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Anonymous
Guest
While I like the idea of having phrases, I don't like the spelling of Chinese that Berlitz uses. I prefer the standard pinyin. Thanks.
I'm not too fond of it either, but it's really not designed for people who know Pinyin - it's designed to allow people with no previous Chinese experience to come reasonably close to approximating the way it's supposed to be pronounced. There are no tones because, as I'm sure those of you who've learned to pronounce tones accurately can attest, it's impossible to master them in a few days and pronouncing them incorrectly is in many respects worse than not pronouncing them at all (as native speakers assume you're pronouncing them correctly and often can't even guess at what you're trying to say). And Pinyin isn't used because there are some aspects to it that are likely to confuse people new to Chinese - for example, Shanghai is pronounced "shayng-hai' by most Americans while the actual pronunciation is closer to "sharng-hai", so the books use the extra 'r' to make it clear. Same goes with 'chang' which the book says as 'charng' so that people don't try to say the highly incorrect 'chayng'. Or 'xie xie' to 'shie shie' since it isn't intuitively obvious how those x'es are supposed to be pronounced.
If there's a lot of demand for a Chinese phrasebook among Oxford users then we could certainly consider producing a version of the Mandarin phrasebook that uses Pinyin (there'd be a few copyright issues but we can probably work those out) - if you're interested in that then send me an e-mail to register your support.
If there's a lot of demand for a Chinese phrasebook among Oxford users then we could certainly consider producing a version of the Mandarin phrasebook that uses Pinyin (there'd be a few copyright issues but we can probably work those out) - if you're interested in that then send me an e-mail to register your support.
Rafael
秀才
Berlitz phrasebook
I agree with bjamisonf. As a beginner I bought the Berlitz phrasebook but I just didn't like that Berlitz romanization. The additional r's made things even more confusing to me.
I found the Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook with its true Pinyin a whole lot more useful.
I agree with bjamisonf. As a beginner I bought the Berlitz phrasebook but I just didn't like that Berlitz romanization. The additional r's made things even more confusing to me.
I found the Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook with its true Pinyin a whole lot more useful.
The issue is more acute in the Cantonese phrasebook where the Chinese characters don't match the spelling of the Chinese because they're actually totally different, e.g. "thank you" shows the characters "xie xie" but says "mm goy" whilst "I'd like to pay" shows the characters "wo yao jiezhang" but says "mm goy maai daan".
Is it possible to add the ability to select the Chinese characters in Berlitz and copy them to the clipboard and/or bring up the Oxford dictionary ?
(I'd just like to add that Berlitz came out last Tuesday just before a long weekend in Spain. I bought a 6-pack, including Spanish, that day just hours before my flight to Spain and it definitely was very useful during my holiday. Many thanks!)
Is it possible to add the ability to select the Chinese characters in Berlitz and copy them to the clipboard and/or bring up the Oxford dictionary ?
(I'd just like to add that Berlitz came out last Tuesday just before a long weekend in Spain. I bought a 6-pack, including Spanish, that day just hours before my flight to Spain and it definitely was very useful during my holiday. Many thanks!)
Yeah, I'm not quite sure what the reasoning was behind that one (again, Berlitz's editorial decision and not ours) - I know very little Cantonese. If anyone wants to comment on which of these is more formal or whatever then I'd be interested to know about that. I've found most of Berlitz's books to be a lot better than their Lonely Planet equivalents, plus Berlitz is an absolutely top-notch brand/trademark, so we're generally quite happy with them.
As far as exporting characters to Oxford, the internal coding for the Berlitz books is in Unicode, which the Oxford doesn't support yet - the new PlecoDict engine for the ABC dictionary will, though. I'm not sure if we'll get around to creating a conversion table in the meantime, though it seems like it could help boost sales for those two books...
And thanks! Considering we haven't even started to advertise yet I'm delighted to hear that people are finding this useful; if you have any other thoughts or feedback I'd be delighted to hear about them. Also, for Oxford users in general, I'd be very interested in hearing your comments on the Berlitz interface - we're thinking about adding that as one of the interface choices for PlecoDict, sort of like an extended List View.
As far as exporting characters to Oxford, the internal coding for the Berlitz books is in Unicode, which the Oxford doesn't support yet - the new PlecoDict engine for the ABC dictionary will, though. I'm not sure if we'll get around to creating a conversion table in the meantime, though it seems like it could help boost sales for those two books...
And thanks! Considering we haven't even started to advertise yet I'm delighted to hear that people are finding this useful; if you have any other thoughts or feedback I'd be delighted to hear about them. Also, for Oxford users in general, I'd be very interested in hearing your comments on the Berlitz interface - we're thinking about adding that as one of the interface choices for PlecoDict, sort of like an extended List View.
It's possible I suppose... I think we might still need to run it by them but at least in theory a machine translator might be acceptable. Wouldn't be very difficult technically, we'd just stick a lookup table in there to convert characters to their most common Pinyin equivalents and give users the option of displaying those instead of the Berlitz pronunciation system.
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Anonymous
Guest
Chinese Pronunciation
So am I to understand that the best way to use the Berlitz Phrase book for the Palm is to just read the translations in a sort of monotone instead of trying to use any inflections or syllabic emphasis?
So am I to understand that the best way to use the Berlitz Phrase book for the Palm is to just read the translations in a sort of monotone instead of trying to use any inflections or syllabic emphasis?
Well in some of the books there are underlines to indicate emphasis, but if the book you're referring to doesn't have those then yes, I'm afraid a monotone is as close as the pronunciation guide lets you get. (there's not much we can do about that, but we do show the translated phrases in bold text so that you can hold up your Palm to the person you're speaking to if they don't understand what you're saying)
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Anonymous
Guest
Berlitz & pinyin
I hope that more demand will bring action, so I vote in favour of pinyin with this Berlitz phrase book, then I'll buy it:
I briefly tried to test the Mandarin version; but if you are already fighting with pinyin, it's quite suprising and brings an almost rejection; dommage...
By the way, I am a student of Berlitz in Beijing; they have published and use a good book, with tapes, of current expressions for their beginners, using exclusively ...pinyin; and all their teaching is based on pinyin as well !
Also, thank to update my email address, dear Pleco Inc, if you happen to read this message, because it has changed and is probably wrong now in your database
it was rougeaux@netvigator.com, now it is rougeaux@mac.com
regards
Jacques Rougeaux
I hope that more demand will bring action, so I vote in favour of pinyin with this Berlitz phrase book, then I'll buy it:
I briefly tried to test the Mandarin version; but if you are already fighting with pinyin, it's quite suprising and brings an almost rejection; dommage...
By the way, I am a student of Berlitz in Beijing; they have published and use a good book, with tapes, of current expressions for their beginners, using exclusively ...pinyin; and all their teaching is based on pinyin as well !
Also, thank to update my email address, dear Pleco Inc, if you happen to read this message, because it has changed and is probably wrong now in your database
it was rougeaux@netvigator.com, now it is rougeaux@mac.com
regards
Jacques Rougeaux