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Q: How to enter PINYIN tones in the PC?
I am not sure what the codes should be to write the tones when we are typing in Pinyin. I am learning Mandarin first through Pinyin but would like to be able to type my notes so they are more legible. Any ideas of how to do this? 
12 years 28 weeks ago in Business & Jobs - China
For speed and ease of typing, just add the number of the tone at the end of each word.
Adding a number beside each word is possible, but unfortunately your brain will not memorize that well the association word-number as opposed to adding the tone over the correct letter.
Unfortunately, there isn't any easy shortcut to do it. Try of the following solutions to see which one suits you better.
1) If you use Windows XP (for Windows 7, I don't know where it's located), you can go to
Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Character Map
Then in the "Group By" field, you select "Unicode Subrange", and it will give you the keystroke reference.
2) Otherwise, if you use Word 2003, you open a new document and you go to Insert -> Symbol, then for each possible tone you assign a shortcut Key or you use the keystroke reference.
3) online pinyin input with tones website : http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/Itool/type_pinyin_with_tones.htm
4) another online pinyin input with tones website (my favorite as it provides lots of different Chinese learning tools):
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/converter-pinyin-unicode.html
learning mandarin through pinyin is certainly the worst possible option in the long term. It helps at the beginning but wil lead to lots of confusions later. Drop it as soon as you can if you want to progress
Sangoku:
It depends what use he wants to do of Chinese language. If he is not interested to learn how to read and write Chinese, but only how to speak and listen to, then learning pinyin and its related translation is plenty enough.
lauramsr:
What would be your recommendation? Should I be learning the characters parallel to the words? The language school I am using is not teaching us with characters, but the book has the characters, should I be practicing on my own?
I use pinyinput (http://pinyinput.sourceforge.net/). Found it easy to use, easy to turn on/off, just type the word and the number tone afterwords. (hint: for the oomlat over the u like nǚ, it's v).
