fonts (simplified, traditional)
that you need, then add the directories containing the fonts to the
FontPath list in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
- The HOWTO recommends xcin for Chinese input, but a much
better program is SCIM. Read the
Wiki carefully for instructions on setting it up, and post to the mailing
list if you have problems. SCIM is the default under recent releases of Ubuntu,
and it can be started simply by enabling Chinese under System -> Preferences ->
Language Support then turning on "enable support to enter complex characters".
To type in
pīnyīn
with SCIM, select the input method ending in "拼音" from the menu.
Mac OS
-
This page
has tons of info on fonts that could be used by users of any operating
system.
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