Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but does anyone (such as @ironlady, since you invented it…) know where I can convert regular old hanyu pinyin into tonally orthographic pinyin? There used to a few online converters but all the links are dead now
If nothing exists anymore, does anyone with basic coding skills wanna tell me how to make my own converter? Tonally orthographic pinyin is where the letters are big or small based on the tones to give a clear visualization of the direction of your voice, so 他 (tā) is TĀ, 不 (bù) is Bù, 你 (nǐ) is nǐ, 孩 (hái) is háI, etc. The converters that I used to use would require tone numbers instead of markings (ni3 vs nǐ) and then make the letters big or small based on the tones. The one on Terry Waltz’s website also had corresponding color coding (blue for first tone cuz it sits in the sky, green for second tone cuz it rises from the ground like a plant, black for third since it sits in the ground, red for fourth cuz it’s angry/yelling at you) I would really love if such a thing could magically exist again (or if someone can point to a how to so I can help me to help myself)
It was on my website, but it got hacked, and then life happened (I was taking care of my parents in their 90s all alone for the last 5 years). Now that life is less complicated, I hope to get the site back up again.
BTW, I heard a teacher say that fourth is red like the apple falling down now. Might be kinder and gentler, don’t know.
I have the scripts, I just need “clean” hosting to put them up, and I haven’t had much free time as I’ve started (gasp!) an actual job of late.
Wow! Life was happening for you! No worries at all. Taking care of aging relatives is far more than a full time job. Even if you weren’t doing far more important things, you had a free service available and then you weren’t focused on making sure that free service was available after some jerk hacked it. Hardly something for anyone to complain about. If you get it up and running again, I’d love to have access to it. If the coding was simple and you don’t mind sharing, I’d appreciate that too. But if you have other life stuff happening now, that is also understandable.
I like the apple falling idea for fourth tone. Apples fall from trees too, so that’s a good visual of what your voice does (and isn’t so mean )
Tonally orthographic pinyin is where the letters are big or small based on the tones to give a clear visualization of the direction of your voice, so 他 (tā) is TĀ, 不 (bù) is Bù, 你 (nǐ) is nǐ, 孩 (hái) is háI. Please convert this phrase in to tonally orthographic pinyin. Ni3 shi4 da4 bai2chi1.
Bonus points, tell ChatGPT to color syllables blue, green, black or red for the tones (I use gray for neutral and end the syllable with an asterisk, but just leave it black if it’s inconvenient). And do the colors based on where you want to use the text – the format will be different for pasting into Word than for flashcards (on programs that allow colors).
The problem with a converter is usually getting the script to split syllables that don’t have a space between them and make them the right shape/color, and less importantly to get it to ignore English words and all punctuation. Green periods look really strange in the middle of something (but no one ever died of it I guess).
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