life: ABC help. a.k.a. asian power!

ok. so before i got into chinese class in my high school, how ppl typed chinese mystified me. i mean, do they have an asian keyboard they use in china?!

but no. HOW TO TYPE CHINESE (windows users):

look down at your screen. you should see a toolbar/menu bar/what ever you call it.

right click on it.

you should see a list pop up. on the top of the list is "Toolbars".

go into the arrow. you should see "Language Bar". click on it.

in the mode you are in right now, you should see "EN" for english.

you can click on "EN" and change to Chinese (it says "CN" or "Chinese PRC") now you can type in chinese!! (remember to use pinyin!! <-- for canto speakers)

but what if you don't see Chinese PRC?!

then you can install it!! (no downloading required)
go here for help on installing chinese if you use Windows XP

go here for help on installing chinese if you use Windows Vista.
it's really easy!

once you have it installed, you can just click on your language bar to change back and forth between both languages.

WHAT IF YOU DON'T KNOW PINYIN?! or how to pronounce it?! or what it means?!

 if you're a canto speaker like me, you will most likely not be able to figure out the mandarin pronunciation of words.

well, i found Canto Dict, which is AMAZING!! but it does have some downfalls (such as only traditional characters--it's because Hong Kong people who speak cantonese, use traditional characters), but it's the only cantonese dictionary i've found out there. it has the cantonese pronunciation, pinyin, and sentences/common phrases.

for your other usages, such as a chinese dictionary, i find NCiku to be very helpful--you can "handwrite" in characters to search when you don't know the definition or how to pronounce a character. it also has sentences/examples, audio, and multiple dictionaries, but the characters display mainly under the simplified version. they do show the traditional character once you look under that character though.

i've also found MDBG, which is a pretty good dictionary with both traditional and simplified characters.

for translators, i haven't really looked into them, but i primarily use Google Translate even though it's not the best.