Just a weird thought but since 〇 (not same as 0 but a ideographic zero(零) is by miles the most used character/word in any Chinese newspaper i just wondered if it really is considered to be a character? It is not in the CJK ideograph part of Unicode but the "CJK Symbols and Punctuation". On the other hand it is listed in MDBG and other sources. It is not in Skritter. By pure definition it is not an character but it still have a lot of the characteristics for it. It is an ideograph after all.

One more thought about this. Since the 草码 (cǎomǎ) traditional numerals are in use in some traditional contexts such as traditional Chinese medicine and they are in the same category as 〇 maybe it should be treated as a character after all. The numerals are:

HANGZHOU NUMERAL ONE 〡
HANGZHOU NUMERAL TWO 〢
HANGZHOU NUMERAL THREE 〣
HANGZHOU NUMERAL FOUR 〤
HANGZHOU NUMERAL FIVE 〥
HANGZHOU NUMERAL SIX 〦
HANGZHOU NUMERAL SEVEN 〧
HANGZHOU NUMERAL EIGHT 〨
HANGZHOU NUMERAL NINE 〩

On the other hand, in that category we also have all the brackets such as 《 and that is hardly a Chinese character.

I am having this debate with my Chinese friend who is very interested in Chinese medicine and introduced those numerals to me. Never seen them before. I guess the basic questions is, what is determining if a character is just a character or something else?

In Unicode, they distinguish between the following types of characters:

letter, mark, number, punctuation, symbol, control

So《 would be punctuation, 〧 would be a number, etc. So they are all Chinese "characters" in the Unicode sense (i.e. they all have Unicode numbers and are used in Chinese).

I seem to remember seeing some of those numerals in Skritter's component breakdowns, but I'm not sure if any of them can be studied.

James

I've always been a fan of adding things like 〇 and even the letter T for words like T恤. My thought is that if things are written this way in Chinese we might as well be able to practice them on Skritter. In my queue karaoke is currently 卡拉 rather than 卡拉OK which bugs me every time I see it.

I know nothing about programming, but I'm assuming it would be easier to add these few strange/Western characters than a lot of other suggestions/ideas people have.

No, it would be really hard to add the non-Han characters. 〇 would be doable except that the handwriting recognition would barf, as we don't have any strokes like that in the system. Otherwise I would agree with you.

We could do some work to add those 草码 numerals, but given that this is the first time I've even heard of them (no one has asked for them before), it doesn't seem like a priority.

I do understand the annoyance of not being able to include those things, but I mean... I doubt you're going to forget how to write them without Skritter including them.

ok, T恤 卡拉OK ... what other Chinese words use latin alphabet letters?

In Taiwan, there's also:

A菜 a common vegetable
K書 to study hard, cram (啃書)
A片 adult movie

still more Taiwanese "字母詞" here:
http://www.huayuqiao.org/articles/yuwenjianshetongxun/6901.htm

I wish we could write latin characters in Skritter for another reason: it's impractical switching from the writing tablet to the keyboard when Skritter prompts me for pinyin, so I wish I could write the pronunciation using the pen, in pinyin or in zhuyin.

AA制 means to go dutch... Mostly I think it's very current, slangy words. DIY is another example, although that is definitely an adult slang abbreviation.

I where not asking for any "characters" to be added. Just debated about what is an character. There are so many variations of some characters that are not treated as a character. Anyway there are several words that combine Latin letters and Chinese characters. To name a few more:
Ｂ超 B chao1 Type B uttrasound
Ｋ歌 K ge1 Other name for karaoke
Ｔ恤 T xu4 T shirt
Ｕ盘 U pan2 One of many words for USB drive
Ｘ光 X guang1 X ray
Ｘ战警 X zhan4 jing3 X men
T字帳 T zi4 zhang4 T account (book keeping)
Ａ咖 A ka1 A class
ｎ遍 n bian4 n times/very frequent/many times/
傻Ｂ sha3 bi1 stupid c...(vulgar)

I've only seen the 草码 numerals called "Suzhou Numerals" 苏州花码 before. Because of an annoying mistake, they are called Hangzhou Numerals in Unicode. The Wikipedia article is good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_numerals

TV SHOW SPOILER ALERT...

the caoma numerals figure prominently in one of the episodes of the recent BBC Sherlock Holmes miniseries, as a "cipher". Sherlock calls them Hangzhou numerals, so I guess we can deduce that the writers learned them from Unicode.

Kai -
If you don't want to type chars for pinyin try using the click-to-show and self-grade method. I didn't think it would work very well but I tried for about a week and was convinced: any lessening of quality in review is counterbalanced for me by the time and annoyance of switching to/from the pen/keyboard. Especially so since I mis-typed often enough that the self-grading doesn't intrude on the flow of practice.

Here's another one to add to the list:

阿Q精神 "Ah Q mentality"

This is from the famous novel 阿Q正传; the protagonist's name is actually 阿Q. I first heard of it because of the phrase "Imitation Foreign Devil", which I think is brilliant, and which apparently comes from the book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Story_of_Ah_Q

http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/books/TrueStory.html

James

James, thanks for the "Imitation Foreign Devil"!

Googling it was quite interesting (sorry this is way off topic):

1. I guess the Chinese is 假洋鬼子

2. Apparently the term predates Lu Xun:

The "Imitation Foreign Devils" (IFD's) were units of Native Chinese soldiers raised and led by European Officers to fight in the Western manner, with modern fire arms. A variety of such volunteer units were raised with Imperial commissions and saw varying amounts of action by the war's end.
http://www.thevirtualarmchairgeneral.com/354-IFD%20Flags.html (with pretty flags)

3. Picture of Lu Xun's IFD here:
http://shuzheng.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-saviour-of-sarawak-a-punjabis-biblical-morality/#archive-dropdown
also interesting:
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=假洋鬼子

4. Apparently the new US ambassador to China has been called an IFD
http://www.thebeijinger.com/forum/2011/03/11/Fake-foreign-devil

... a deep antagonism is evident in a profusion of less-than-diplomatic commentary on the Internet, a venue where Chinese feel free to vent.

"A fake foreign devil who cannot even speak Chinese," wrote one anonymous contributor to an Internet forum on public affairs.

...

The hostility is no surprise to Chinese Americans who live or work in China and are alternately embraced as long-lost relatives or scorned for deserting the motherland. They often are not recognized as foreigners and have difficulty getting into diplomatic compounds where many expatriates reside.

A joke already floating among the Chinese Americans in China is that Locke had better carry his passport.

...

Locke does not speak Mandarin Chinese, unlike the current ambassador, Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor who was a Mormon missionary in Taiwan.

But Huntsman, who is reportedly exploring a run for president, angered the Chinese government by appearing Feb. 20 on a pedestrian mall in Beijing where dissidents had called for pro-democracy protests. The U.S. Embassy said he happened to walk by with his family.

"To pick Gary Locke is a way for Obama to make amends," said Zhou Shijian, a senior fellow at the Center for U.S.-China relations at Qinghua University. "He looks Chinese, but he is American and will represent the American government's interests."

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/10/world/la-fg-china-locke-20110310

James and Kai, some fascinating stuff!

To clarify one thing though, Locke does speak Cantonese.