03.38, which uses 7-bit per character, is interpreted as UTF-16, which uses 16-bit per character due to emoji. Learn Characters & Pinyin by Texting In Chinese. Often you can understand the meaning with the pinyin alone. You simply type out a word phonetically and it offers you an array of matches, based on relevancy. Hey Taiwan! It is the same case in China, where people text using a constantly evolving style of slang, complete with specific emojis that will seem like inside-jokes if you don’t have the cultural context. Hopefully you can adapt some of these abbreviations and emojis into your own chats and messages! Learn Characters & Pinyin by Texting In Chinese. Invented Chinese expressions. I think you can also long-press on … *** NOTE: You might be tempted to use 呵呵 (hē hē) instead, like the English "hehe". "LOL" is a standard chatspeak for "haha" on the internet. Try to read the pinyin for comprehension first, before taking a peek at the usually bad English translation. Interested in using texting for learning Chinese? Sometimes you can guess the meaning  based on a few words and the context. (Lower-case letters spell words which are changed into Chinese characters). Currently, there are over 1000 characters available in the app. Press Alt + Shift key to show and select a Chinese … As you can see from these examples, the Chinese language is extremely complex, rich and entertaining and it offers endless possibilities of new creations. OMG! If you have any questions, ask me in the comments below! Chinese Dating Culture. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. In the beginning I could only text a few simple words, but slowly and patiently I began to text and read a bit more. You can usually find her traveling, eating, and writing about both. For Chinese phones and for American phones with Mandarin enabled, texting is very similar to typing on a computer. Google Translate. Text language is heavy on abbreviations and tends to be a lot more casual. 7. In a language of approximately 50,000 individual characters, mastering the most commonly used Chinese characters—and knowing their order of frequency—will benefit you along your path to … It's hard to tell all my friends and family not to use them when texting me and only me, that's not going to work. I hope that you’ve learned a bit about how people actually text/message each other in China. Lately people are complaining to be getting my texts in Chinese letters, or just getting half of it. Why Motivation is Overrated When Learning a New Language. Students going through our Upper Intermediate Conversational Course will remember "250" coming up in this awesome lesson where Yangyang and Mama Cheng are bargaining with a shopkeeper in Beijing over the price of shoes: One of the unique features of WeChat are the quirky stickers and emojis that people developed for the app. Chinese characters can be written horizontally or vertically. The emperor then said: “Take these four "250s” outside to be beheaded!” Thus the phrase “250” has been used to mean “idiot,” and is still used to poke fun at people today. I like your blog.I will follow up your blog. Surprise Discovery About Learning Chinese Characters, Lonely Americans In Taiwan: Why Making Friends Is Harder Than We Thought. The precise strokes of Chinese characters make them relatively easy for a computer to distinguish. Why do non-Chinese people feel that Chinese is difficult to learn? Did You Know You Can Use Yoyo Chinese Like a Mobile App? In this example, I have chosen the Simplified Chinese – Pinyin keyboard. Latin alphabet abbreviations (rather than Chinese characters) are also sometimes used to evade censorship. Here are a few hilarious WeChat emojis you might like: This one is used in response to a unique WeChat feature, 红包 (hóng bāo) - red envelopes. Currently, the most likely place a Chinese speaker or learner would encounter internet slang is on 微信 ( wēi xìn) also known by its English name WeChat. You can change the input method by long-pressing on an input field and choosing Input Method → Android Keyboard. Google's free service instantly translates words, phrases, and web pages between English and over 100 other languages. It’s nice to connect! Like Language Boat on Facebook for events, updates, extra photos & posts! June 3, 2013 Amy Estrada Language Learning Tips & Ideas 0. I'm receiving short messages just fine, with or without emoticons. It was a big hit not only in China but also in some parts of the world (hello 9gag): DUANG. I Never Thought This Would Happen In Taiwan! Please share in the comments! Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. In Chinese, characters are morphemes which are also words, therefore if text speak = acronyms (like imho, wrt), then there's very little room for it. If you ever talk to Chinese people over social media (such as WeChat or QQ) then you will notice several different ways of laughing. Old, uncommon Chinese characters that have been revived. A similar phrase is 五二零一三一四 (wǔ èr líng yī sān yī sì), which is a stand-in for 我爱你一生一世 (wǒ ài nǐ yì shēng yí shì). The Chinese texting we did is essentially Cold Character Reading (CCR) as Terry conceptualizes it (having people read Chinese characters that they already have the sound and meaning for firmly in their heads), but instead of introducing Characters in a story text, it’s through real-time interpersonal communication on an everyday communication device: our phones.