How can I add Chinese tone marks to romanized words?

D

Don Ellis

Hi...

Sorry I'm a bit late... very busy day, but I did have time this
morning to take a look at one of my wife's Mandarin books.

It was Berlitz and I don't know if they're using the Yale system and I
can't find the book now and Leela's not home (life is complicated).

But what I saw was left and right angled accents, a small "v" above an
"e" and the straight line you use for a long vowel... in other words,
nothing particularly unusual.

In Word 2007, you use Symbol on the Menu Bar, choose More Symbols,
navigate to a particular letter you want -- let's say an "a" with a
straight line above it, highlight it and click the Shortcut Key. Then
assign it a shortcut such as Alt-Ctrl-a.

Then you use that when you arrive at that character in your text.

Obviously with "a", you're going to have three or four diacritical
marks -- left slant, right slant, straight line, maybe even a small
"v". So choose the same system for all your vowels (a, e, i, o, u),
i.e. Alt-[letter] for left slant, Ctrl-[letter] for right slant, etc.

If you know all this and were looking for something even simpler, I'll
admit I don't know any other way. This is what I used to do with
Cantonese.

Cheers,
Don
 
D

drumsinger

Dear Don,

Thank you so much--I will try it right away. I used to use WordPerfect,
which was much easier to use for such things, but now everything is in Word.

Yours,
Francesca

Don Ellis said:
Hi...

Sorry I'm a bit late... very busy day, but I did have time this
morning to take a look at one of my wife's Mandarin books.

It was Berlitz and I don't know if they're using the Yale system and I
can't find the book now and Leela's not home (life is complicated).

But what I saw was left and right angled accents, a small "v" above an
"e" and the straight line you use for a long vowel... in other words,
nothing particularly unusual.

In Word 2007, you use Symbol on the Menu Bar, choose More Symbols,
navigate to a particular letter you want -- let's say an "a" with a
straight line above it, highlight it and click the Shortcut Key. Then
assign it a shortcut such as Alt-Ctrl-a.

Then you use that when you arrive at that character in your text.

Obviously with "a", you're going to have three or four diacritical
marks -- left slant, right slant, straight line, maybe even a small
"v". So choose the same system for all your vowels (a, e, i, o, u),
i.e. Alt-[letter] for left slant, Ctrl-[letter] for right slant, etc.

If you know all this and were looking for something even simpler, I'll
admit I don't know any other way. This is what I used to do with
Cantonese.

Cheers,
Don


I'm using the Yale system for Mandarin.
 
D

Don Ellis

Hi Francesca,

I sympathize. I was a WordPerfect user for 20 years... even in the
office I would write in WordPerfect and convert to Word before sharing
my files. But as you said, everyone is on Word these days... and Word
2007 was finally so attractive that I switched. End of an era.

You sound like you know what you're doing, but to complete my
suggestion, I would probably use this approach:

Alt-[letter] for left slant
Ctrl-[letter] for right slant
Alt-Ctrl-[letter] for straight line
Alt-Ctrl-Shft-[letter] for small "v"

Good luck.

Don


Dear Don,

Thank you so much--I will try it right away. I used to use WordPerfect,
which was much easier to use for such things, but now everything is in Word.

Yours,
Francesca

Don Ellis said:
Hi...

Sorry I'm a bit late... very busy day, but I did have time this
morning to take a look at one of my wife's Mandarin books.

It was Berlitz and I don't know if they're using the Yale system and I
can't find the book now and Leela's not home (life is complicated).

But what I saw was left and right angled accents, a small "v" above an
"e" and the straight line you use for a long vowel... in other words,
nothing particularly unusual.

In Word 2007, you use Symbol on the Menu Bar, choose More Symbols,
navigate to a particular letter you want -- let's say an "a" with a
straight line above it, highlight it and click the Shortcut Key. Then
assign it a shortcut such as Alt-Ctrl-a.

Then you use that when you arrive at that character in your text.

Obviously with "a", you're going to have three or four diacritical
marks -- left slant, right slant, straight line, maybe even a small
"v". So choose the same system for all your vowels (a, e, i, o, u),
i.e. Alt-[letter] for left slant, Ctrl-[letter] for right slant, etc.

If you know all this and were looking for something even simpler, I'll
admit I don't know any other way. This is what I used to do with
Cantonese.

Cheers,
Don


I'm using the Yale system for Mandarin.

:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:14:01 -0700, drumsinger

How can I add Chinese tone marks to romanized words?

What romanization system are you using?

Don
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Note that there are built-in keyboard shortcuts for vowels with acute and
grave accents; for example, the shortcut for é is Ctrl+', e. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm for a list of these
and others.



Don Ellis said:
Hi Francesca,

I sympathize. I was a WordPerfect user for 20 years... even in the
office I would write in WordPerfect and convert to Word before sharing
my files. But as you said, everyone is on Word these days... and Word
2007 was finally so attractive that I switched. End of an era.

You sound like you know what you're doing, but to complete my
suggestion, I would probably use this approach:

Alt-[letter] for left slant
Ctrl-[letter] for right slant
Alt-Ctrl-[letter] for straight line
Alt-Ctrl-Shft-[letter] for small "v"

Good luck.

Don


Dear Don,

Thank you so much--I will try it right away. I used to use WordPerfect,
which was much easier to use for such things, but now everything is in Word.

Yours,
Francesca

Don Ellis said:
Hi...

Sorry I'm a bit late... very busy day, but I did have time this
morning to take a look at one of my wife's Mandarin books.

It was Berlitz and I don't know if they're using the Yale system and I
can't find the book now and Leela's not home (life is complicated).

But what I saw was left and right angled accents, a small "v" above an
"e" and the straight line you use for a long vowel... in other words,
nothing particularly unusual.

In Word 2007, you use Symbol on the Menu Bar, choose More Symbols,
navigate to a particular letter you want -- let's say an "a" with a
straight line above it, highlight it and click the Shortcut Key. Then
assign it a shortcut such as Alt-Ctrl-a.

Then you use that when you arrive at that character in your text.

Obviously with "a", you're going to have three or four diacritical
marks -- left slant, right slant, straight line, maybe even a small
"v". So choose the same system for all your vowels (a, e, i, o, u),
i.e. Alt-[letter] for left slant, Ctrl-[letter] for right slant, etc.

If you know all this and were looking for something even simpler, I'll
admit I don't know any other way. This is what I used to do with
Cantonese.

Cheers,
Don


On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 07:50:09 -0700, drumsinger

I'm using the Yale system for Mandarin.

:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:14:01 -0700, drumsinger

How can I add Chinese tone marks to romanized words?

What romanization system are you using?

Don
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top