Hi, I live in Taiwan, and I would like to create a vocabulary list of Zhuyin and the sounds. I know it's not that popular, even with learners in Taiwan, and it's generally not hard to memorize, as it's only 37 characters... but I find I need to periodically review them. Learning them has really helped me improve my pronunciation and having them available to me on Skritter to brush up, would be SO SO awesome and fast.

I know this has come up once or twice before, but I'm curious if there's been an update? Last I checked I still couldn't add them as a custom vocab list.

Thanks!
Andrew

No progress on this front; we would need to add handling for characters that didn't have valid pinyin in a ton of places and it hasn't been a priority yet. Sorry! It's still on the list, though.

Ok thanks for the update. If I promise to subscribe for another year in advance, can you add those 37 sooner than later? ;)

My girlfriend will pay for it because she is sick of me asking her what they mean whenever I forget. hehe :) I think she's also sick of helping me read children's books. :)

Completely off topic, but just wondering why your user name is kohoutek? This is Czech for cock(erel) and also tap/faucet.

It's kind of dorky. It's just my world of warcraft druid name. :) It comes from the name of a highly anticipated comet that came near earth in the 70's and was supposed to be extremely bright... but turned out to be almost unnoticeable from most places. I think it was also the inspiration of an R.E.M. song by the same name.

OK, so no Czech connection, just a coincidence.

Just googled it. The comet was named after astronomer Luboš Kohoutek, who first sighted it.

It's also the name of a pre-Steve-Perry Journey prog-rock instrumental:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVLK2eJ68Eo

(It gets going around 2:00)

What's nerdier, WOW or progressive rock?

James

Now, if everyone bribed us to build the features they wanted sooner like that, then where would we be?

Rich, maybe!

Naw, seriously, it's probably not going to happen all that soon. Got a bunch of stuff that everyone wants, like the character decompositions and mnemonics, up ahead of that.

Kohoutek,

I also live in Taiwan, and I learned zhuyin first several years ago "forced" by local style of learning habits here. Guess what? I use pinyin now, and I am happy on it, and trust me, learning the pinyin for every new word I grab, and then later speaking out in Taiwan, ALL is ok, and everyone underststands me.
Zuyin is taught to kids here, and I think it is good way, because they DO NOT, know yet any type of characters at all.
But for westerners, pinyin is more close.
My advice is concentrate seriously on tones.
No correct tones - no food served in Taiwan etc etc etc. no life.
Just ask a counter girl in Starbucks - give me water ("shui") - and use incorrect tone (and you can get misunderstood a loooooot..;)

Hey Rolands,

Nice to hear your experience. I've been here about 5 years and I do actually find it useful. I know all the pinyin already and the zhuyin is still better, for me, when really trying to reproduce a sounds accurately. But, as you say, I don't use it often enough sometimes and it slips from my memory. Hence the request. :) Even just straight flash cards with no sounds would be cool. Of course I have paper ones, I just never pick them up. And I like the spaced repetition when reviewing an old short list of words I kinda already know. :)

a

I have to agree with kohoutek on the usefulness of zhuyin for folks living in Taiwan.

It's not about a better understanding of the sounds, but about the vast learning resources that become available to you when you know zhuyin. I own loads of children's books annotated in zhuyin because these are a good stepping stone to non-annotated reading. When you've got an intermediate vocabulary, jumping up to regular (non-annotated) materials is discouraging because it takes longer to look up words you don't know. Knowing zhuyin gets you doing more active reading, which is really motivating - you take less time to look up characters and more time actually reading.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that locals in Taiwan don't know pinyin. Furthermore, their pronunciation is often imprecise and confusing - for example, Taiwanese often meld -en/-eng and -in/-ing together, as well as the s/sh sounds. Being able to ask someone, "Did you say ㄅㄧㄣ or ㄅㄧㄥ?" (bin or bing, in pinyin) can help you learn accurate pronunciation of new words you hear on the street.

Personally, I learned pinyin first, zhuyin second, and pinyin is still my primary method of writing and studying new words. However, when I buy reading materials, get new vocab from my language exchange partner or a stranger, or even want to clarify the pronunciation of someone's name, I'm really glad I learned zhuyin. If you live in Taiwan, don't limit yourself to one system - you'll be missing out on the benefits of knowing both.

Incidentally, for people who want to learn/review the sounds while you wait for it to be incorporated into Skritter somehow, you can try here: http://www.mdnkids.com/BoPoMo/

It's not Skritter style, but you can click and hear the sounds.

And Pinyin Info has a handy zhuyin pinyin chart here:

http://www.pinyin.info/romanization/bopomofo/basic.html

That is an awesome followup point ktvxiaojie.

The link you shared is for Mandarin Daily News which is where I first got significant exposure to learning the Zhuyin and their 1st floor bookstore (on Rooseveldt, near Heping) is just fantastic for buying any number of books in Chinese with Zhuyin next to the characters. This is just about the level I'm at now so it's so fun to read a book that has no roman characters in it and be able to know the pronunciation from the zhuyin, and derive the meaning just from context without having to pick up a dictionary to learn how to say it. Gives me flashbacks to reading the same level books as a young kid in english... like The Black Cauldron... which I found at that same bookstore but in Chinese with zhuyin!

:)

I definitely share your opinion about learning both. If you had to learn only one, of course it makes sense to learn pinyin. But I really enjoy the learning variety that opens up when I spend time refreshing my memory of the zhuyin system as well.

Here's another vote for adding zhuyin from a user based in Taiwan. I have to use Anki to practice it from time to time. But it would be nice to write it in Skritter.

Hi Senmu... Would you mind sharing your Anki deck with me for studying Zhuyin?

I would also be interested in the Anki deck.

James

Agree with Roland (I also live in Taiwan BTW!!!), Zhuyin is a REALLY good method but it's useful only for reql beginner (that is kids), if you already know pinyin I don't find it very useful.

However Kohoutek, learning Zhuyin should not take you more than an afternoon to see them all and a week of practice (simply by typing with your computer) to master the thing.

If you have an iPhone there is a free app to train Zhuyin by the way!