Hi,
Can I recommend CantonWP as a new learning utility for Cantonese and Mandarin learning?
CantonWP is a new software that will let you read any unicode chinese text (e.g. copied and pasted from an IE5+ browser) whilst providing the pronunciation in cantonese or mandarin together with an approximate english translation. So now you can now read learn cantonese or mandarin at the same time as you read any chinese text of your choice from the internet.
Below is an example of the output from this software. The first paragraph is an extract from the Great Learning by Confucius. The second paragraph provides the output of CantonWP, and the third paragraph is the english translation (not provided by the software).
As you can see, the english meaning provided by CantonWP is not always contextually precise, but it does provide more or less accurate pronunciation. If you have the english translation as well, this provides a very fast and effective way of learning cantonese (or mandarin), while reading new texts.
There are also other learning facilities, such as 'quick lookup' of the meaning and pronunciation of characters etc. It can't handle large texts, or print, but the unicode output text can easily be copied and pasted into Word or notepad.
The free version is available from www.cantonwp.com. It is a massive 29MB to download, and 70MB to install. It also takes ages to start up (about 30 secs), but it is well worth a try. The full version costs USD$40.
大學之道在明明德，在親民，在止於至善。
[大:daai6:doctor][學:hok6:learn][之:ji1: (literary equivalent of 的)][道:do6:direction][在:joi6: (located) at][明:ming4:clear][明:ming4:clear][德:dak1:德]，[在:joi6: (located) at][親:chan1:parents-in-law of one's offspring][民:man4:the people]，[在:joi6: (located) at][止:ji2:to stop][於:yue1:on][至:ji3:arrive][善:sin6:good]。
The way of great learning consists in manifesting one's bright virtue, consists in loving the people, consists in stopping in perfect goodness.
Best Regards,
admin@cantonwp.com