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Hi Dali and everyone, Dali: Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and describing it so well. You enlightened me about how to type in Chinese by using Pinyin on a computer. Then, I read more about it on Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, all children in mainland China <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China> are required to learn Pinyin <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin> in school. Pinyin is in fact very popular over there. If people do not speak Chinese, they are not able to use Pinyin. They will need to learn the standard Chinese pronunciation of characters before they are able to use this input method. I wonder if Deafian Chinese children have particular difficulties in using Pinyin because they are not skilled in learning the standard Chinese pronunciation of characters. The stroke method does not require the user to know how to speak Mandarin nor to be able to recognize the characters. I think that Chinese Deafian users who use a stroke-based input method are able to construct the character from scratch as one would do in writing Chinese. However, according to Wikipedia, it is a disadvantage in that it may cause language attrition <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_attrition> and skills loss in adults, and it may be a learning barrier for children as concerns written Chinese. Best regards, André De : Dali balti <[log in to unmask]> Répondre à : "SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages" <[log in to unmask]> Date : Wed, 29 Jul 2015 16:25:10 +0100 À : <[log in to unmask]> Objet : Re : SW-L Digest - 27 Jul 2015 to 28 Jul 2015 (#2015-145) Hello dear André!Before starting to use computers to type Chinese, it was thought that it would not work because Chinese is not letters but symbols! But they found out two basic ways to type Chinese on computer. The first one is by using Chinese pronunciation transcription which is called "pinyin". Chinese is based on syllables, there are no single letters, which means that you cannot make up new pronunciations out of the existing ones, I will give you some examples; with the phoneme "b" you can have the following combinations: ba/bi/bu/ban/bang/beng/etc... But with the phoneme "j" you CANNOT make any of the previous pronunciations, except "ji". In all there are about 400 syllables in Chinese and it is lesser than English which is a free language in which you can have any combination of letters (some linguistics say that in English there are about more than 65000 syllables)... You can imagine that now! Back to the writing system, and using "pinyin", in Chinese we type the pronunciation transcription and not characters themselves. The pronunciation system is a worldwide system for Chinese learning! For example, to type "bicycle" in Chinese, I need to type the pronunciation pinyin into the computer and it will show up the Chinese characters---- zì xíng chē = bicycle. That's easy, isn't it? BUT! BUT! BUT! The problem is bigger when the word to type is bisyllabic. Because the computer will show you a list of many words having the same pronunciation but with different writing forms. For example: the pronunciation "yan yuan" would have the following different characters! 演员 / 眼缘/ 盐源/ 颜渊 So in this case you will have to click on the word you need each time you're typing! It's not boring because the computer can detect the logical words combinations in a single sentence, sometimes it might miss the point! Some other Chinese people use strike by stroke system, which looks like SW! Every Chinese character has a logical way to be written in order stroke by stroke. On computers you can find this system but it is boring, you type on the basic strokes and the computer detects the order and try to guess the character, it shows you a list of possibilities and you click on the character you want! Chinese is now written from left to write! Envoyé depuis Yahoo Mail pour iPhone <https://yho.com/footer0> > Le 29 juil. 2015 05:06:26, SW-L automatic digest system a écrit :There are 3 > messages totalling 2543 lines in this issue. > > Topics of the day: > > 1. Writing Chinese using a computer > 2. Certificate of Participation for SignWriting Symposium 2015 (2) > > ________________________________________________ > > > SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION > > Valerie Sutton > SignWriting List moderator > [log in to unmask] <javascript:return> > > Post Messages to the SignWriting List: > [log in to unmask] <javascript:return> > > SignWriting List Archives & Home Page > http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist > > Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages > http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2015 08:53:17 -0400 > From: =?ISO-8859-1?B?QW5kcuk=?= Thibeault <[log in to unmask] > <javascript:return> > > Subject: Writing Chinese using a computer > >> > Ce message est au format MIME. Comme votre programme de lecture de >> courriers ne comprend pas > ce format, il se peut que tout ou une partie de ce message soit illisible. > > --Boundary_(ID_Uv5N/Vkzu2zFlnVb3vZ80Q) > Content-Type: text/plain; > charset=iso-8859-1 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > Hi Dali, Yu and everyone, > > =20 > > > > I noticed that some people posted their message on the SW list. Some of > them talk about the Chinese writing characteristic (vertical writing vs > horizontal writing) and a Chinese computer. Why do I ask Dali and Yu? > Because both of you are skilled in writing Chinese and in using a computer. > Then, I would like you to share your experiences with us regarding writing > Chinese using your computer. > > =20 > > > > Yu: You are an international student. I cannot remember the name of the > College you attend. You live in Toronto. You mention that you lived in Chin= > a > before. I have a question: Can you write Chinese faster by using a > computer? Does writing with a computer in English vs writing with a > computer in Chinese take about the same time? > > =20 > > > > Dali: I cannot believe that you can use up to 15 languages! I understand > that you are a Chinese teacher. As you can write both the SW Tunisian Sign > Language and the SW Chinese Sign Language, I have two questions: 1) What ar= > e > the similarities and the differences between writing a SignWriting and usua= > l > Chinese as concerns using a computer? Which one is slower or faster when > using the keyword or the mouse? When the writing is done horizontally or > vertically? What action is the easiest, the most difficult, and so forth? > > =20 > > > > It is common for people to use a translate feature and translate from > glossed texts to sign texts in order to save time. 2) Is it common for a > Chinese user to write Chinese using a translation feature (I do not know th= > e > exact word (translation) for the Chinese computer system) like SignPuddle > (translate feature) since they need to save time? > > =20 > > > > Yu and Dali: Is it true that modern Chinese is written horizontally when > using a computer? > > =20 > > > > Best regards, > > =20 > > Andr=E9 > > > > ________________________________________________ > > > SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION > > Valerie Sutton > SignWriting List moderator > [log in to unmask] <javascript:return> > > Post Messages to the SignWriting List: > [log in to unmask] <javascript:return> > > SignWriting List Archives & Home Page > http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist > > Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages > http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=3DSW-L&A=3D1 > > --Boundary_(ID_Uv5N/Vkzu2zFlnVb3vZ80Q) > Content-Type: text/html; > charset=iso-8859-1 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > > > > > > > > aches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> > > aches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_themedata.xml"> > > ________________________________________________ SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION Valerie Sutton SignWriting List moderator [log in to unmask] Post Messages to the SignWriting List: [log in to unmask] SignWriting List Archives & Home Page http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1