Dictation exercise not recognizing umlauts

karlovac
 January 14, 2013, 09:21 PM posted in General Discussion

I just did the exercises for this lesson:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/renting-an-apartment-through-an-agent-2#exercises-tab

This is the first time I've figured out how to enter the umlaut tone marking (e.g. above the first "u" in nǚ péng you). However, the exercise didn't accept my answer. As far as I can tell, I got all the syllables and tones right (see screenshot attached).

I guess that maybe there are different ways to enter the ǚ character, and the CPod website only accepts one of them. Here's how I am entering it:

  • I'm using a Mac, with the keyboard set as U.S. Extended.
  • First I do option+u, which displays the umlaut, but leaves the cursor under the umlaut: ¨
  • Then I press "u". That adds a u under umlaut: ü
  • Finally, I press option+shift+v, which adds the small caret above the u and umlaut: ǚ

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Right-Wingnut
 January 14, 2013, 10:09 PM

All you do is type 'v'. So if you want ǚ, you type v3.

At least that is how you do it here in the forum before hitting 'Convert Tone Marks'. I've never tried the exercises so I guess that could be different.

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karlovac
 January 17, 2013, 09:04 PM

Thanks, although what you're describing is a different way of representing tones. The exercises don't have a "convert tone marks feature", although I do believe the numerical notation you're describing. I always use the native OS method of typing the tone marks, because that's what I'm used to seeing in the pinyin translations, so it's easier to tell if I have the answer right.

Still, if anyone knows how to enter the umlaut/v-caret combination, in a native way, I'd like to know what it is.

I do notice one thing. In my browser, the character I typed above (ǚ) looks exactly like the one that you typed (ǚ). However if I pasted them both into my text editor, and then read the actual character codes, I get different results:

My character: ǚ (Hex 00fc, Hex 030c)
Your character: ǚ (Hex 01da)

So it seems the method I use enters some kind of compound character that's made of the u with umlaut and the caret.