{"id":306,"date":"2006-05-04T13:53:53","date_gmt":"2006-05-04T05:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/wenlin-software-for-learning-chinese\/"},"modified":"2016-05-18T18:08:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T10:08:23","slug":"wenlin-software-for-learning-chinese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/wenlin-software-for-learning-chinese\/","title":{"rendered":"Wenlin: &#8216;software for learning Chinese&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I get a lot of questions about how to do some sort of conversion involving Chinese characters. Most of the time, my answer is something like, &#8220;Get <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wenlin.com\/\">Wenlin<\/a>. Even the free, non-expiring <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wenlin.com\/demo.htm\">demo version<\/a> (4 MB) will do what you need &#8212; and a lot more.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who aren&#8217;t familiar with Wenlin, <a href=\"http:\/\/houshuang.org\/\">Random Stuff That Matters<\/a> has posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/houshuang.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/02\/screencast-wenlin-helps-you-read-chinese\/\">five-minute movie (with sound) of Wenlin in action<\/a> (14.5 MB). <\/p>\n<p>The range of what Wenlin can do extends far beyond what the movie shows. A lot of people might not notice that even in the demo a wide range of options are available under <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>Edit<\/code> &#8594; <code>Make Transformed Copy<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My favorite, which is available only with the full version, is <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>Edit<\/code> &#8594; <code>Make Transformed Copy<\/code> &#8594; <code>Pinyin Transcription<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh, it is a thing of beauty. (That function, though, works only in the full version, not the demo.)<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who have the full version, I thought I&#8217;d share a little-known feature of Wenlin: its ability to search for regular expressions. <\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say you are trying to remember a <em>chengyu<\/em> (set phrase) about studying, but all you can recall is that it contains the sound &#8220;rubu.&#8221; You&#8217;re not sure of the characters. You&#8217;re not even sure of the tones. First you look up entries beginning with &#8220;rubu&#8221; in Wenlin&#8217;s electronic edition of the <em>ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary<\/em>: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>List<\/code> &#8594; <code>Words by Pinyin<\/code><\/li>\n<li>Then enter <code>rubu<\/code> and hit <code>OK<\/code>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This will take you to <span class=\"py\">r&#249;b&#249;f&#363;ch&#363;<\/span> and <span class=\"py\">r&#250;b&#249;sh&#232;ngy&#299;<\/span>. But neither of those is what you&#8217;re looking for. Now what? Here&#8217;s where regular expressions come in handy.<\/p>\n<p>Hit <code>Ctrl+F<\/code> to search for something within the current page. <\/p>\n<p>In the Find box, enter<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"py\">re=r(u|&#363;|&#250;|&#468;|&#249;)b(u|&#363;|&#250;|&#468;|&#249;)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This will yield:  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"py\">ch&#466;ngr&#468;b&#249;j&#299;ng<\/span> &#23541;&#36785;&#19981;&#39514;[&#23456;&#8211;&#24778;] f.e. unmoved by honors\/disgrace<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"py\">l&#232;ir&#250;b&#249;g&#257;n<\/span> &#28122;&#28641;&#19981;&#20094;[&#27882;&#8211;&#24178;] f.e. be drowned in tears<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"py\">ni&#232;r&#250;b&#249;y&#225;n<\/span> &#22209;&#22149;&#19981;&#35328;[&#21995;&#8212;] f.e. &#12296;wr.&#12297; move the mouth without speaking<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"py\">xu&#233;r&#250;b&#249;j&#237;<\/span> &#23416;&#22914;&#19981;&#21450;[&#23398;&#8212;] f.e. study as if one could never learn enough<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bingo! <\/p>\n<p>The reason for using OR pipes to separate the possibilities instead of putting them together &#8212; i.e., the reason for writing <span class=\"py\">(u|&#363;|&#250;|&#468;|&#249;)<\/span> instead of <span class=\"py\">[u&#363;&#250;&#468;&#249;]<\/span> &#8212; is that the regex library sees non-ASCII characters as strings of bytes (UTF-8); thus, without the pipes you could end up with extra garbage or not find what you intend to at all. This might be fixed in the next version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I get a lot of questions about how to do some sort of conversion involving Chinese characters. Most of the time, my answer is something like, &#8220;Get Wenlin. Even the free, non-expiring demo version (4 MB) will do what you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/wenlin-software-for-learning-chinese\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,32,20,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-chinese-characters","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7235,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/7235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}