In one of my previous posts I was trying to score a Mac Chinese keyboard. Sadly, no one knew where I could get one (aside from going to 中国). However, I did get a great tip about an application called OpenVanilla.org.
OpenVanilla.org lets you type pinyin (Chinese in English style characters) like shù (it even works with just shu), and then it creates Chinese characters – 树.
At first I thought it wasn’t quite what I wanted, but I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I find it fantastic. It’s helped me match sounds to characters better than I thought it would. And I can print out the characters for object and tape them to stuff (and it’s legible).
While I do want to learn how to write the characters by hand, I figured learning to write Chinese properly might be better tackled after I can actually read the characters.
Short movie on how OpenVanilla.org works / how to set it up:
This application has helped me out tremendously. So far I’ve been doing self study, but I start a proper Chinese class this Friday. Wish me luck.
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p>(If you’re curious about the self study bit, ChinesePod is a good resource (you can get the pod cast in iTunes), and a Chinese => English => Chinese dictionary is a tool you can’t live with outshouldn’t be without.(There is a wonderful widget that does Chinese to English and English to Chinese available on apple.com). I bought a simple Barnes & Noble one.)