Okay so a thing that has been enormously frustrating me learning Chinese
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Okay so a thing that has been enormously frustrating me learning Chinese
And it is the fault of MICROSOFT AND APPLE (not joking)
There are five basic vowels in Chinese. In pinyin you write them
a e i o u ü
ü is like german ü but exaggerated.
However when writing words, each vowel has a tone marker. for example in second tone these vowels are
á é í ó ú ǘ
THE PROBLEM:
Computer operating systems since 1980 make it absurdly hard to type ǘ, ǚ etc.
So people just … … don't.
@mcc some use v in place of ü, so e.g. on my phone if I long press v it give me ǚǖǘǜü -
Okay so a thing that has been enormously frustrating me learning Chinese
And it is the fault of MICROSOFT AND APPLE (not joking)
There are five basic vowels in Chinese. In pinyin you write them
a e i o u ü
ü is like german ü but exaggerated.
However when writing words, each vowel has a tone marker. for example in second tone these vowels are
á é í ó ú ǘ
THE PROBLEM:
Computer operating systems since 1980 make it absurdly hard to type ǘ, ǚ etc.
So people just … … don't.
In all written resources I find intended for non-中文 speakers, whenever you find written Pinyin, ǘ is ALWAYS simplified to ú. Which is INCORRECT. That is a DIFFERENT SOUND and 汉语 speakers will NOT UNDERSTAND YOU.
And resources for 中文 speakers are, obviously, written in 中文; the only way 中文 speakers interact with Pinyin is computer IMEs. On these systems, you just replace u with v. Type "lv" to mean lǜ.
By now we have unicode diacritics so ǜ displays easy, but everyone's used to the compromises…
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In all written resources I find intended for non-中文 speakers, whenever you find written Pinyin, ǘ is ALWAYS simplified to ú. Which is INCORRECT. That is a DIFFERENT SOUND and 汉语 speakers will NOT UNDERSTAND YOU.
And resources for 中文 speakers are, obviously, written in 中文; the only way 中文 speakers interact with Pinyin is computer IMEs. On these systems, you just replace u with v. Type "lv" to mean lǜ.
By now we have unicode diacritics so ǜ displays easy, but everyone's used to the compromises…
So:
- Resources that are likely to teach me Chinese words silently omit the diaeresis on ü
- However, I am then expected to know the diaeresis is there, because the Android IME which is the most convenient way to enter 中文 in a computer will expect me to substitute v for u, because Android expects I know 汉语 or else why would I be using a 汉语 phonetic input method?!
- The problem is international cultural norms downstream from a technological problem so I cannot fix it except with a time machine
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So:
- Resources that are likely to teach me Chinese words silently omit the diaeresis on ü
- However, I am then expected to know the diaeresis is there, because the Android IME which is the most convenient way to enter 中文 in a computer will expect me to substitute v for u, because Android expects I know 汉语 or else why would I be using a 汉语 phonetic input method?!
- The problem is international cultural norms downstream from a technological problem so I cannot fix it except with a time machine
@mcc Perhaps try a Chinese textbook printed in Germany?
The "norm" that diacritics don't matter is pretty much unique to the American publishing practices and their overseas influencees.
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@mcc Perhaps try a Chinese textbook printed in Germany?
The "norm" that diacritics don't matter is pretty much unique to the American publishing practices and their overseas influencees.
@riley That's an interesting proposal but said textbook would probably be written in German which would not help me.
That said, how often do Germans *combine* the ü and ú diacritics? Like it seems like Germans would only be using the '` signs when speaking French, in which case they don't need the ü.
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@mcc some use v in place of ü, so e.g. on my phone if I long press v it give me ǚǖǘǜü
@shironeko Hmm… my Android will do this if I longpress v on the Chinese keyboard, but not if I longpress v on the English keyboard. But it would be more convenient on the English keyboard because I have to perform extra steps on the Chinese keyboard to type roman characters instead of hanzi.
Maybe I should fiddle with the settings. Or switch to Keyboard Designer.
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@riley That's an interesting proposal but said textbook would probably be written in German which would not help me.
That said, how often do Germans *combine* the ü and ú diacritics? Like it seems like Germans would only be using the '` signs when speaking French, in which case they don't need the ü.
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@drahardja @riley yeah the problem is easy to fix i just need to get around to it, it's just awkward because I need to fix it 3x (Android, Linux, Windows, Linux and Windows I'm using the same text input system so at least I can fix it the same way but Android is its own thing)
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Okay so a thing that has been enormously frustrating me learning Chinese
And it is the fault of MICROSOFT AND APPLE (not joking)
There are five basic vowels in Chinese. In pinyin you write them
a e i o u ü
ü is like german ü but exaggerated.
However when writing words, each vowel has a tone marker. for example in second tone these vowels are
á é í ó ú ǘ
THE PROBLEM:
Computer operating systems since 1980 make it absurdly hard to type ǘ, ǚ etc.
So people just … … don't.
@mcc I'm learning Bangla and latin transliteration for it is not at all standardized so it has been really helpful to learn the Bengali alphabet in parallel with learning grammar and vocabulary.
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@riley That's an interesting proposal but said textbook would probably be written in German which would not help me.
That said, how often do Germans *combine* the ü and ú diacritics? Like it seems like Germans would only be using the '` signs when speaking French, in which case they don't need the ü.
@mcc Well, actually, a lot of stuff is printed in English in Germany.
The German language doesn't make a use of dual diacritics, but at least, publishers with experience with umlauts would not automatically neglect them just because they used to be hassly to typeset.
FWIW, Vietnamese uses dual diacritics extensively. A publishing house that puts out Vietnamese textbooks would likely have no trouble at all doing the same for Mandarin.
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@drahardja @mcc There's probably some sort of standard keyboard combination set / 'input method' for this sort of thing.
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@mcc I'm learning Bangla and latin transliteration for it is not at all standardized so it has been really helpful to learn the Bengali alphabet in parallel with learning grammar and vocabulary.
@tedmielczarek That makes sense, and actually, I'm finding written Chinese easier to learn than spoken Chinese.
Problems:
- There are ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND hanzi characters. You only need to know about 3000 in practice but 3000 is a large number.
- I alluded to this above, but the most common way to enter written Chinese into a computer is… to type the spoken Chinese equivalent phonetically!
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@drahardja @mcc There's probably some sort of standard keyboard combination set / 'input method' for this sort of thing.
@riley @drahardja I am not the best person to comment on this but:
- In general, computer and phone eastern language input systems have diverged into slightly different evolutionary paths.
- I strongly suspect Apple devices either do, or can be configured to, have a reasonable unified behavior if you use the longpress method. I don't own Apple devices.
- I am using a slightly unusual input method called "XCompose", which is built in to Linux and can be enabled in Windows with "WinCompose".
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@mcc Well, actually, a lot of stuff is printed in English in Germany.
The German language doesn't make a use of dual diacritics, but at least, publishers with experience with umlauts would not automatically neglect them just because they used to be hassly to typeset.
FWIW, Vietnamese uses dual diacritics extensively. A publishing house that puts out Vietnamese textbooks would likely have no trouble at all doing the same for Mandarin.
@mcc That having been said, I find that at least in mathematics and computer-and aviation-related subjects, German textbooks tend to teach faster and deeper than comparable English ones. I'm not entirely sure if it's about cultural differences or about the German language allowing itself more grammatic complexity. If this trend also applies to other subjects, that alone might be a good reason to learn some German.
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@riley @drahardja I am not the best person to comment on this but:
- In general, computer and phone eastern language input systems have diverged into slightly different evolutionary paths.
- I strongly suspect Apple devices either do, or can be configured to, have a reasonable unified behavior if you use the longpress method. I don't own Apple devices.
- I am using a slightly unusual input method called "XCompose", which is built in to Linux and can be enabled in Windows with "WinCompose".
- XCompose is based on "visual overlap", it's trying to emulate a key on a typewriter that would type without advancing. So for example if you type COMPOSE / o it becomes ø. This can easily type ü, ú, ǔ etc but the standard default XCompose file was designed in the 80s before unicode so it lacks ǘ. I have a custom XCompose file I copy between all my computers which is what makes this a "get around to it" kind of thing. But this fixes the problem for no one else
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@mcc That having been said, I find that at least in mathematics and computer-and aviation-related subjects, German textbooks tend to teach faster and deeper than comparable English ones. I'm not entirely sure if it's about cultural differences or about the German language allowing itself more grammatic complexity. If this trend also applies to other subjects, that alone might be a good reason to learn some German.
@riley Americans are generally in agreement that our standard textbooks are so bad it constitutes a crisis. It's possible the effect you're describing is, literally, due to the internal politics of the state of Texas
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@riley @drahardja I am not the best person to comment on this but:
- In general, computer and phone eastern language input systems have diverged into slightly different evolutionary paths.
- I strongly suspect Apple devices either do, or can be configured to, have a reasonable unified behavior if you use the longpress method. I don't own Apple devices.
- I am using a slightly unusual input method called "XCompose", which is built in to Linux and can be enabled in Windows with "WinCompose".
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@drahardja @riley Yes. Which means there's no especial pressure for anyone to fix this in a systematic way
