I was surprised to discover a new little dropdown option in the Gmail menu bar today, with the Chinese character 拼 on it (for 拼音, pinyin). After playing with it, it became clear that it’s an in-browser input method–a way to type in Chinese characters. Most people install Chinese IMEs at the operating system level (Chinese input is supported by Windows, Mac OS, and Linux now), but now Gmail is offering a way to type pinyin without the OS-level …
26
Feb
2013
2013
Creating Characters by SVG
A new project called SVG Hanzi (SVG 漢字/SVG 汉子) allows anyone to piece together an image of a character by specifying its structure and component parts. Very cool!
From the site:
SVG Hanzi is a web service that can be used to obtain a picture of any Chinese character in SVG format.
It is only necessary to visit a link that looks like http://svghanzi.appspot.com/[Character Code].
Character Code here should consist of an Ideographic Description Character ⿰, ⿱, ⿲,
…
21
Feb
2013
2013
First Look at Google Glass and Chinese
I’m pretty into geeky tech stuff, so I’m excited about Google Glass. On the new promo site, though, I noticed this strange photo:
My first thought was, “where can you buy vegetables in Chinese by the pound?” Must be in Chinatown in the U.S.
I showed this to my wife, and her immediate reaction was, “they wrote the 苗 in 豆苗 wrong.”
If you’re using Google Glass to buy vegetables in Chinese in Chinatown in the U.S., I’d imagine …
20
Nov
2012
2012
CIEE Conference: Tech and Chinese
Over the weekend I joined the CIEE Conference in Shanghai. It struck me as a mini-ACTFL (but in town!), focused on study abroad. I was part of a panel discussion on “Effective Use of the New Digital Chinese Language Technology,” chaired by David Moser and also joined by Brendan O’Kane.
To sum up our initial points (and apologies if I get any of these wrong), what we said was:
- David Moser: Chinese used to be a huge pain …
25
Sep
2012
2012
iOS6 has your iPhone speaking Chinese
I got a great tip from my friend Will Stevenson yesterday. Apparently iOS6 not only added text-to-speech support for new languages, but also enabled the ability to recognize and read out Chinese, even when the phone is in English language mode, and even when the text is a mix of Chinese and English.
What it is
Here’s an example of “Speak” enabled for a Chinese spam text:
Here’s an example of “Speak” for a note which includes both …
12
Sep
2012
2012
A Visual Case for Stroke Order
Inevitably, students of Chinese characters will ask, at some point, “why do we have to learn stroke order? What difference does it make?“
It’s a good question. This is the answer:
(The message reads 好无聊. “So bored.”)
This is what Chinese characters start to look like as the strokes flow together. And it’s not just about calligraphy and an appreciation of ancient culture; I discovered the image above through Tencent’s WeChat (the iPhone app).…
22
Aug
2012
2012
Learn Chinese in 3D takes Chinese learning to the third dimension!
What does it mean to take Chinese learning to the third dimension? Well, it means a cool 3D interface for exploring Chinese characters and words, but beyond that, it’s not totally clear. But that’s OK! The way I view this new app, 3D Chinese, is a sort of experiment, a Chinese learning app that was created because it was possible. And I think that’s a good thing. It’s fun, for one (unless you’re a luddite). I’d like to …
20
Jul
2012
2012
Bombing the Wall of Characters
Most Chinese learners have a goal of one day being able to read a Chinese newspaper, or a novel in Chinese. And thanks to better and better tools for learning Chinese, it’s getting easier to work towards that goal progressively. However, even learners who have studied for quite a while report that they still struggle with the “wall of characters” mental block. It’s that irrational, overwhelming feeling (perhaps even a slight sense of panic) we sometimes get when confronted with …
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