The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Why is the Mandarin word for “hundred” in the Mandarin word for “lily”?
This week’s MEotW in the unofficial Pīnyīn Plus / Pīnyīn+ resource “Sing Out Joyfully” Bk. (Pīnyīn+Music, Pīnyīn Plus / Pīnyīn+, Web)
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
For Mandarin field language learners, how does Zhùyīn compare with Pīnyīn?
Zhùyīn, or Bopomofo, in regular, handwritten regular, and cursive formats
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Official Pīnyīn web material is now available on jw.org for certain publications.
To see if such material is available on jw.org for a certain publication, follow this path:
When a web page of text for that publication is loaded, a 显示拼音 checkbox will appear near the top of that page if Pīnyīn web material is available for it. (“显示拼音 (Xiǎnshì Pīnyīn)” means “Show Pīnyīn”.) Checking that checkbox will immediately cause Pīnyīn ruby text to appear over the Chinese characters on that web page. The setting will be “remembered” by your web browser for web pages like that web page.
Related information will be added to the affected short links as time allows.
Official Pīnyīn web material is now also available for certain publications on the Watchtower Online Library (WOL) when the language is set to Chinese Mandarin (Traditional) - 中文繁體（國語）. (Before, such official Pīnyīn web material was only available on the WOL when the language was set to Chinese Mandarin (Simplified) - 中文简体（普通话）.) This new web material renders Traditional Chinese characters with Pīnyīn ruby text, kind of like the official Pīnyīn PDF files do. However, unlike the official Pīnyīn PDF files, which are digital versions of paper publications with fixed page sizes and line renderings, this official Pīnyīn web material inherits the ability of web material to adapt to displays of different shapes and sizes, making it much more mobile-friendly than PDFs, especially on smaller mobile devices.
Selecting the option to display Pīnyīn or not in the Watchtower Online Library (WOL) when the language is set to Chinese Mandarin (Traditional) - 中文繁體（國語） is done like it is when the language is set to Chinese Mandarin (Simplified) - 中文简体（普通话）. See this post for more details.
The affected tiandi.info short links will gradually be updated as time allows.
Official Pīnyīn web material is now available for certain publications on the Watchtower Online Library (WOL) when the language is set to Chinese Mandarin (Simplified) - 中文简体（普通话）. This new web material renders Simplified Chinese characters with Pīnyīn ruby text, kind of like the official Pīnyīn PDF files do. However, unlike the official Pīnyīn PDF files, which are digital versions of paper publications with fixed page sizes and line renderings, this official Pīnyīn web material inherits the ability of web material to adapt to displays of different shapes and sizes, making it much more mobile-friendly than PDFs, especially on smaller mobile devices.
While some unofficial apps and services have been around for a while that can produce computer-generated mobile-friendly Pīnyīn material (perhaps also with English meanings) for any Chinese publication, a big disadvantage of the material that they produce is that it has not been human-proofread. So, while such material can be quickly produced in great quantities, it contains significant quantities of errors, because computers do not have the wisdom and love required to adapt appropriately and lovingly to whatever life and human language may bring—human language, a remarkable gift from Jehovah, can potentially express all human thought, much of which still eludes modern computers. The official Pīnyīn web material that is now available can be relied upon to be of higher quality than any computer-generated material, since it has been human-proofread. (Of course, unofficial computer-generated material is generally better than nothing when it comes to publications for which official Pīnyīn material is not yet available.)
On the Watchtower Online Library (WOL), when the language is set to Chinese Mandarin (Simplified) - 中文简体（普通话） and when Pīnyīn ruby text is available for the loaded web page, an option must be selected from the menu displayed using the “hamburger menu” button on the bottom right for the Pīnyīn text to be displayed. (This setting is “remembered” like the other settings on this menu are. When Pīnyīn ruby text is not available for the loaded web page, the option is greyed out.)
This option can also be set using the ⚙ Preferences link near the bottom of WOL pages.
Many thanks to our God Jehovah and to our Leader Jesus, and to all the brothers and sisters who worked hard to make this official Pīnyīn web material available! Undoubtedly, it is just the first such mobile-friendly official Pīnyīn material and more is to follow, which will make it faster and easier for the many mobile device-using Mandarin field publishers around the world to be helped to more effectively speak in Mandarin “about the magnificent things of God”!—Acts 2:7–11.
The affected tiandi.info short links will gradually be updated as time allows.
