Tutorial Pinyin implementation

[PoP]

I just noticed that when enabled in the language learning options:



Books in chinese language (such as the Kindle User's Guide Chinese Edition in these screenshots) will (unsurprisingly) display pinyin above chinese characters:



And have an active pinyin level menu:



The feature doesn't seem to be implemented in a way similar to wordwise. I couldn't find an equivalent of the mnt_us/system/kll/kll.en.en.klld wordwise data base with accompanying mnt_us/bookASIN.sdr/LanguageLayer.en.ASIN.kll in the sdr directory for the book.

By curiosity, has anybody researched how/where pinyin is implemented?

[PromethiumL]

Here is the file found on my KOA2:

[/var/local/java/prefs] cat language_layer.preferences
#User preferences for LanguageLayer Preferences
#Mon Jun 04 09:40:17 GMT+08:00 2018
pinyin.ftuxShown=true
pinyin.difficulty=1
pinyin.sliderFtuxShown=true
targetLang=zh
dictTimestampcn-kll.zh.pn=1521941647210
pinyin.isVisible=false
dictTimestampcn-kll.en.zh=1528076417459
dictTimestampcn-kll.en.en=1524226765524
dictVersioncn-kll.zh.pn=3.0
dictVersioncn-kll.en.zh=2.0
isEnabled=true
dictVersioncn-kll.en.en=3.0
pinyin.isEnabled=true

As you can see, this file tells kindle where the dict locates, so it can look up the characters in the dict.

I'm still looking for other implementation.

[PoP]

That was helpful, thank you @PromethiumL.

I have inspected the sql dababase located in mnt_us/system/kll/CC-CEDICT.kll.zh.pn.klld

It has 2 tables:

metadata table: pinyin definition language



chinesedict table: pinyin translations along with their difficulty level



My guess is that when the option is selected, the framework upon rendering a zh book, searches the sql database to display the pinyin of all the terms it encounters.

The CC-CEDICT.kll.zh.pn.klld was probably automatically downloaded from amazon when I opened a chinese book. It was not present in the kindle when I purchased it.

[EDIT] To verify, I deleted CC-CEDICT.kll.zh.pn.klld and re-opened the zh User Guide, the pinyin klld automagically downloaded. As a bonus, it is now at version 4.

In the end, the process is somewhat similar to wordwise, just with a different and simpler database.

[tangerino]

The "Language Learning" section on my Kindle doesn't have a Pinyin option, only Word Wise and Vocabulary Builder. My Kindle Paperwhite 1st gen is updated to 5.6.1.1. Synced again just to be sure it's on the latest version. "Update your kindle" is greyed out.

Any ideas why it wouldn't be there? Is this an option only available on 2nd gen Paperwhites or later (though I don't see why any Kindle couldn't do it).

[PoP]

Have you opened a book in the zh language? On my PW3 v5.8.11 *that* caused the pinyin file to be downloaded.