Chinese languages

Dear list,

I am asking for advice on how to make my computer compatable with Chinese characters and pin yin with the phonetic tone indications.

for example I have microsoft word can that program be made to accept and utelise Chinese characters?

I am also wondering how can one learn to write the characters?

Is any one awere of any on line materials that could help in learning how to read and write chinese?

Marco

If you have win2000 or later, you can make your computer read and write anything like Chinese/Arabic/Amharic/Hindi/Thai/Korean/ whatever. Just go to Control Panel, World Settings, add in the languages you want and then go to the tab for entering in your input methods for typing. Easy.

On older 98 and 95 machines, it was possible too, but I can't remember the process that well. I spent a long time setting it up, but then found out that Word did not support Chinese and Russian or Chinese and Korean on the same page. In other words it was language specific. I think 98 could but not 95. Then I got a software called GlobalWriter from Unitype and all my problems went away (US$50 at that time). But today with 2000 or later, you don't need to buy any extra software and you can get the languages to display in almost any program.

If you want to learn how to write the characters, buy a tutor and then practice. You'll have to write characters thousands of times before you develop nice handwriting, but it's worth it.