Learn Chinese for Kids

How To Change Chinese Characters To Zhuyin

H/T Oliver Tu for this Chinese hack. 

In case you use zhuyin (bopomofo) to teach your children Chinese, you should install Chinese font with zhuyin. Until your kids (or really, you) can read on their own, this will allow you to add phonetic assistance to anything you want to print out for them to read.

You can find such fonts at sites like this: http://cooltext.com/Fonts-Unicode-Chinese. Tu recommends the fonts 明體注音 and 明體破音.

Here is an example Tu included:

1) Copy a story in Chinese from a webpage and paste it to MS Word.

2) Select the 明體注音 and 明體破音 fonts.

3) Print out and use as children’s Chinese lesson for them to read.

4) Additionally, you can use websites to print out practice pages for them to practice their writing. (I will post more about these sites later when I have a chance.)

This way, the materials available for your children to read will be limited only by your imagination and not by limited published text and/or the funds to purchase such available texts!

Happy phonetically assisted reading!

Author

Virginia Duan is the entertainment editor for "Mochi Magazine," a freelance writer, and an Asian American author who writes stories full of rage and grief with biting humor and glimpses of grace. She spends most of her days plotting her next book or article, shuttling her children about, participating in more group chats than humanly possible, and daydreaming about BTS a totally normal amount.

Comments are closed.