Chinese members: Need help translating pinyin to hanzi

[Buyingbf_]

I'm trying to write a name from pinyin into hanzi. I'm helping one of my friends find someone he lost contact with, and since Chinese is a character language there can be hundreds of different characters for one sound I am struggling quite hard. I have barely any understanding of the language so mind me if I sound dumb.

 

The name is: Jia Ying Li. My friend says that it's in Mandarin. Any help is appreciated.

[zassou]

it appears mandarin, yes. but the problems is that there are countless of homonyms in chinese, multiple characters with the same pronounciation, plus in mandarin there are four tones, so only knowing the pinyin isnt enough. there is not such thing of commonly used name table in chinese, in theory you can name your kid whatever chinese characters you like, even those from ancient dictionaries that do not exist in unicode yet.

 

also the family name is unclear, the standard way to spell chinese name in the mainland (according to textbooks, anyway) is family name first but its not uncommon for ppl who work overseas to put their family last when romanising their name to avoid confusion, like japanese do. in your case, Jia could be the family name, often written as 賈, while Li, written as 李 is one of the most commonly found family names. (could be others but those are the 2 characters that comes to my mind)

 

different ppl from different places romanise their names differently, for example, ppl from mainland put family name first, given name last, and no spaces between characters. for example, 白居易 written as Bai Juyi, 李白 as Li Bai. if your friend comes from the mainland, his or her name should written as Jia Yingli or Li Jiaying.

 

[wasab]

What's more confusing, Chinese characters can have different pronunciation depending on the context. 

 

My favorite is Emproer decree from many Chinese tv dramas. The character for 日 is pronounced differently for some reason. 

[captain_to_fire]

@mrchow19910319 @VegetableStu @AluminiumTech

[Buyingbf_]

16 hours ago, zassou said:

it appears mandarin, yes. but the problems is that there are countless of homonyms in chinese, multiple characters with the same pronounciation, plus in mandarin there are four tones, so only knowing the pinyin isnt enough. there is not such thing of commonly used name table in chinese, in theory you can name your kid whatever chinese characters you like, even those from ancient dictionaries that do not exist in unicode yet.

 

also the family name is unclear, the standard way to spell chinese name in the mainland (according to textbooks, anyway) is family name first but its not uncommon for ppl who work overseas to put their family last when romanising their name to avoid confusion, like japanese do. in your case, Jia could be the family name, often written as 賈, while Li, written as 李 is one of the most commonly found family names. (could be others but those are the 2 characters that comes to my mind)

 

different ppl from different places romanise their names differently, for example, ppl from mainland put family name first, given name last, and no spaces between characters. for example, 白居易 written as Bai Juyi, 李白 as Li Bai. if your friend comes from the mainland, his or her name should written as Jia Yingli or Li Jiaying.

 

Yeah, I've stumbled upon the different types of sounds for each word and the hundreds of different characters as well. I knew that this would be a problem for me but damn.

For now, I'll try delving for more background information on my friend's friend. Thanks guys.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

19 hours ago, Buyingbf_ said:

I'm trying to write a name from pinyin into hanzi.

Quite impossible, without know where your friend is from.

different backgrounds have diff translations 

[wasab]

I would just enter the pinyin into baidu and see what pops up. 

 

http://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&tn=baidu&wd=Jia Ying Li 名字&oq=Jia%20YingLi%E5%90%8D%E5%AD%97&rsv_pq=841372e70002d450&rsv_t=bb919eGxKTROsgUWrdA4pVvyhpJcl%2Bbflti8LuZn87OVoZNoaUzX8Za9xX0&rqlang=cn&rsv_enter=0&inputT=2018&rsv_sug3=13&rsv_sug4=2200

 

Or you can try the dictionary and try all the permutations of chinese characters associated with these pinyin. yeah... good luck with that....

 

http://xh.5156edu.com/html2/j02.html

[zassou]

13 hours ago, wasab said:

What's more confusing, Chinese characters can have different pronunciation depending on the context. 

 

My favorite is Emproer decree from many Chinese tv dramas. The character for 日 is pronounced differently for some reason. 

not the same character, 日 means the sun or day. 曰 means someone speaks. the latter is flatter.

[wasab]

1 minute ago, zassou said:

日 (ri4) means sun, or day. 曰 (yue1) means someone speaks. the latter is flatter.

isnt that just confusing to chinese learners though? different meanings and different pronunciations. 

[zassou]

Just now, wasab said:

isnt that just confusing to chinese learners though? different meanings and different pronunciations. 

as i said, not the same character. instead of trying to remember individual character, as there are tens of thousands of them, the way to go is to understand it based on the context.

生日, literally birthday.

子曰, the teacher says,

[wasab]

Just now, zassou said:

as i said, not the same character. instead of trying to remember individual character, as there are tens of thousands of them, the way to go is to understand it based on the context.

生日, literally birthday.

子曰, the teacher says,

huh? they look the same to me. cant tell the difference. 

[zassou]

5 minutes ago, wasab said:

huh? they look the same to me. cant tell the difference. 

when written in regular script (楷書) they're quite different. but modern os uses sans serif fonts that make them look quite similar.

 

日：

 

曰：

https://zh.wiktionary.org/zh-hant/曰

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

10 minutes ago, wasab said:

isnt that just confusing to chinese learners though? different meanings and different pronunciations. 

little tips, 

DO NOT try to understand simplified chinese, learn traditional chinese.

Most single character are designed to have a certain "meaning" 

 

and chinese isnt worth learning.

[wasab]

Just now, zassou said:

when written in regular script (楷書) they're quite different. but modern os uses sans serif fonts that make them look quite similar.

 

日：

 

曰：

 

well damn.... i used to think they were the same. wonder how people can tell if handwriting is sloppy like mine. 

 

 

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

Just now, wasab said:

i used to think they were the same. wonder how people can tell if handwriting is sloppy like mine. 

no they cant, unless it is presented in a meaningful phrase

[zassou]

2 minutes ago, wasab said:

well damn.... i used to think they were the same. wonder how people can tell if handwriting is sloppy like mine.

many ppl cant even write anymore, other than their names. me for example, quite literally havent write a single chinese character since high school.

[wasab]

4 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

little tips, 

DO NOT try to understand simplified chinese, learn traditional chinese.

Most single character are designed to have a certain "meaning" 

 

and chinese isnt worth learning.

Doesn't matter which you learn. Anyone who can read traditional chinese can read simplified chinese and vice versa. The two are so similar that many mainland chinese immigrants can begin reading traditional chinese newspapers right from the get go. (I live NYC, there is a china town here, many chinese immigrants, and all Chinese writtings are traditional) 

 

Although i would learn simplified just because simplified Chinese users outnumber traditional like... i dont know, 1.4 billions to like a couple millions? 

 

[wasab]

2 minutes ago, zassou said:

many ppl cant even write anymore, other than their names. me for example, quite literally havent write a single chinese character since high school.

you can still at least read can you? 

[zassou]

Just now, wasab said:

you can still at least read can you? 

somewhat, need dictionary occasionally. have trouble on simplified text as ive never learned them, but they are similar enough for me to guess what an unfamiliar character is based on context. i can barely speak mandarin as the pronounciation is too "weird" for me.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

4 minutes ago, wasab said:

Anyone who can read traditional chinese can read simplified chinese and vice versa.

no, its just false.

 

[wasab]

1 minute ago, zassou said:

somewhat, need dictionary occasionally. have trouble on simplified text as ive never learned them, but they are similar enough for me to guess what an unfamiliar character is based on context. i can barely speak mandarin as the pronounciation is too "weird" for me.

what dialect are you most familiar with? As far as I know, all the modern Chinese states, Taiwan, Singapore, and China itself use Mandrine as the default. 

[wasab]

Just now, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

no, its just false.

 

dude, i see plenty Chinese taught in simplified reading traditional Chinese newspapers. 

[zassou]

5 minutes ago, wasab said:

what dialect are you most familiar with? As far as I know, all the modern Chinese states, Taiwan, Singapore, and China itself use Mandrine as the default. 

i do not consider my native tongue is a dialect, as far as i am concerned, if 2 tongues are not mutually intellectable, they are different languages.

my native tongue is cantonese if you curious. a native mandarin (putonghua) speaker who is never heard cantonese before, he probably cant understand a single word.

[zassou]

3 minutes ago, wasab said:

dude, i see plenty Chinese taught in simplified reading traditional Chinese newspapers. 

they are trolling, i know a lot of native users who can read both simplified and traditional text with little trouble. only those like me who skipped lessons, like me have trouble understanding one of them.

[wasab]

1 minute ago, zassou said:

they is trolling, i know a lot of native users who can read both simplified and traditional text with little trouble. only those like me who skipped lessons have troubles understanding one of them.

no really, its not that difficult. I even see these immigrants kids, who had only 2nd grade level education back in mainland china before immigrated, reading the tradiotnal chinese newspaper.