How to show tone marks above Chinese characters

[Jas]

Hi,

Is there a way I can input pinyin, choose the character but also select a tone mark to be displayed above the character?

Thanks in advance!

Jas

p.s. I have a number of pinyin input methods installed such as IMKQIM, Sogou, standard Mac Pinyin

[James Liebner]

I think you would have to find a set of characters with tone marks already combined to be able to do what you are seeking.  Since native Chinese already know the pronunciation of the characters, you can imagine such a product would have a small market.  You could just write the numbers 1,2,3,4, next to the character or the tone marks to indicate the tone.  

 

Click on the link below to see some of my photos:

http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/28275.html

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From: Jas <jasthem...@gmail.com>
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Sent: Sunday, July 8, 2012 1:09 AM
Subject: [chinese mac] How to show tone marks above Chinese characters

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[Kerim Friedman]

I don't know of options to just display the tone, but there are various options for displaying Chinese+pinyin/zhuyin transcription including the tone as well. See here:

http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/romanization.html

Kerim

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P. Kerim Friedman 傅可恩

Associate Professor

Department of Indigenous Cultures

College of Indigenous Studies

National DongHwa University, TAIWAN

助理教授國立東華大學民族文化學系

[康文德]

Hi there,

there is one way I know of, which is very easy to use:
Useing the keyboard called "U.S. Extended" (the symbol is a little US flag with an "U" in the corner) on the Mac, gives you additional diacritical marks.
They are made combining the option/alt-key with a, e, v and `. Then you can type any letter after them and it has a diaritical ("tone") mark on top of it, e.g.: ā, á, ǎ, à

Once you have changed your keyboard to "U.S. Extended", you can turn on "Show Keyboard Viewer", where you can also look them up.

Hope this helps!

[Tom Gewecke]

On Jul 9, 2012, at 3:59 AM, 康文德 wrote:

>
> They are made combining the option/alt-key with a, e, v and `. Then you can type any letter after them and it has a diaritical ("tone") mark on top of it, e.g.: ā, á, ǎ, à

But the question relates how to add these marks to Chinese characters, not Latin ones.

[Jas]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the suggestions, very much appreciated.

I tried the US Extended method but as soon as I switch to pinyin input (after I generate the tone mark in US E), the tone mark simply disappears.

I may try to  contact the publisher of New Practical Chinese Reader because they do it in Vol 2+ then again, it's probably typeset so anything is possible.

I also like the idea of finding a character set with tone marks, I'll do some research on that.

If I find an answer, I'll be sure to update everyone here.

Thanks!

Jas

[Tom Gewecke]

On Jul 11, 2012, at 12:23 AM, Jas wrote:

>
> I tried the US Extended method but as soon as I switch to pinyin input (after I generate the tone mark in US E), the tone mark simply disappears.

You did it backwards. First type the chinese character, then switch to US extended and type, for example, Alt + shift + a, and it will put a macron over the character. But the positioning is too low and not legible.

我̄

[Tom Gewecke]

On Jul 11, 2012, at 12:23 AM, Jas wrote:

I tried the US Extended method but as soon as I switch to pinyin input (after I generate the tone mark in US E), the tone mark simply disappears.

PS:  Actually typing the accents with US Extended after the character does become legible if the characters are large enough:

我̄  我̌  我́  我̀

[TenThousandThings]

On Wednesday, July 11, 2012 12:23:43 AM UTC-4, Jas wrote:

I may try to  contact the publisher of New Practical Chinese Reader because they do it in Vol 2+ then again, it's probably typeset so anything is possible.

I also like the idea of finding a character set with tone marks, I'll do some research on that.

You can always use typesetting, especially a feature known as "ruby" text -- MS Word calls it "phonetic guides" -- but you have to turn on the East Asian features, see here: http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/applications.html#Office_2011

Another application that does it is iText Pro ($11.99 in the App Store).

The trick to make it look right would be to use the "Spacing Modifier Letters" block of Unicode in Chinese fonts, specifically, Traditional-form fonts produced in Taiwan, which use them for tone marks in Zhuyin text. Of the fonts that come with OS X, BiauKai seems best, but if you have Arphic fonts, use them instead because the third-tone caron is actually shaped like the contour of the third tone itself -- that is, it isn't a caron -- it is a third-tone mark. Unfortunately, Zhuyin does not use a first-tone mark, so the first-tone macron is either blank (BiauKai) or missing entirely (Arphic). I think I'd try just using a hyphen instead...

[TenThousandThings]

Wow, of course! Impressive, Tom. Definitely easier than trying to use typesetting!

[Tom Gewecke]

On Jul 11, 2012, at 8:32 AM, TenThousandThings wrote:

> Wow, of course! Impressive, Tom. Definitely easier than trying to use typesetting!
>

I guess it might also be easier to add these by using the Character Viewer and putting the necessary combining diacritics in the Favorites list (0304, 030c, 0300, 0301), instead of switching keyboards back and forth.

[Jas]

First and foremost...thanks for the responses!!

Ok, I was able to use the USE keyboard as suggested - thanks tomg!

TenThousandThings is on to something potentially really good here...I played around with the Phonetic Guide in Word, just as you suggested.  I didn't know it even existed before so thanks for pointing me there!  It actually gave me an answer to another question I had which was how to show the Pinyin for a character and there it is!

A couple of things...

1. would be nice if there was an option to position the Ruby text below the character (as opposed to above), hopefully MS will amend this in the future.

2. Here's the thing that would REALLY help and answer my original question and that is if the Ruby text had an option to show the tone only (not the pinyin + tone) this would be amazing because I wouldn't need to manually choose the tone and would do EXACTLY what I want.

3. I also tried the Emphasis Mark option in the Font menu, but it only had two there...this is a possible option but does anyone know how to add an emphasis mark so that it appears in the drop down list?

Thanks to all...

Jas.

 

On Saturday, 7 July 2012 13:09:10 UTC-4, Jas wrote:

[Eric Rasmussen]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Jas <jasthem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. Here's the thing that would REALLY help and answer my original question
> and that is if the Ruby text had an option to show the tone only (not the
> pinyin + tone) this would be amazing because I wouldn't need to manually
> choose the tone and would do EXACTLY what I want.

Jas -- This was actually news to me, since until recently this was
something Microsoft only provided in the Windows edition of Office.
Indeed, I'm fairly certain that the original release of Office 2011
did not provide the Pinyin/Zhuyin text for you -- you had to enter it
manually. I'm going to guess this was added in the Office 2011 Service
Pack 1 (v14.1.0), which added 14 Asian fonts that were previously
Windows-only, and more.

Anyhow, for those that don't know, the pop-up menu in Microsoft
Language Register now has TC and SC as options along with English and
Japanese. Although there are still no Chinese proofing tools. But the
Phonetic Guide feature gives you Pinyin if you choose SC and Zhuyin if
you choose TC.

[Jas]

Hi all, just posting an update on this...

For anyone considering iText Pro, it doesn't support Ruby text for Chinese fonts (only Japanese).  I contacted the developer and they will be putting it on the development "to do" list.  So who knows how long it will take.

Jas

On Saturday, 7 July 2012 13:09:10 UTC-4, Jas wrote:

[Jas]

Another update:

I went back to look at this and finally came up with a better solution which looks like this:

I used a combination of techniques...I used the Phonetic Guide function in MS Word and substituted the pinyin and tone with just the tone mark using the US Extended Keyboard and the Alt A,V,E, ~ options to generate each of the tone marks.  It's a bit manual, but it works.

If only MS would provide the option on the Phonetic Guide of selecting Pinyin+Tone, or Tone only.  

I've set the Ruby Text distance to 0 which is the lowest I could go.  Again, it would be good if MS would allow a negative value here to close the gap above the character more (the space used for the Pinyin).

In the example, I used the Kai font for the Chinese characters and Times Roman for the tone (Ruby Text font).  For some reason, I couldn't always select Lucida Sans Unicode (which is the best font for tone marks IMHO) for the tone (it wasn't always in my font drop-down, I don't know why) so I settled on Times Roman.

Jas