My Journal

For most expats who live in China, sooner or later they need to do one of these three challenges. All these can be done easily by using pinyin!
 

1. How to Use Chinese Dictionary

Contents:
1. Radical
2. The steps

Many of my china expats friends have switched to electronic Chinese dictionary. Many own the electronic dictionary but I am still using my paper-book-dictionary (cost 50 yuan vs thousand of yuan for the electronic one, as of 2009).

Let me give you an example how to look and find word 你 (ni you).

For example, one wants to check the word 你 in a dictionary. How to do it?

1. Check the radical (see more information about radical on the right), in this case the radical is "亻" which is at number 19 of picture below. 

About  Chinese Radical

To look for a word in dictionary, you need to know the radical. Some is pretty easy to guess, some is not. But after a while, I get used to it. Radicals are used to group characters which are useful for dictionary purposes, for one thing. Some are easily guessed than others.

For example:
Characters that have radicals of 女 are , , etc.

Characters that have radicals of 亻 are , , etc.

2. Find the derivatives: Since the radical is at number 19, that means we need to check the group 19 of derivatives. Browse trough all characters under group 19. Find the character and get the pinyin, nǐ.

Blown picture:

3. Open the dictionary to check “nǐ”.




The pictures are taken from my dictionary published by OXFORD University Press.

2. How to Type Chinese Characters in the computer

If one wants to deal with Chinese language in computer, it's formidable for not being able to type. You could download the software for free from here for example

http://pinyin.sogou.com/?s=alading

It's free. SoGou (Sohu) is a big internet company in China. Yeah, they can be trusted.

To switch between English-Chinese can be done easily by pressing CTRL-SPACE. For example one wants to type "你". Just type in the pinyin which is "ni". A list of characters will appear, pick the one you need.

 3. How to send SMS in Chinese

The principle is the same as typing in the computer. All you need is to type the pinyin. For example to write "你", dial "ni" and list of Chinese characters will appear. For common key pad "ni" would be 64 since 6 is for letter mno and 4 is for letter ghi. Pick the one you need "你" .