# Transcript

XIMENA ARIAS-MANZANO:
In this section, I'm going to teach you how to type in Chinese. We use the system called pinyin. Pinyin, is in this column. So to be able to find the right character, you need to type the word in pinyin. So for example, if we want to type the word wŏ, which is I or me, once you set up your language preference into Chinese, then you type the pinyin, w-o. And in here, you will have a selection of different characters that share the same sound but maybe-- what's obviously with different tones. So you will have a selection of characters you could choose from.
If you need an extra character, you will need to click on the arrow. And it will keep giving you all the extra characters that share the same sound. In this case, I want to pick the very first one so I go back, I click on that, or type number one. And that's the character that you have here. If we want to type number one, yī, just type y-i and the first one is not the one I'm looking for for number one but it's the second one. So I click on the second one.
Now if I want to type words that have two, three, or more characters, you need to type the pinyin together. So for example, in bĕi jīng, you have to type bei jing together and you will get the whole word. If you only type bei-- bei, you will get different bei. So then you will have to look for the right one. In this case is here, but it's easier to type up the whole word, beijing. And you will be able to get the right one. OK. So this is the right one.
If you want to type, for example, the word for woman, nǚ rén– nǚ rén. If you see the pronunciation of this nǚ, you will need to type up n-v instead of n-u. If you type n-u, you will not find the right character. So n-u-ren, if you see the one I typed up here, you will not find it. So you need to type n-v-ren and you will find nǚ rén which is woman. And that is how you type the characters in Chinese.
Sometimes there are characters that you will need to scroll down a little bit to find them. For example, the word for pear is li. And it doesn't appear at the beginning of the list. So you will need to keep clicking on the arrow to be able to find the right character, if you know it already. So here it is li and that is the character for pear. So again, you need to know which character you are looking for, once you become more confident with learning the language.