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Pinyin is really peculiar. It makes it so much easier to learn to outsiders. I know some overseas Chinese people who (not being raised in China) never learned

Pinyin is really peculiar. It makes it so much easier to learn to outsiders. I know some overseas Chinese people who (not being raised in China) never learned pinyin and prefer the stroke method. Some of the even prefer drawing the strokes by hand (instead of choosing from the keyboard). Any Chinese word, I've ever learned, I can only input using pinyin. The stroke method adds so much more mental overhead.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I know some overseas Chinese people who (not being raised in China) never learned pinyin and prefer the stroke method. I knew someone who used wubi in preference to pinyin input. She grew up in Guangzhou until age 16, so it wasn't an issue of not learning pinyin. The problem, for her, was that she had no way to know the correct pinyin for a character, since she didn't distinguish between a bunch of sounds that are distinct in pinyin. > Any Chinese word, I've ever learned, I can only input using pinyin. The stroke method adds so much more mental overhead. If you were capable of writing by hand, this wouldn't be true.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  It's a death spiral though: Computer/mobile input has long since displaced writing by hand for many people, so many of them are no longer fully capable of writing by hand, particularly when it comes to complex and/or rare characters.
- hnfong 5y ago
  Pinyin is the romanization method for Mandarin (aka Putonghua). From your description it sounds like your friend being more comfortable in Cantonese than Mandarin. (Is there really a difference between not fully understanding pinyin and not distinguishing the different sounds?) Anyway these days Cantonese input methods are getting better (or so I heard, my fingers have muscle memory of Changjie by now). See https://jyutping.org/en/keyboard/ https://jyutping.org/en/keyboard/
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > (Is there really a difference between not fully understanding pinyin and not distinguishing the different sounds?) Yes. They aren't even related ideas. You can easily understand that a distinction exists despite the fact that you, personally, can't hear it. Is there a distinction between not understanding the RGB model and being colorblind? > From your description it sounds like your friend being more comfortable in Cantonese than Mandarin. She was fully fluent in Mandarin. Just Cantonese-accented Mandarin. Mandarin is the language of instruction everywhere in China; it isn't possible not to speak it.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I know some overseas Chinese people who (not being raised in China) never learned pinyin and prefer the stroke method. I knew someone who used wubi in preference to pinyin input. She grew up in Guangzhou until age 16, so it wasn't an issue of not learning pinyin. The problem, for her, was that she had no way to know the correct pinyin for a character, since she didn't distinguish between a bunch of sounds that are distinct in pinyin. > Any Chinese word, I've ever learned, I can only input using pinyin. The stroke method adds so much more mental overhead. If you were capable of writing by hand, this wouldn't be true.

dustintrex 5y ago
It's a death spiral though: Computer/mobile input has long since displaced writing by hand for many people, so many of them are no longer fully capable of writing by hand, particularly when it comes to complex and/or rare characters.
hnfong 5y ago
Pinyin is the romanization method for Mandarin (aka Putonghua). From your description it sounds like your friend being more comfortable in Cantonese than Mandarin. (Is there really a difference between not fully understanding pinyin and not distinguishing the different sounds?) Anyway these days Cantonese input methods are getting better (or so I heard, my fingers have muscle memory of Changjie by now). See https://jyutping.org/en/keyboard/ https://jyutping.org/en/keyboard/
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > (Is there really a difference between not fully understanding pinyin and not distinguishing the different sounds?) Yes. They aren't even related ideas. You can easily understand that a distinction exists despite the fact that you, personally, can't hear it. Is there a distinction between not understanding the RGB model and being colorblind? > From your description it sounds like your friend being more comfortable in Cantonese than Mandarin. She was fully fluent in Mandarin. Just Cantonese-accented Mandarin. Mandarin is the language of instruction everywhere in China; it isn't possible not to speak it.