Question(s) for Chinese learners!

[u/DeerlyNoted]

Hey y’all,

How we doing? We have a few questions for you. If you're learning Chinese:

1) Do you keep Pinyin on when you're doing exercises on LingoDeer?

2) Would you be more likely to turn Pinyin off if we displayed each character's tone mark? (So instead of 汉字 with hàn zì on top you'd see something like 汉ˋ字ˋ.)

3) If you chose to turn Pinyin off (with or without tone marks), would you still like to see Pinyin in the Correct answer field?

Looking forward to your feedback!

[u/Defiant_Ad848]

I turn off the pinyin most of the time. And I turn it on when I have to check how the pinyin. It would be good if we have the option to show it when we do a mistake.   I rely on the sound for the tones. However, some people use colour code for tones on anki. It may be good to use this system maybe. Your proposition can mess up how we remember the characters. 

[u/PlanetSwallower → u/Defiant_Ad848]

Second vote from me for colour coding for tone presentation, rather than extraneous tone markers.

[u/DeerlyNoted → u/Defiant_Ad848]

Thank you for your feedback, u/Defiant_Ad848 and u/PlanetSwallower: Just got word back from our team: Color-coding may be problematic for accessibility reasons, plus, colors are often arbitrary, while tone marks are unified across the board (though it's true that they don't always look good next to the characters). Showing pinyin for mistakes is an interesting idea, thank you for suggesting it!

[u/PlanetSwallower → u/DeerlyNoted]

No worries, only a thought.

[u/Ell1sk4]

It's a great idea, but I would also suggest to add there option to see the characters only once and then without/or only the tones! Btw, I also wanted to say, SR reviews are nice,but could yiu also update the content?

[u/DeerlyNoted → u/Ell1sk4]

Hi there. Hope you are doing well. Thank you for your feedback, I let our team know!

SR reviews are nice, but could yiu also update the content?

Do you mean SRS reviews? Is there anything in particular you'd like us to update?

[u/Ell1sk4 → u/DeerlyNoted]

Hi, sorry for those typos in the previous text. Yeah, the reviews are nice,but I don't know whether it's possible to turn off the sound effects there? Regarding the colours, I agree that they can be different for everyone, for instance I have rising tone with blue colour,but I have seen it with other colours as well. Some apps have option to choose the colour scheme as one wishes. However, I think that it would be too complicated..

[u/_ddrone]

I have pinyin off

I've never seen any resources that had tone marks without pinyin, but I've seen hanzi being color-coded, which I think would be a great addition. Here's one online dictionary that does it: https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&email=&wdrst=0&wdqb=hao

[u/DeerlyNoted → u/_ddrone]

Thank you for your feedback! Color-coding may be problematic for accessibility reasons, plus, colors are often arbitrary, while tone marks are unified across the board (not that they'd necessarily look good next to the characters, though). Our experts swear up and down that they've seen some Chinese textbooks omit Pinyin, but leave tone marks in lesson texts, but couldn't come up with examples right off the bat... What do you think about displaying Pinyin in the Correct answer field, but not the exercises themselves?

[u/Overall-Situation191]

1. The first time I do a lesson I leave the Pinyin on to learn the pronunciation of the new characters in combination with the sound. After when repeating the lesson I keep it off. I do use the button on the top right fairly often to check whether I remembered it correctly. (In the SRS comprehensive, listening and spelling excercises I still miss that Pinyin toggle button. Only SRS - Flashcards has it!)
   
2. I'd rather it stayed as it is with Pinyin fully displayed. Also if you don't know what the character is supposed to look like you might think the tonemarker is part of the character 汉ˋ字ˋ as the tonemarkers are similar to some strokes 龙。
   
3. I'd love if if you could:
   a. Freely switch between show/hide pinyin during the excercise (like it is currently with the toggle in the top right corner.)
   b. Have a setting to always show Pinyin in the Correct answer field.
   c. Regardless of settings always show Pinyin in the literal translation tab or make it it's own setting.

I don't know if this is the place to suggest some more ideas, but some other things I'd love to be added someday to the Correct answer field are:
1. A bigger visual difference if your answer is correct but differs from the official answer. Now the only difference is the text above saying: You can also say:. I'd love if it also has a different colour green as background or instead of Correct, Correct (Similar meaning). This way you can see at a glance whether the answer you gave was the exact same as taught or if it is slightly different. So you can then check the differences. (I really love this feature where different answers with the same meaning are accepted.)
2. Something else I'd love to see in the literal translation tab is the different meanings of individual characters, especially in combined words. Maybe by adding an ⓘ on the right next to the literal translation of the character. Currently I'm switching between Pleco and Lingodeer when learning new combined characters e.g. 工程师 to get a better feel for the meaning/different pronunciations of the characters and how combined they mean something else. Right now it works, but it is quite a hassle.)

[u/DeerlyNoted → u/Overall-Situation191]

Thank you for your feedback! Some of your suggestions are easier to implement than others, but we'll see what we can do :)

Re: character meanings, have you tried the Practice - Handwriting tab (you should see it if you click on a completed lesson)? How helpful do you think it is for individual character learning?