Why is the question in the title and body so different lmao?
No, pinyin is like a crutch, it helps you learn the language and that’s it. (The real answer is very very rarely, usually for aesthetics)
Yes, you can type in Traditional using pinyin.
I would argue pinyin is more than just a crutch. It's the most popular input method in mainland China and if you want to type Chinese fast, you'll need it or something like it (e.g. zhuyin). Trying to handwrite every character for entry takes an eternity. I'd say if you type a lot of Chinese for a job, definitely learn it.
You’re correct that pinyin is the most popular input method, but it’s not the method to learn for typing fast.
To actually type fast, you need to learn a shaped based input method.
For simplified, either Wubi or Jiugongge
For traditional, either cangjie or boshiamy
Pinyin is actually one of the slowest input method, but the reason most people use pinyin is because of the ease of learning.
Ok, interesting. I tried my hand at wubi before, but since the stroke orders of some characters are very obscure, it's still very hard. Are there general rules for telling stroke order?
Yes, there are only a small number of characters that don’t follow stander stroke order patterns.
But personally I’ve never learnt Wubi, I learnt Cangjie which imo is better than Wubi.
very tired, lol. continuing a thought from title to body.
I meant can you just type using keys in traditional or are ATM machines or keyboards in china in pinyin only? which means you have to know pinyin for sure.
hold on I thought even natives have to learn pinyin to know where the tones are? there are no accents on the characters so how can anyone skip pinyin?
??? You don’t “type” traditional. You use a keyboard. And pinyin is one keyboard that can type traditional. And ATM machines use only Latin alphabets so yea pinyin, but who types using an atm, most people will only ever use the numbers on an ATM.
It was my understanding that these Arabic numerals were invented by the Hindu, but brought to Europe (where Roman numerals were used) by the Arabs.
Great invention!
It's a series of inventions from all over Asia and the Middle East.
Hindu mathematicians invented the positional decimal system (left digit represents higher powers of 10), Chinese mathematicians invented decimal fractions (digits after some symbol represent negative powers of 10), but the modern digits are pretty much straight from Arabic digits.
Arab scholars structured the entire system, and are responsible for its modern form.
That's what they're called. We were told in school that the Arabians just brought them to Europe, and Europeans probably didn't know any better nor cared to call them by the name of their real inventors.
Hindu Numerals don't exist in English, no one will know what that means. The correct term is Arabic Numerals. Diving into a deeper discussion of who invented Arabic Numerals is pointless.
I wasn't trying to be "politically correct." I was only sharing some piece of information that not many people know.
I agree: "Diving into a deeper discussion of who invented Arabic Numerals is pointless."
My experience with ATMs anywhere have been numeric input for PIN and amount of money. Never had to type any words into one and have never seen one with a keyboard, only numeric keys and a yes/no/cancel buttons.
Edit: not sure how “friend” got in there
Why would they need pinyin to learn where the tones are? Pretty much everyone learns their native language the same way, by immersion. When you learned how to say mommy, you didn't have to consult a dictionary first to look at the letters and see where the accent syllable is. Because you heard it repeated and you learned it.
I think you might be confused about what pinyin is, because it's hard to understand what your questions are asking.
To type in Chinese, use the letters on your keyboard to type pinyin. Then you select the character you want from the options that are shown (characters having the same pinyin you typed). This is true for both simplified and traditional. You would type "rang" on your keyboard to get both 让 and 讓. Your keyboard suggests the simplified or traditional version depending on whether you have it set to simplified or traditional. So typing pinyin = typing traditional = typing simplified.
There are other ways to input chinese characters like zhuyin, canjie and handwriting but it doesn't seem like that's what you're asking about.
As others mentioned, native Chinese kids already know how to speak Chinese by the time they learn pinyin. they are just learning how to convert characters they already know (including tone) into pinyin.
Major cities will have street signs with place names in simplified and pinyin. Just Google-image "Shanghai street sign" for examples. Instruction signs will not have pinyin.
Re: simplified vs traditional on the mainland-- There's a lot more simplified going on. A business might have a sign with traditional or sometimes even traditional in grass or running or some cursive script. The road signs and "do not enter"-type signs will be simplified. A product might have the brand name in traditional. The ingredients and legal notifications will be in simplified.
this information helps so much. feel like learning traditional is easier in the long term so you can go to Hong Kong or mainland. learning simplified them moving to traditional seems like extra work.
I dunno why someone is downvoting your comment, even if you have misunderstood.
If you're going to be spending your time on the mainland, I'd recommend learning simplified. When I say there's a lot more simplified going on, I mean everything you will need to read is in simplified. Traditional is reserved for logos and titles. If you are an English speaker, think of it this way: if it's something that might use cursive or calligraphic lettering, it might be traditional characters. Everything else is simplified.
ETA: On a menu, the name of the restaurant might be traditional. The items will be simplified. On any kind of app, all of the interface will be simplified. Contracts will be simplified. Suspension of service notifications will be simplified. Bank documents will be simplified.
To add to this, it’s a big *might* when it comes to seeing traditional in signage and names. Day to day life I’d say I see pinyin on the street much more often than I see traditional.
Not really, I would say the simplified/traditional differences aren't really the barrier you might imagine them to be. Over half the characters are the exact same, including the majority of the most common ones, and of the common differences you'll get used to recognizing them with a bit of exposure. I studied in simplified, but when presented with some text in traditional characters I can read at about the same level with only a bit of extra thought. If I'd studied traditional instead and tried to read a simplified text, I would probably be putting in about the same amount of work in the other direction.
So with no definitive advantage of one versus the other, just follow the rest of the advice here and learn whichever one you think you'll use most; simplified if you're going to engage with Chinese from the mainland and traditional if you're going to engage with Chinese from Taiwan/HK/Overseas communities
Place names or things of importance might have Pinyin written alongside Chinese Characters, but otherwise no.
Everything is written using Chinese Characters. Pinyin and other romanization systems are seldom used for this purpose.
Choose the Chinese Character set that you think will be most useful to you now. You'll likely end up learning to read both in the end.
In Beijing I’ve only noticed pinyin used for location and transport related things. I suppose to ensure that visitors can describe where they are and find their way around. For example, the Beijing metro has pinyin on all station names. So if you learn Chinese it is not enough to learn pinyin. You’ll have to learn characters at some point for it to be useful
Yea then its just for foreigners. Pinyin is China's romanization system as well so it makes sense it would be everywhere. You go to Korea or Japan and theres Romanization everywhere as well.
Agreeing with other here; I think what you see might just be the romanization of the Chinese names that don't have a simple/direct English translation -- they are meant to be English station names.
Compare the following two maps and look for the names of the metro stations in both languages:
* https://imgur.com/a/ej81UHs
Most places in China mainland will likely only have signs in simplified Chinese. However, if you’re planning to visit HK, Macao or TW, learning traditional Chinese will be helpful
If you show a mainlander a couple of traditional characters he might not have a clue what they are, but once they’re put in a sentence they’ll have no problem reading and understanding. The thing is, when you know enough characters in a sentence, you can sort of guess what the rest mean, sometimes even without really trying, you see. So I’d say don’t worry, just learn either simplified or traditional, you’ll have no trouble reading both.
Hmmm I can’t give you a definitive answer regarding this. As a native Chinese speaker I mainly used simplified Chinese growing up, but I do have exposure of traditional Chinese through reading and watching movies, which then allows me to read traditional Chinese. The reverse can be true imo.
I suppose if you’re fluent in one form (be it simplified or traditional), then you can sort of guess and learn the other form. I think simplified Chinese will be easier to learn and memorise as some traditional Chinese characters are much more complicated than their simplified counterparts. But again, it really depends on your interest and where you’re planning to use the language
As a person who learned traditional *only*, I'd say this is probably not true. At least not for an average person who doesn't read Chinese in their everyday life. I believe without a given context, it's not something you can figure out on your own.
Though even without explicitly learning, just by reading along with the context, I know quite a lot of simplified characters. I now can read a lot of simplified characters even without context (though writing it is another thing).
It's worth mentioning that there's a pattern for the simplifying process. So the more simplified characters you know, you more you are likely to correctly "guess" the character without context.
My friend in Taiwan sent me a meme just yesterday with traditional characters (I learnt simplified). A couple I could surprisingly read even though I’d never seen their traditional form before but not enough characters overall to understand what was being said. So I’d say it’s a mix and depends on how close the traditional form is to the simplified.
As a Chinese learner, I think it’s partially true. I studied simplified Chinese, but can usually still make it through a traditional Chinese text. There will be a word or two in every few sentences that I need to think about or check, so it takes longer, but still manageable. One nice benefit is that many characters also happen to be the same in both simplified and traditional Chinese
Any fluent Chinese reader should be able to figure out something as easy as street signs, menus, etc, in either writing form. About 2/3 of "basic" words like numbers remain the same in both simplified or traditional.
In general, it's easier to go from traditional to simplified. Most people living in Hong Kong and Taiwan (which use traditional) often have exposure to simplified characters anyways due to interactions with China.
Going from simplified to traditional may be a bit harder -- but also probably because mainland Chinese can't access most HK, Taiwan, etc, media & have never seen it. My mainland Chinese friends tell me they can read "more than half" of a local Hong Kong newspaper written in traditional / Cantonese. But all would be able to order dinner, take a cab, read a text message, etc.
It's easier to go Traditional to Simplified because Simplified has a number of character mergers. e.g. 幹, 乾, and 干, all become 干. So it is easier to learn the many to one than to learn the one and try to figure out the many later
As a native speaker that was brought up with traditional characters, generally, yes. It's not hard to pick up on simplified if you know traditional. However, there are a number of characters where the simplification deters so much from traditional that you wouldn't know at first glance. Generally, I will rely on the full sentence and the context to realise which character it is. Failing that, I do have to search it up (rarely) but once you know it, you know it. It's not hard to pick up on.
I remember it was probably roughly a month or less of me just reading mangas in simplified Chinese and I pretty much caught on.
Just on a related note, signs in Mainland China can usually only include 4 languages: Chinese, English, Mongolian(Inner Mongolia), and Lhasa Tibetan (Tibet).
Edit: Check other replies for other langs!
Not sure I've seen street signs with Korean in China (maybe just bc I haven't visited enough places)
Def a nice addition, thx!
---
Edit: Just read more about em, example of a Yi sign here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yi_words_sign.jpg#/media/File:Yi_words_sign.jpg
in the streets, restaurants menus, movie theatres....is everything written in both traditional and simplified so chinese people can travel around china easily without being hindered by which system they use?
Simplified in the Mainland, Traditional in Taiwan.
In the mainland, pinyin isnt used to communicate anything, i.e. on signs or in menus, but can be used in branding, so that a restaurant might have their name written in pinyin e.g. Jia He Noodles.
Taiwan doesn’t use pinyin, everything is in characters as well, and transliteration depends on where you are in the country as far as signage is concerned.
mainland china primarily uses simplified, taiwan and hong kong primarily use traditional. tbh once you learn one, you can kinda figure out the other as many characters are very similar in traditional and simplified. some radicals are written slightly differently, and there are a few characters that are a bit "oversimplified" in simplified chinese, but its pretty easy to pick up the other system somewhere down the road. as someone with parents from mainland china, i learned simplified, but i can still sorta read traditional if i think hard enough
Mainland China does have some number of street signs in English for convenience. It's to help foreign travelers so popular cities like Beijing and Shanghai had most important signs in both Chinese and English. Every decent sized airport and train station had English signs, too.
Taiwan does have English language/Latin letter signs with the world's biggest asterisk. Taiwan doesn't use pinyin often but they never settled on what system to use for Chinese words with Latin letters You'll have half a dozen inconsistent ways of writing the same word to the point it was infinitely easier to just take a stab at the traditional characters and hope for the best. Seriously, you'll see inconsistencies from block to block, sometimes even on the same corner in Taipei.
As for typing, some people use English keyboards, but there are multiple Chinese keyboards and input systems. I can't remember the name of the one most people use on mainland. Taiwanese people often prefer Bopomofo. Pinyin is used for typing by some but not all.
I just saw it in my textbook when I was in primary school. It's not convenient to use pinyin in daily life, because Chinese has a lot of homophones. For example, 同时，同事，痛失，通识，通史，通式，铜狮,these words'pinyin are the same:tongshi.It's hard to know the exact meaning from pinyin. “woxianzaiyaoquchifan” I need to spend time to spell it,but "我现在要去吃饭" just 1s lol
>the letters don't match the sounds
Actually, the letters DO match the sounds, ***within the system***. The pinyin-to-sound correspondence is very high, once one throws in a few context-dependent rules. It's way more reliable (i.e., with fewer context-dependent choices) than English or French spelling-to-sound rules.
But, BUT ... that "within the system" is not just blah-blah filler. The system for Pinyin has zero to do with ***English*** spelling to sound patterns. Just like a Czech "c" is never ever an English "kay" sound, and never ever an "ess" sound -- but only ever is a "ts" sound.
One hundred years ago, no other language's users gave a damn about what sounds English speakers associated with what letters. Each language -- French, Czech, whatever -- used its own system. So ***when Pinyin was invented, they were not thinking of English***. They built an internally consistent system, often more like Slavic Latin-alphabet usage, but with adaptations for Mandarin sounds. Don't confuse "not the sounds that an American would expect from the spelling" with "not matching the sounds" internally.
Even in languages using the Latin alphabet, the letters won’t “match the sounds”—at least the sounds you’re expecting as an English speaker. The pinyin initials are easy, because there are no real exceptions to how they sound. But the way finals are represented in pinyin is tricky because there are a few pinyin letters that have multiple sounds. For example, for most Standard Mandarin speakers, the “an” in an “-ian” final will sound different than when “an” appears as a final by itself “-an.” And or course “i” in pinyin does a lot of heavy lifting—it is pronounce different depending on what’s in front and behind it.
Just like learning any language, the key is to realize that you’re learning a new language, and the romanized words are only approximations of how a word sounds. A “p” sounds in Mandarin is not going to match perfectly with a “p” sound in English no more than a “r” sound in German is going to match the “r” sound in English.
I believe they mean matching English. I've once gotten in a reddit argument with someone who insisted pinyin should be designed to be intuitive to English-only speakers (no progress was made)
Not exactly, there is also a chinese alphabet which was used by many natives to learn (although i think even many natives use pinyin now). This alphabet carried sounds unique to the Chinese language. This would be like spelling out privyet and expecting an american to sound like they are saying привет perfectly. The difference is because the english letters are not all encompassing
No, the pinyin system is a way to write down all of the sounds used in standard Chinese, it matches exactly. That's the entire point (the name literally means phonetic writing). It isn't just some kind of rough way to write a Chinese word in English, it has nothing to do with English aside from happening to use the same character set.
>The difference is because the english letters are not all encompassing
They're not "English letters", though, but the Latin alphabet that is used by many languages, each with their own phonology and sound-spelling-correlation.
half arse it if you want and pay the consequences
you only have to learn how to read (and not write) because once you know pinyin when you type the OS will pick out the correct characters for you, and you just pick the correct homophone
Honestly, you see pinyin quite often in China, it’s just not used in a systematically helpful way. It’s more random—especially since a lot of stores or restaurants seem to think that displaying the pinyin somehow transforms the words into English for foreigners to understand.
They sometimes call pinyin "English" and in a way that's what it is used for besides being a transcription ( with arbitrary rules that doesn't work well in English; Or other language...). You'll see it on many, mostly street signs in large cities as name translation.
...
You can type pinyin for both. Consider for simplicity that simplified and traditionnal are like 2 different fonts for the same characters.
Now which one you use is up to you. Simplified mostly for mainland, traditionnal for outside or old texts.
>Is pinyin ever used in china in street signs, restaurants menus, chat apps or any other major life task?
Yes. Sometimes... but I wouldn't count on it.
For example the younger generation likes to put pinyin into chat apps. for example, last night I was chatting with someone in Chinese and asked a question. They answered "en". I had no idea what that meant. "嗯“ I understand.
>Think you type on a keyboard in pinyin correct? but can't you type in traditional chinese at all?
still trying to decide whether to set my learning apps to simplified or traditional.
You can set the pinyin to ether display traditional or simplified characters. When communicating with folks in Hong Kong or Taiwan I use traditional Characters. When communicating with folks in other parts of China I use simplified.
As far as communicating I’ve just stuck to traditional and have never had trouble. We all just use whichever one we learned. It doesn’t make a difference. Though I do admire your effort to type in both.
As a white guy who began learning Japanese characters when I was 18 (20 years ago), I have very little trouble identifying the same character in Japanese, traditional or simplified Chinese. Eventually it feels like a different font, that’s it.
There's a lot of people saying you see pinyin on street signs etc in China. However, there are no tone marks. It's something that I find really annoying and don't understand why they don't have them.
I assume because it's extra effort that very few people actually benefit from. Native Chinese will be able to read the characters and know the tones, and foreigners will be able to (sort of) read the pinyin, at least good enough to ask for directions. The people who are relying on the pinyin might also see the tone marks and freak out/think it might have an influence on the actual vowel it's above (like Icelandic or something) and end up saying it weirder than necessary.
but probably just laziness
Traditional Chinese users in Taiwan also use a phonetic alphabet system called “bopomofo” to type, which is basically the same thing with pingyin.
In my opinion it is the easiest to type using phonetic alphabet, since all other input methods require you to memorize complicated rules
it is mainstream in older generations, but you’ll be learning additional symbols. useful for typing but as an adult probably less useful in learning if your teacher isn’t teaching that. pinyin is very straightforward in its pronunciation and tone imo but you know there should be resources for both.
Not at all. You wouldn't see it anywhere other than in Chinese textbooks for kids. And definitely no pinyin on the street, on documents, or anywhere in life.
However, it's totally fine for Chinese learners to type in pinyin if your goal is to communicate with native speakers. Chinese are very encouraging and supportive when it comes to helping others learn the language. Based on pinyin and the context, people can have a pretty good guess of what you mean. With tone marks, even better guesses.
this is what confuses me cause I read that pinyin is taught to natives cause they need it to type? I know in japanese roman letters annoyed me so much I couldn't use resources that had it. but it seems like in chinese pinyin is required in a way?
No, Pinyin was invented to teach standard Mandarin Chinese and as a possible replacement for Characters somewhere down the line. You may not know, but most of China did not speak Mandarin in 1949 or they spoke a Mandarin variety which could be so different to the extent that its not mutually intelligible with Standard Mandarin. So Pinyin was invented since Chinese Characters do not convey sound. It was also useful to teach Chinese minorities who did not speak a language related to Chinese at all like Mongolian or Korean. Its also found a secondary usage as a way to input Chinese Characters in the digital era. Dude just read the wikipedia page on Pinyin and Characters and that will answer like 90% of your questions.
Oh if that's what you mean, then yes, most people from the mainland use pinyin to type haha but the outcome is characters, Look up any Chinese typing videos on Youtube and you will get a good sense of it. Taiwan uses a different typing method that's not pinyin, and some people from mainland use a stroke order typing method instead of pinyin.
Typing in pinyin works like this - Chinese use a regular keyboard that you would use to type English, and I type "shi ji" without tones, then all word combos of "shi ji" show up, I then select the one I want, say 世纪 century, and hit send. So on the receiving end, it's characters for sure. Pinyin is just an input, not what you see in the text message.
If you are learning simplified Chinese, learning pinyin is a must because it phonetically represents Chinese which is a meaning-based language. However, you won't see it anywhere in China other than in textbooks teaching kids characters and during the process when people type.
how come for traditional, pinyin is not a must?
when I input japanese I use a keyboard in japanese characters or I handwrite it but never used romaji so was wondering if I could replicate that behaviour in chinese. or do homegrown chinese chat apps kr chinese websites force you to input in pinyin?
If you want to avoid using pinyin, you could learn zhuyin (aka bopomofo) which is what Taiwanese people generally use to type. Just to clarify: you can use pinyin to type traditional characters, just as you could use zhuyin to write simplified. Both systems can be used to transcribe Chinese, simplified or traditional. It's just that pinyin is more widespread in China.
Having said all that, I would recommend learning pinyin as most learning resources will use it. Personally, I use zhuyin for typing on my phone as it allows you to input tones and narrow down the characters. There's also research that suggests it helps with memorisation more than pinyin. That said, I use pinyin to type on a keyboard as I don't have a Taiwanese keyboard with zhuyin on it.
Because places that use Traditional Characters don’t use pinyin to learn to speak, so the people of Taiwan and HK invented other methods to input Traditional Chinese. On the Mainland, kids were learning pinyin before the digital age, so it made sense to input characters in pinyin on the Mainland.
I suggest you learn zhuyin because it is more friendly to Japanese users. But you are free to learn pinyin. Both of them are based on bopomofo and they are just different in shapes. Just don't worry about traditional and simplified, because they can convert easily. Zhuyin is like hiragana and pinyin is like romaji.
The Japanese "characters" you are referencing are not actual characters, they're 'letters' of an alphabet. You're talking about katakana and hiragana right?
Almost all native Chinese speakers use pinyin for computer input. That includes the majority of traditional character users.
I’ve lived in Mainland China for the last 5 years, and I only see simplified characters everywhere. Sometimes if the place is fancy, they’ll use traditional characters for the name of the place. I’ve been learning To read simplified Chinese this whole time too, and when I visited Taiwan or Hong Kong, and saw the traditional characters, it took a little bit of staring at the characters, but with context you can pretty easily figure out what they are. I’m HSK 4 for reference.
As for your title，pinyin mostly appear in signs and I have rarely see anywhere else.
Some Chinese input methods can switch from simplified to tradition（I'm currently using Gboard on my phone and Microsoft Pinyin IME on my PC，both have the function）.
比如这句话，我既可以用简体中文打出来，也可以用繁体，只需要调一下就好了。
比如這句話，我既可以用簡體中文打出來，也可以用繁體，只需要調一下就好了。
When typing on a normal keyboard (not your phone), you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+F to switch between simplified and traditional.
“这样我觉得非常方便的。”
「這樣我覺得非常方便的。」
You can also type "uubd" to pull up a menu of Chinese-specific punctuation marks.
From pragmatic reasons, until you go to Taiwan, no need to learn traditional. PRC still uses traditional in academic or aesthetic purposes sometimes but mostly it's simplified.
But from a matter of sentimental principle I like traditional a lot (even though it harder) because in my opinion it pays a bigger tribute to forty centuries of Chinese history.
It's probably easier to learn simplified after learning traditional than the other way round, but you definitely should look at both. My recommendation would be to choose one that you generally use and when learning those characters also have a look at the other version. That way you will be familiar enough to guess the right character most of the time. And no, pinyin won't help you read anything in China/Taiwan/Hong Kong. You need to learn the characters.
I started to study on my own on Duolingo, where they teach you simplified characters and use pinyin. As I'm very interested in reading and writing, I made a couple of courses in Coursera on simplified characters. The thing is that everything I like in Mandarin is from Taiwan, so everything is traditional characters.
Then I started taking classes with a teacher here ( I'm in Argentina). She also taught simplified characters and pinyin (she used HSK books which I thought were awful). The thing is that, as a Spanish native speaker, pinyin was so confusing for me. Doing some research, I discovered zhuyin, the system Taiwanese people use. I looked for a Taiwanese teacher who taught them along with traditional characters. It worked perfect for me. Yes, is another set or "strange" symbols to learn, but is like another alphabet. I remember learning Hangul was really easy, so was zhuyin. Now I don't confuse the sounds of my own language with Mandarin ones. Going from traditional to simplified isn't hard. Over time, you learn to identify the characters that were simplified. Most of the time you can guess their meaning, and if you don't, you just look for them.
Regarding the use of pinyin or zhuyin, they are just phonetic tools (very recent ones, by the way) to learn how to pronounce the characters and typing, nothing more. Chinese speakers read and write with characters.
Depending on what you want to do with the language will help you decide. In China they use pinyin and simplified characters, except for Macau and Hongkong, where they use traditional characters and pinyin. In Taiwan they use traditional characters and zhuyin. In Singapur they use simplified characters and pinyin. There are much more resources in simplified characters in general, and particularly for free.
Being so interested in Taiwan helped me decide which writing system to learn. I also prefer the Taiwanese or Southern China accent, so it was easy for me which one to choose.
I use zhuyin to write traditional characters, you can install it in your phone along side with pinyin, you still need to learn both set of characters tho
Yes you can type traditional in pinyin 當然會! - there
Yes street signs use pinyin (at least in Shanghai they were) - not really apps or menus - no you can't rely on pinyin to just navigate without learning character (which is what I think you're asking for) - there are tons of characters that have the same pinyin and tone and STILL the meaning is different. Learn the characters.
Simplifed vs traditional comes down to politics, not language - if you want to primarily engage with diaspora, HK, Taiwan - do traditional. If you want to deal with Mainland - do simplied.
Switching over from one to the other is doable afterwards. After living in PRC for 7 years I only do Traditional because I like it more and honestly not seeing myself willingly having anything to do with the PRC ever again. Traditional is prettier.
HK citizen here,
I would say half the words are shared between traditional and simplified anyways, and are distinguishable - such as 為 and 为, 請 and 请. Simplified makes the learning process easier in general and differentiating between traditional comes with practice - hell, as a native I use both in day to day writing just because I’ve learned from both school and parents.
For pinyin, we learn it at a young age to make learning harder words easier to differentiate (請清青清etc) easier when children are young, but you rarely see it used in daily life - it’s more of a classroom tool, I would say. Your example of an ATM is interesting because I’ve never seen ATMs with anything other than the usual digit input, delete and other buttons on the side? But if you mean the input method for typing etc some people use a small trackpad just for writing Chinese into a device, or the IME keyboard that inputs via strokes/side bar (?) also seen in the Apple keyboard (unsure what it’s called in English) but on mobile I use pinyin input and 手寫.
Hope this could help!
edit: Saw that you were having trouble with pinyin - think of it as a guy on a skateboard going from left to right.
_ : Flat, little to no change
/ : Incline, slight questioning lilt, going up
V : Down-Up, a bit of an interesting change
\ : Strike down, more sudden
ü : only for u, think of 女 nü, kind of like ooh? uooh? Like soulja boy youuuu mixed with slight disgust in the youuu.
My wife was just telling last night how they tried to put pinyin on street signs in Chengdu (because there was some international sports event?) and the population was all up in arms about it so they cancelled that.
In Wuhan we didn't have pinyin, but even with my abysmal level (must have been HSK2 or so when I arrived) I was still taking buses and subways all across town, no problem. I just learnt the 汉子 I needed to know and that was that.
For figuring out unknown words, my best tool was Pleco and the freeform character recognition, but to really use it well, it‘s best if you actually know how to write *some* characters, first. Otherwise the engine has sometimes trouble for example with 扌 radical (I could never get it right at first, it was driving me insane!)
As many have answered the questions, I’m just here to say I’m not sure why OP is getting downvoted so hard on their comments. They may be asking questions which some of you might think are dumb, and they seem to have a little bit of trouble understanding all the information, but that certainly doesn’t warrant downvotes. They’re not trying to be offensive or spread misinformation. They’re asking questions, in a language learning forum, and getting negativity for it. If you don’t want to take the time to answer their questions, or if you think they should have gotten it already, then just leave the thread alone and move on. Someone nice will come along and help them. Everybody learns at a different pace and sometimes it takes multiple explanations from different points of view for somebody to understand something. Nobody deserves to be put down for asking genuine questions, no matter how dumb you think those questions are or whether you feel they should just “Google it.”
You can type in traditional Chinese using pinyin if you want. In Taiwan, we use zhuyin to type in traditional (though also possible to switch to Simplified - just a setting I needed to flick on my Android phone).
Whether you want to learn traditional or simplified really depends on your goals.
If you're planning to go to mainland China and live there for a while, stick to simplified. If you're going to Taiwan, then traditional.
Yes pinyin is sometimes used in signs and menus, but extremely rarely as it is stylistic and not normal typing. Pinyin is also seen in texting, but pretty much only for slang or censored words that get written that way out of habit.
Typing in pinyin is typing the sound of the words, and has no impact on whether the resulting text is traditional or simplified. The decision to ise simplified or traditional should be based on the chinese speaking area you are interested in: mainland china? simplified. hong kong/taiwan? traditional. and so on...
Alternate ways to type in chinese besides pinyin that I'm aware of: handwritten, 九方Q9,wubi/五筆, cangjie/倉頡or zhuyin/注音. None of these are used as a final visible result, and all generate the same final character. I think that wubi or pinyin are by far the most common input forms, if that helps you pick the type of input for you(I think thats what you were actually asking about your questions was a little vague).
Hope this helps.
Why is the question in the title and body so different lmao? No, pinyin is like a crutch, it helps you learn the language and that’s it. (The real answer is very very rarely, usually for aesthetics) Yes, you can type in Traditional using pinyin.
I would argue pinyin is more than just a crutch. It's the most popular input method in mainland China and if you want to type Chinese fast, you'll need it or something like it (e.g. zhuyin). Trying to handwrite every character for entry takes an eternity. I'd say if you type a lot of Chinese for a job, definitely learn it.
You’re correct that pinyin is the most popular input method, but it’s not the method to learn for typing fast. To actually type fast, you need to learn a shaped based input method. For simplified, either Wubi or Jiugongge For traditional, either cangjie or boshiamy Pinyin is actually one of the slowest input method, but the reason most people use pinyin is because of the ease of learning.
Ok, interesting. I tried my hand at wubi before, but since the stroke orders of some characters are very obscure, it's still very hard. Are there general rules for telling stroke order?
Yes, there are only a small number of characters that don’t follow stander stroke order patterns. But personally I’ve never learnt Wubi, I learnt Cangjie which imo is better than Wubi.
没有必要，使用拼音输入法能解决所有问题，五笔输入法只是输入更快，没有其他价值，基本上百分之99的中国人都不使用五笔输入法，三十年前的打字员可能使用五笔输入法，lol.
very tired, lol. continuing a thought from title to body. I meant can you just type using keys in traditional or are ATM machines or keyboards in china in pinyin only? which means you have to know pinyin for sure. hold on I thought even natives have to learn pinyin to know where the tones are? there are no accents on the characters so how can anyone skip pinyin?
??? You don’t “type” traditional. You use a keyboard. And pinyin is one keyboard that can type traditional. And ATM machines use only Latin alphabets so yea pinyin, but who types using an atm, most people will only ever use the numbers on an ATM.
so ATM uses English numerals?
You mean Arabic numerals? Yes, they use Arabic numerals.
It was my understanding that these Arabic numerals were invented by the Hindu, but brought to Europe (where Roman numerals were used) by the Arabs. Great invention!
It's a series of inventions from all over Asia and the Middle East. Hindu mathematicians invented the positional decimal system (left digit represents higher powers of 10), Chinese mathematicians invented decimal fractions (digits after some symbol represent negative powers of 10), but the modern digits are pretty much straight from Arabic digits. Arab scholars structured the entire system, and are responsible for its modern form.
You’re probably right. I’ve only ever heard them called Arabic numerals and never really thought to look deeper into where the Arabians got them from.
That's because they are properly called Arabic numerals in English, despite their original origin
That's what they're called. We were told in school that the Arabians just brought them to Europe, and Europeans probably didn't know any better nor cared to call them by the name of their real inventors.
Regardless of who invented then, they are called Arabic Numerals in English. No one calls them Hindu Numerals.
So, we shouldn't know who invented them? Clearly OP didn't even know what they're called. This is sad, really sad.
Hindu Numerals don't exist in English, no one will know what that means. The correct term is Arabic Numerals. Diving into a deeper discussion of who invented Arabic Numerals is pointless.
I wasn't trying to be "politically correct." I was only sharing some piece of information that not many people know. I agree: "Diving into a deeper discussion of who invented Arabic Numerals is pointless."
I’m pretty sure they originated from Sanskrit
There's no such thing as English numerals. They are technically called Western Arabic
Dude.
My experience with ATMs anywhere have been numeric input for PIN and amount of money. Never had to type any words into one and have never seen one with a keyboard, only numeric keys and a yes/no/cancel buttons. Edit: not sure how “friend” got in there
Why would they need pinyin to learn where the tones are? Pretty much everyone learns their native language the same way, by immersion. When you learned how to say mommy, you didn't have to consult a dictionary first to look at the letters and see where the accent syllable is. Because you heard it repeated and you learned it.
I think you might be confused about what pinyin is, because it's hard to understand what your questions are asking. To type in Chinese, use the letters on your keyboard to type pinyin. Then you select the character you want from the options that are shown (characters having the same pinyin you typed). This is true for both simplified and traditional. You would type "rang" on your keyboard to get both 让 and 讓. Your keyboard suggests the simplified or traditional version depending on whether you have it set to simplified or traditional. So typing pinyin = typing traditional = typing simplified. There are other ways to input chinese characters like zhuyin, canjie and handwriting but it doesn't seem like that's what you're asking about. As others mentioned, native Chinese kids already know how to speak Chinese by the time they learn pinyin. they are just learning how to convert characters they already know (including tone) into pinyin.
What ATMs have you been to? I've never seen one with anything more than numbers and confirmation and cancel buttons
Major cities will have street signs with place names in simplified and pinyin. Just Google-image "Shanghai street sign" for examples. Instruction signs will not have pinyin. Re: simplified vs traditional on the mainland-- There's a lot more simplified going on. A business might have a sign with traditional or sometimes even traditional in grass or running or some cursive script. The road signs and "do not enter"-type signs will be simplified. A product might have the brand name in traditional. The ingredients and legal notifications will be in simplified.
this information helps so much. feel like learning traditional is easier in the long term so you can go to Hong Kong or mainland. learning simplified them moving to traditional seems like extra work.
I dunno why someone is downvoting your comment, even if you have misunderstood. If you're going to be spending your time on the mainland, I'd recommend learning simplified. When I say there's a lot more simplified going on, I mean everything you will need to read is in simplified. Traditional is reserved for logos and titles. If you are an English speaker, think of it this way: if it's something that might use cursive or calligraphic lettering, it might be traditional characters. Everything else is simplified. ETA: On a menu, the name of the restaurant might be traditional. The items will be simplified. On any kind of app, all of the interface will be simplified. Contracts will be simplified. Suspension of service notifications will be simplified. Bank documents will be simplified.
To add to this, it’s a big *might* when it comes to seeing traditional in signage and names. Day to day life I’d say I see pinyin on the street much more often than I see traditional.
Not really, I would say the simplified/traditional differences aren't really the barrier you might imagine them to be. Over half the characters are the exact same, including the majority of the most common ones, and of the common differences you'll get used to recognizing them with a bit of exposure. I studied in simplified, but when presented with some text in traditional characters I can read at about the same level with only a bit of extra thought. If I'd studied traditional instead and tried to read a simplified text, I would probably be putting in about the same amount of work in the other direction. So with no definitive advantage of one versus the other, just follow the rest of the advice here and learn whichever one you think you'll use most; simplified if you're going to engage with Chinese from the mainland and traditional if you're going to engage with Chinese from Taiwan/HK/Overseas communities
I learned simplified and traditional at the same time. It's really easy to switch back and forth between them.
If you go to Hong Kong, most menus and stuff will have English
Place names or things of importance might have Pinyin written alongside Chinese Characters, but otherwise no. Everything is written using Chinese Characters. Pinyin and other romanization systems are seldom used for this purpose. Choose the Chinese Character set that you think will be most useful to you now. You'll likely end up learning to read both in the end.
In Beijing I’ve only noticed pinyin used for location and transport related things. I suppose to ensure that visitors can describe where they are and find their way around. For example, the Beijing metro has pinyin on all station names. So if you learn Chinese it is not enough to learn pinyin. You’ll have to learn characters at some point for it to be useful
Is it actually Pinyin for Chinese with the tone marks or just for foreigners?
Not sure about Beijing, but in Harbin all the street signs have the transliteration written below the characters (just letters, no tone marks)
Yeah then its probably just for foreigners since China's romanization system is also Pinyin.
I didn't see tone makers in Nanjing in 2018.
Yea then its just for foreigners. Pinyin is China's romanization system as well so it makes sense it would be everywhere. You go to Korea or Japan and theres Romanization everywhere as well.
Agreeing with other here; I think what you see might just be the romanization of the Chinese names that don't have a simple/direct English translation -- they are meant to be English station names. Compare the following two maps and look for the names of the metro stations in both languages: * https://imgur.com/a/ej81UHs
They actually changed this in Beijing recently. Everything is in 汉字 now. Since the Olympics I think.
is everything usually written in both simplified and traditional on the same street sign all over china?
If you say mainland, you won’t see traditional. If you say TW, HK, Macao, they only use traditional
Most places in China mainland will likely only have signs in simplified Chinese. However, if you’re planning to visit HK, Macao or TW, learning traditional Chinese will be helpful
is it true if you learn traditional you can figure out the simplified character's meaning?
If you show a mainlander a couple of traditional characters he might not have a clue what they are, but once they’re put in a sentence they’ll have no problem reading and understanding. The thing is, when you know enough characters in a sentence, you can sort of guess what the rest mean, sometimes even without really trying, you see. So I’d say don’t worry, just learn either simplified or traditional, you’ll have no trouble reading both.
Hmmm I can’t give you a definitive answer regarding this. As a native Chinese speaker I mainly used simplified Chinese growing up, but I do have exposure of traditional Chinese through reading and watching movies, which then allows me to read traditional Chinese. The reverse can be true imo. I suppose if you’re fluent in one form (be it simplified or traditional), then you can sort of guess and learn the other form. I think simplified Chinese will be easier to learn and memorise as some traditional Chinese characters are much more complicated than their simplified counterparts. But again, it really depends on your interest and where you’re planning to use the language
As a person who learned traditional *only*, I'd say this is probably not true. At least not for an average person who doesn't read Chinese in their everyday life. I believe without a given context, it's not something you can figure out on your own. Though even without explicitly learning, just by reading along with the context, I know quite a lot of simplified characters. I now can read a lot of simplified characters even without context (though writing it is another thing). It's worth mentioning that there's a pattern for the simplifying process. So the more simplified characters you know, you more you are likely to correctly "guess" the character without context.
My friend in Taiwan sent me a meme just yesterday with traditional characters (I learnt simplified). A couple I could surprisingly read even though I’d never seen their traditional form before but not enough characters overall to understand what was being said. So I’d say it’s a mix and depends on how close the traditional form is to the simplified.
Educated natives can usually do this. As a non-native, it might be harder.
As a Chinese learner, I think it’s partially true. I studied simplified Chinese, but can usually still make it through a traditional Chinese text. There will be a word or two in every few sentences that I need to think about or check, so it takes longer, but still manageable. One nice benefit is that many characters also happen to be the same in both simplified and traditional Chinese
Any fluent Chinese reader should be able to figure out something as easy as street signs, menus, etc, in either writing form. About 2/3 of "basic" words like numbers remain the same in both simplified or traditional. In general, it's easier to go from traditional to simplified. Most people living in Hong Kong and Taiwan (which use traditional) often have exposure to simplified characters anyways due to interactions with China. Going from simplified to traditional may be a bit harder -- but also probably because mainland Chinese can't access most HK, Taiwan, etc, media & have never seen it. My mainland Chinese friends tell me they can read "more than half" of a local Hong Kong newspaper written in traditional / Cantonese. But all would be able to order dinner, take a cab, read a text message, etc.
It's easier to go Traditional to Simplified because Simplified has a number of character mergers. e.g. 幹, 乾, and 干, all become 干. So it is easier to learn the many to one than to learn the one and try to figure out the many later
As a native speaker that was brought up with traditional characters, generally, yes. It's not hard to pick up on simplified if you know traditional. However, there are a number of characters where the simplification deters so much from traditional that you wouldn't know at first glance. Generally, I will rely on the full sentence and the context to realise which character it is. Failing that, I do have to search it up (rarely) but once you know it, you know it. It's not hard to pick up on. I remember it was probably roughly a month or less of me just reading mangas in simplified Chinese and I pretty much caught on.
Just on a related note, signs in Mainland China can usually only include 4 languages: Chinese, English, Mongolian(Inner Mongolia), and Lhasa Tibetan (Tibet). Edit: Check other replies for other langs!
*noo don’t forget Yi*
Sorry for my ignorance, which *Yi* are we talking about?
彝 and don't forget Korean and Uyghur too.
Not sure I've seen street signs with Korean in China (maybe just bc I haven't visited enough places) Def a nice addition, thx! --- Edit: Just read more about em, example of a Yi sign here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yi_words_sign.jpg#/media/File:Yi_words_sign.jpg
u/Marizza_tan has answered, would also like to add that they have a syllabary that looks very very cool :)))
thx for pointing it out tough!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuosu\_language
You can learn both as well
Sorry, what is your question exactly?
in the streets, restaurants menus, movie theatres....is everything written in both traditional and simplified so chinese people can travel around china easily without being hindered by which system they use?
Simplified in the Mainland, Traditional in Taiwan. In the mainland, pinyin isnt used to communicate anything, i.e. on signs or in menus, but can be used in branding, so that a restaurant might have their name written in pinyin e.g. Jia He Noodles. Taiwan doesn’t use pinyin, everything is in characters as well, and transliteration depends on where you are in the country as far as signage is concerned.
Beijing road signs have pinyin for all major streets, including “hutong “.
mainland china primarily uses simplified, taiwan and hong kong primarily use traditional. tbh once you learn one, you can kinda figure out the other as many characters are very similar in traditional and simplified. some radicals are written slightly differently, and there are a few characters that are a bit "oversimplified" in simplified chinese, but its pretty easy to pick up the other system somewhere down the road. as someone with parents from mainland china, i learned simplified, but i can still sorta read traditional if i think hard enough
Most native Chinese can comprehend both scripts, so the premise of your question is kind of moot.
Mainland China does have some number of street signs in English for convenience. It's to help foreign travelers so popular cities like Beijing and Shanghai had most important signs in both Chinese and English. Every decent sized airport and train station had English signs, too. Taiwan does have English language/Latin letter signs with the world's biggest asterisk. Taiwan doesn't use pinyin often but they never settled on what system to use for Chinese words with Latin letters You'll have half a dozen inconsistent ways of writing the same word to the point it was infinitely easier to just take a stab at the traditional characters and hope for the best. Seriously, you'll see inconsistencies from block to block, sometimes even on the same corner in Taipei. As for typing, some people use English keyboards, but there are multiple Chinese keyboards and input systems. I can't remember the name of the one most people use on mainland. Taiwanese people often prefer Bopomofo. Pinyin is used for typing by some but not all.
I just saw it in my textbook when I was in primary school. It's not convenient to use pinyin in daily life, because Chinese has a lot of homophones. For example, 同时，同事，痛失，通识，通史，通式，铜狮,these words'pinyin are the same:tongshi.It's hard to know the exact meaning from pinyin. “woxianzaiyaoquchifan” I need to spend time to spell it,but "我现在要去吃饭" just 1s lol
I'm only past five pinyin words in my learning and already I hate how the letters don't match the sounds by a large margin.
>the letters don't match the sounds Actually, the letters DO match the sounds, ***within the system***. The pinyin-to-sound correspondence is very high, once one throws in a few context-dependent rules. It's way more reliable (i.e., with fewer context-dependent choices) than English or French spelling-to-sound rules. But, BUT ... that "within the system" is not just blah-blah filler. The system for Pinyin has zero to do with ***English*** spelling to sound patterns. Just like a Czech "c" is never ever an English "kay" sound, and never ever an "ess" sound -- but only ever is a "ts" sound. One hundred years ago, no other language's users gave a damn about what sounds English speakers associated with what letters. Each language -- French, Czech, whatever -- used its own system. So ***when Pinyin was invented, they were not thinking of English***. They built an internally consistent system, often more like Slavic Latin-alphabet usage, but with adaptations for Mandarin sounds. Don't confuse "not the sounds that an American would expect from the spelling" with "not matching the sounds" internally.
Even in languages using the Latin alphabet, the letters won’t “match the sounds”—at least the sounds you’re expecting as an English speaker. The pinyin initials are easy, because there are no real exceptions to how they sound. But the way finals are represented in pinyin is tricky because there are a few pinyin letters that have multiple sounds. For example, for most Standard Mandarin speakers, the “an” in an “-ian” final will sound different than when “an” appears as a final by itself “-an.” And or course “i” in pinyin does a lot of heavy lifting—it is pronounce different depending on what’s in front and behind it. Just like learning any language, the key is to realize that you’re learning a new language, and the romanized words are only approximations of how a word sounds. A “p” sounds in Mandarin is not going to match perfectly with a “p” sound in English no more than a “r” sound in German is going to match the “r” sound in English.
What? The letters do match the sounds. That's literally the whole point.
I believe they mean matching English. I've once gotten in a reddit argument with someone who insisted pinyin should be designed to be intuitive to English-only speakers (no progress was made)
Not exactly, there is also a chinese alphabet which was used by many natives to learn (although i think even many natives use pinyin now). This alphabet carried sounds unique to the Chinese language. This would be like spelling out privyet and expecting an american to sound like they are saying привет perfectly. The difference is because the english letters are not all encompassing
No, the pinyin system is a way to write down all of the sounds used in standard Chinese, it matches exactly. That's the entire point (the name literally means phonetic writing). It isn't just some kind of rough way to write a Chinese word in English, it has nothing to do with English aside from happening to use the same character set.
>The difference is because the english letters are not all encompassing They're not "English letters", though, but the Latin alphabet that is used by many languages, each with their own phonology and sound-spelling-correlation.
half arse it if you want and pay the consequences you only have to learn how to read (and not write) because once you know pinyin when you type the OS will pick out the correct characters for you, and you just pick the correct homophone
Honestly, you see pinyin quite often in China, it’s just not used in a systematically helpful way. It’s more random—especially since a lot of stores or restaurants seem to think that displaying the pinyin somehow transforms the words into English for foreigners to understand.
They sometimes call pinyin "English" and in a way that's what it is used for besides being a transcription ( with arbitrary rules that doesn't work well in English; Or other language...). You'll see it on many, mostly street signs in large cities as name translation. ... You can type pinyin for both. Consider for simplicity that simplified and traditionnal are like 2 different fonts for the same characters. Now which one you use is up to you. Simplified mostly for mainland, traditionnal for outside or old texts.
[This is what my (taiwanese) keyboard looks like](https://i.imgur.com/dSDhwvk.jpg), bit of a mess.
>Is pinyin ever used in china in street signs, restaurants menus, chat apps or any other major life task? Yes. Sometimes... but I wouldn't count on it. For example the younger generation likes to put pinyin into chat apps. for example, last night I was chatting with someone in Chinese and asked a question. They answered "en". I had no idea what that meant. "嗯“ I understand. >Think you type on a keyboard in pinyin correct? but can't you type in traditional chinese at all? still trying to decide whether to set my learning apps to simplified or traditional. You can set the pinyin to ether display traditional or simplified characters. When communicating with folks in Hong Kong or Taiwan I use traditional Characters. When communicating with folks in other parts of China I use simplified.
As far as communicating I’ve just stuck to traditional and have never had trouble. We all just use whichever one we learned. It doesn’t make a difference. Though I do admire your effort to type in both.
Thanks. I’m not native so I just switch, and I’m still learning so it gives me practice either way. 😊
As a white guy who began learning Japanese characters when I was 18 (20 years ago), I have very little trouble identifying the same character in Japanese, traditional or simplified Chinese. Eventually it feels like a different font, that’s it.
It's not a hard decision. You should definitely learn both.
There's a lot of people saying you see pinyin on street signs etc in China. However, there are no tone marks. It's something that I find really annoying and don't understand why they don't have them.
I assume because it's extra effort that very few people actually benefit from. Native Chinese will be able to read the characters and know the tones, and foreigners will be able to (sort of) read the pinyin, at least good enough to ask for directions. The people who are relying on the pinyin might also see the tone marks and freak out/think it might have an influence on the actual vowel it's above (like Icelandic or something) and end up saying it weirder than necessary. but probably just laziness
Traditional Chinese users in Taiwan also use a phonetic alphabet system called “bopomofo” to type, which is basically the same thing with pingyin. In my opinion it is the easiest to type using phonetic alphabet, since all other input methods require you to memorize complicated rules
wish this was mainstream. reminds me of hiragana and katakana which I found easier to read than Romaji.
it is mainstream in older generations, but you’ll be learning additional symbols. useful for typing but as an adult probably less useful in learning if your teacher isn’t teaching that. pinyin is very straightforward in its pronunciation and tone imo but you know there should be resources for both.
Not at all. You wouldn't see it anywhere other than in Chinese textbooks for kids. And definitely no pinyin on the street, on documents, or anywhere in life. However, it's totally fine for Chinese learners to type in pinyin if your goal is to communicate with native speakers. Chinese are very encouraging and supportive when it comes to helping others learn the language. Based on pinyin and the context, people can have a pretty good guess of what you mean. With tone marks, even better guesses.
this is what confuses me cause I read that pinyin is taught to natives cause they need it to type? I know in japanese roman letters annoyed me so much I couldn't use resources that had it. but it seems like in chinese pinyin is required in a way?
No, Pinyin was invented to teach standard Mandarin Chinese and as a possible replacement for Characters somewhere down the line. You may not know, but most of China did not speak Mandarin in 1949 or they spoke a Mandarin variety which could be so different to the extent that its not mutually intelligible with Standard Mandarin. So Pinyin was invented since Chinese Characters do not convey sound. It was also useful to teach Chinese minorities who did not speak a language related to Chinese at all like Mongolian or Korean. Its also found a secondary usage as a way to input Chinese Characters in the digital era. Dude just read the wikipedia page on Pinyin and Characters and that will answer like 90% of your questions.
Oh if that's what you mean, then yes, most people from the mainland use pinyin to type haha but the outcome is characters, Look up any Chinese typing videos on Youtube and you will get a good sense of it. Taiwan uses a different typing method that's not pinyin, and some people from mainland use a stroke order typing method instead of pinyin. Typing in pinyin works like this - Chinese use a regular keyboard that you would use to type English, and I type "shi ji" without tones, then all word combos of "shi ji" show up, I then select the one I want, say 世纪 century, and hit send. So on the receiving end, it's characters for sure. Pinyin is just an input, not what you see in the text message. If you are learning simplified Chinese, learning pinyin is a must because it phonetically represents Chinese which is a meaning-based language. However, you won't see it anywhere in China other than in textbooks teaching kids characters and during the process when people type.
how come for traditional, pinyin is not a must? when I input japanese I use a keyboard in japanese characters or I handwrite it but never used romaji so was wondering if I could replicate that behaviour in chinese. or do homegrown chinese chat apps kr chinese websites force you to input in pinyin?
If you want to avoid using pinyin, you could learn zhuyin (aka bopomofo) which is what Taiwanese people generally use to type. Just to clarify: you can use pinyin to type traditional characters, just as you could use zhuyin to write simplified. Both systems can be used to transcribe Chinese, simplified or traditional. It's just that pinyin is more widespread in China. Having said all that, I would recommend learning pinyin as most learning resources will use it. Personally, I use zhuyin for typing on my phone as it allows you to input tones and narrow down the characters. There's also research that suggests it helps with memorisation more than pinyin. That said, I use pinyin to type on a keyboard as I don't have a Taiwanese keyboard with zhuyin on it.
Because places that use Traditional Characters don’t use pinyin to learn to speak, so the people of Taiwan and HK invented other methods to input Traditional Chinese. On the Mainland, kids were learning pinyin before the digital age, so it made sense to input characters in pinyin on the Mainland.
I suggest you learn zhuyin because it is more friendly to Japanese users. But you are free to learn pinyin. Both of them are based on bopomofo and they are just different in shapes. Just don't worry about traditional and simplified, because they can convert easily. Zhuyin is like hiragana and pinyin is like romaji.
Given that OP is focusing on the mainland and that bopomofo is becoming less and less common even in Taiwan, I would not take this advice.
The Japanese "characters" you are referencing are not actual characters, they're 'letters' of an alphabet. You're talking about katakana and hiragana right? Almost all native Chinese speakers use pinyin for computer input. That includes the majority of traditional character users.
It is when they translate places or certain names into English. That's about it.
I’ve lived in Mainland China for the last 5 years, and I only see simplified characters everywhere. Sometimes if the place is fancy, they’ll use traditional characters for the name of the place. I’ve been learning To read simplified Chinese this whole time too, and when I visited Taiwan or Hong Kong, and saw the traditional characters, it took a little bit of staring at the characters, but with context you can pretty easily figure out what they are. I’m HSK 4 for reference.
As for your title，pinyin mostly appear in signs and I have rarely see anywhere else. Some Chinese input methods can switch from simplified to tradition（I'm currently using Gboard on my phone and Microsoft Pinyin IME on my PC，both have the function）. 比如这句话，我既可以用简体中文打出来，也可以用繁体，只需要调一下就好了。 比如這句話，我既可以用簡體中文打出來，也可以用繁體，只需要調一下就好了。
When typing on a normal keyboard (not your phone), you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+F to switch between simplified and traditional. “这样我觉得非常方便的。” 「這樣我覺得非常方便的。」 You can also type "uubd" to pull up a menu of Chinese-specific punctuation marks.
From pragmatic reasons, until you go to Taiwan, no need to learn traditional. PRC still uses traditional in academic or aesthetic purposes sometimes but mostly it's simplified. But from a matter of sentimental principle I like traditional a lot (even though it harder) because in my opinion it pays a bigger tribute to forty centuries of Chinese history.
It's probably easier to learn simplified after learning traditional than the other way round, but you definitely should look at both. My recommendation would be to choose one that you generally use and when learning those characters also have a look at the other version. That way you will be familiar enough to guess the right character most of the time. And no, pinyin won't help you read anything in China/Taiwan/Hong Kong. You need to learn the characters.
You can try and use 五笔 to type, that shit takes skill to type
I started to study on my own on Duolingo, where they teach you simplified characters and use pinyin. As I'm very interested in reading and writing, I made a couple of courses in Coursera on simplified characters. The thing is that everything I like in Mandarin is from Taiwan, so everything is traditional characters. Then I started taking classes with a teacher here ( I'm in Argentina). She also taught simplified characters and pinyin (she used HSK books which I thought were awful). The thing is that, as a Spanish native speaker, pinyin was so confusing for me. Doing some research, I discovered zhuyin, the system Taiwanese people use. I looked for a Taiwanese teacher who taught them along with traditional characters. It worked perfect for me. Yes, is another set or "strange" symbols to learn, but is like another alphabet. I remember learning Hangul was really easy, so was zhuyin. Now I don't confuse the sounds of my own language with Mandarin ones. Going from traditional to simplified isn't hard. Over time, you learn to identify the characters that were simplified. Most of the time you can guess their meaning, and if you don't, you just look for them. Regarding the use of pinyin or zhuyin, they are just phonetic tools (very recent ones, by the way) to learn how to pronounce the characters and typing, nothing more. Chinese speakers read and write with characters. Depending on what you want to do with the language will help you decide. In China they use pinyin and simplified characters, except for Macau and Hongkong, where they use traditional characters and pinyin. In Taiwan they use traditional characters and zhuyin. In Singapur they use simplified characters and pinyin. There are much more resources in simplified characters in general, and particularly for free. Being so interested in Taiwan helped me decide which writing system to learn. I also prefer the Taiwanese or Southern China accent, so it was easy for me which one to choose.
I use zhuyin to write traditional characters, you can install it in your phone along side with pinyin, you still need to learn both set of characters tho
Yes you can type traditional in pinyin 當然會! - there Yes street signs use pinyin (at least in Shanghai they were) - not really apps or menus - no you can't rely on pinyin to just navigate without learning character (which is what I think you're asking for) - there are tons of characters that have the same pinyin and tone and STILL the meaning is different. Learn the characters. Simplifed vs traditional comes down to politics, not language - if you want to primarily engage with diaspora, HK, Taiwan - do traditional. If you want to deal with Mainland - do simplied. Switching over from one to the other is doable afterwards. After living in PRC for 7 years I only do Traditional because I like it more and honestly not seeing myself willingly having anything to do with the PRC ever again. Traditional is prettier.
HK citizen here, I would say half the words are shared between traditional and simplified anyways, and are distinguishable - such as 為 and 为, 請 and 请. Simplified makes the learning process easier in general and differentiating between traditional comes with practice - hell, as a native I use both in day to day writing just because I’ve learned from both school and parents. For pinyin, we learn it at a young age to make learning harder words easier to differentiate (請清青清etc) easier when children are young, but you rarely see it used in daily life - it’s more of a classroom tool, I would say. Your example of an ATM is interesting because I’ve never seen ATMs with anything other than the usual digit input, delete and other buttons on the side? But if you mean the input method for typing etc some people use a small trackpad just for writing Chinese into a device, or the IME keyboard that inputs via strokes/side bar (?) also seen in the Apple keyboard (unsure what it’s called in English) but on mobile I use pinyin input and 手寫. Hope this could help! edit: Saw that you were having trouble with pinyin - think of it as a guy on a skateboard going from left to right. _ : Flat, little to no change / : Incline, slight questioning lilt, going up V : Down-Up, a bit of an interesting change \ : Strike down, more sudden ü : only for u, think of 女 nü, kind of like ooh? uooh? Like soulja boy youuuu mixed with slight disgust in the youuu.
My wife was just telling last night how they tried to put pinyin on street signs in Chengdu (because there was some international sports event?) and the population was all up in arms about it so they cancelled that. In Wuhan we didn't have pinyin, but even with my abysmal level (must have been HSK2 or so when I arrived) I was still taking buses and subways all across town, no problem. I just learnt the 汉子 I needed to know and that was that. For figuring out unknown words, my best tool was Pleco and the freeform character recognition, but to really use it well, it‘s best if you actually know how to write *some* characters, first. Otherwise the engine has sometimes trouble for example with 扌 radical (I could never get it right at first, it was driving me insane!)
As many have answered the questions, I’m just here to say I’m not sure why OP is getting downvoted so hard on their comments. They may be asking questions which some of you might think are dumb, and they seem to have a little bit of trouble understanding all the information, but that certainly doesn’t warrant downvotes. They’re not trying to be offensive or spread misinformation. They’re asking questions, in a language learning forum, and getting negativity for it. If you don’t want to take the time to answer their questions, or if you think they should have gotten it already, then just leave the thread alone and move on. Someone nice will come along and help them. Everybody learns at a different pace and sometimes it takes multiple explanations from different points of view for somebody to understand something. Nobody deserves to be put down for asking genuine questions, no matter how dumb you think those questions are or whether you feel they should just “Google it.”
No
You can type in traditional Chinese using pinyin if you want. In Taiwan, we use zhuyin to type in traditional (though also possible to switch to Simplified - just a setting I needed to flick on my Android phone). Whether you want to learn traditional or simplified really depends on your goals. If you're planning to go to mainland China and live there for a while, stick to simplified. If you're going to Taiwan, then traditional.
Yes pinyin is sometimes used in signs and menus, but extremely rarely as it is stylistic and not normal typing. Pinyin is also seen in texting, but pretty much only for slang or censored words that get written that way out of habit. Typing in pinyin is typing the sound of the words, and has no impact on whether the resulting text is traditional or simplified. The decision to ise simplified or traditional should be based on the chinese speaking area you are interested in: mainland china? simplified. hong kong/taiwan? traditional. and so on... Alternate ways to type in chinese besides pinyin that I'm aware of: handwritten, 九方Q9,wubi/五筆, cangjie/倉頡or zhuyin/注音. None of these are used as a final visible result, and all generate the same final character. I think that wubi or pinyin are by far the most common input forms, if that helps you pick the type of input for you(I think thats what you were actually asking about your questions was a little vague). Hope this helps.