2020-11-17 20:47
How to use the Japanese course
2020-11-17 20:44
General
Chinese (Taiwan)
How to use the Chinese course
If you want to read and write Chinese, at the bottom of your session screen, turn on Full Practice mode. There is a Typing Guide below the typing box (it's not a pronunciation guide).
If you want to practice speaking and listening, then turn on Listening Mode, and I strongly recommending turning on the "Recording" button as well! You'll get to see more detailed phonics in this mode for pronouncing Chinese.
Chinese is romanized and taught using "Pinyin" which literally means "spell-sounds". We've added spaces between "words" in Chinese to help you recognize word boundaries and natural pacing for speaking.
Glossika offers transcriptions for all languages written in different scripts: ● Typing Guide (appears under the typing box): this adheres closely to actual spelling rules, and teaches you how to type in native scripts. For Chinese, we teach you how to type using pinyin + tone number. Feel free to turn on your Chinese input editor when you're confident enough, and you can use the same spelling we've taught all along to start inputting characters. Chinese is not written with spaces, so all spaces are optional, including the pinyin. It doesn't matter if you input traditional or simplified characters, Glossika recognizes them all! You can even type your answers in older romanizations or Cyrillic pinyin! (only supported for Taiwan Mandarin)
● Pronunciation Guide (toggle on and off in listening and recording modes): the pinyin transcription shows you how to pronounce each word accurately. Tones are marked on top of the vowels using standard pinyin. For you linguists out there, this pronunciation guide is "phonemic" and doesn't show allophones.
● Phonics Guide (toggle on and off in listening and recording modes): phonics is written in international phonetic alphabet (IPA), and for you linguists, this pronunciation guide is "phonetic" showing the allophones. What this means is some sounds change in special environments. This guide shows you the way a native speaker actually pronounces each word in detail.
Chinese has four tones, 1 = high flat, 2 = rising, 3 = low falling + rising, and 4 = high falling. Normally the 3rd tone is only pronounced using the low falling tone, however in front of another 3rd tone, you only pronounce the rising part of the tone. In our typing guide, you'll notice a 5th tone: this is the neutral tone. In fact, you don't even have to type the number 5 for these words, and you'll still get the answer right.
We're working on adding more transcriptions for Chinese such as Zhuyin and support for older systems such as Wade-Giles.
We post regular updates in notifications here on updates to Chinese.
