new Pinyin Guide is online

I second david's suggestion for a option to vary between speakers, of both sexes, as this will help people get an idea of just what the tones sound like from a variety of voices. I have a few friends that picked their Chinese up from females tutors that have ridiculous high 1st tones, probably because that was their primary exposure. Various sexes (although I don't agree with varying accents - lets keep it standard) would help clarify natural variation to those outside of China.

davidhallgren,

I agree that the "ying" issue should be mentioned in the Pinyin Guide. I actually already have plans to add in a discussion of it, but I first need to iron out all the errors! Thanks for your patience, everybody.

I agree with you Bazza, except for perhaps ying. It does sound differently from the "normal" ying and the file you can listen to inside the written guide. I`m far from sure but I think this might be a dialectal thing. I've heard 欢迎 huānyíng being pronounced the same way by some speakers and when asking about it being told that it`s just a different way of pronouncing it. Ying sounds more like a mix between yong and yang in that case. If this is the case it should perhaps be commented upon in the written guide. Furthermore I think that having more than one voice to choose from, just as you can change tone, would be a nice feature. Which for example would let you listen to both a male and a female speaker, perhaps from different parts of China. A female voice is already recorded and used on the website so I don`t think adding it to the file should be too difficult.

Sorry for bringing up ideas that mean even more work for you John! It`s just that seeing great developments inspires ideas for even more change.

I think there's still problems with pa pai

fo

fou

fen

yao

ye

ying

xing

John, I just downloaded your Pinyin Chart, first time, but I still hear many of the mistakes Bazza mentioned... I listend to "bao" and it gave me "ban" (and will all tones checked, it only played "ban"'s first-tone sound file), but some are fixed.

Are there any plans have a Palm OS version of the Pinyin Chart? ;)

Man2Toe,

I'm definitely not getting enough sleep... :( Hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon.

The downloadable Pinyin Chart is fixed. Let me know if it still has issues.

We are currently working on the HTML pages.

John, are you going to sleep tonight? The Honey at home and you still at work?

Please take care, we need you around for the long haul.

i think what the problem is, you got a misplaced one and it screwed the whole order up, on the i section for example, ting is ni, and then every single other one in the section is one off. no offense or anything, but its not just one or 2 pinyin parts that were mistakes, there is a rediculous amount of them, quite frankly i dont see how it wasnt caught before it was released.

oops missed a few there:

liang

jiang

xiang

yn

nin

lin

jin

xin

yng

ping

ming

ding

ting

ning

ling

jing

qing

chuo

Pretty cool, I like the single page layout. There are currently lots of errors though. I've been them on all and I think there are errors on the following:

bao

pa

pai

man

fo

fou

fen

ni

li

si

shi

ri

ji

xi

lia

jia

xia

yao

niao

liao

jiao

xiao

ye

nie

lie

jie

xie

tiu

niu

liu

jiu

xiu

tian

nian

lian

jian

xian

niang

Hmmm, yeah, my link above totally doesn't work. Sorry about that. There's a "Pronunciation" link on your Study page.

If there are any problems with the chart, they will be fixed tomorrow.

First of all I would just like to say that this looks great and I think that this chart combined with your excellent written guide gives learners an amazing tool. However, I have noted two strange things:

First, the -ü section has you, not yü at the top.

Second, unpacking pinyinchart_win.zip gives me two folder, both pinyinchart_win and __MACOSX which seems a little strange.

oh ps, im using macromedia flash on the windows version

i could be wrong but i think the ji qi xi lines are a bit off, jiang is like jin or something jiu is like jian, lots of mistakes, as i said, im expert and could be wrong but im pretty sure!

I think that link is wrong, it works if you go to the Pronunication page.

I will have to wait until I get home, I can't really install it at work. ;)

The mac version is working fine for me. Very impressive; I especially like how each section links back to the text explanation online.