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LDBoblo · 03-25-2010, 05:47 AM

I've read a few HYPY [漢語拼音] publications and it is usable for a lot of things (news in particular), but for more literary applications, its limitations can quickly be found. Characters can be ambiguous enough in literature, why magnify it by using Romanization?

Most learners would be better off with reading on a PC with Dr. Eye, Wenlin, Lingoes, StarDict, or some other program that allows rapid lookup. Ebook readers aren't really as useful yet.

If you insist on reading on an ebook reader, there are also some Chinese fonts that will give the phonetic pronunciation of each character alongside the character itself (typically for educational books, and almost always in zhuyin fuhao [注音符號]. Most are in FangSong style [仿宋體] if I recall.) I don't think they'll display very well at small sizes on a 6" ebook reader, but they should be readable at normal sizes if you're willing to invest the work to install and use them (though such fonts I suspect are pretty limited in character range, and many characters have alternate pronunciations in certain usage patterns).

For a single book as specific as the Christian Bible, I think it would be most prudent to simply buy a paper copy with both characters and phonetic notation. I admit I've not looked for such a thing as I'm not in that subculture, but I'm quite certain it'd be easy to find.

03-25-2010, 05:47 AM	#11
LDBoblo Wizard Posts: 1,385 Karma: 16056 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Asia Device: Kindle 3 WiFi, Sony PRS-505	I've read a few HYPY [漢語拼音] publications and it is usable for a lot of things (news in particular), but for more literary applications, its limitations can quickly be found. Characters can be ambiguous enough in literature, why magnify it by using Romanization? Most learners would be better off with reading on a PC with Dr. Eye, Wenlin, Lingoes, StarDict, or some other program that allows rapid lookup. Ebook readers aren't really as useful yet. If you insist on reading on an ebook reader, there are also some Chinese fonts that will give the phonetic pronunciation of each character alongside the character itself (typically for educational books, and almost always in zhuyin fuhao [注音符號]. Most are in FangSong style [仿宋體] if I recall.) I don't think they'll display very well at small sizes on a 6" ebook reader, but they should be readable at normal sizes if you're willing to invest the work to install and use them (though such fonts I suspect are pretty limited in character range, and many characters have alternate pronunciations in certain usage patterns). For a single book as specific as the Christian Bible, I think it would be most prudent to simply buy a paper copy with both characters and phonetic notation. I admit I've not looked for such a thing as I'm not in that subculture, but I'm quite certain it'd be easy to find. Last edited by LDBoblo; 03-25-2010 at 05:52 AM.