Hard to explain, what I mean.

When I am practicing a character like (头发) tóufa, when I am asked for the tones (writing them with my mouse) I make the 2nd and then the 1st I am right ('cause 1st tone is the correct tone for 发 (fā) standing alone.
But If I am asked to write the word in Pinyin I need to go 2nd tone and then 5th, 'cause this 2-character word changes 1st tone to 5th.

Here's the thing: if I do it in the tone request I go right with either 1st or 5th tone, in Pinyin request I would go wrong with 1st and could only go with 5th.

This makes learning the right tones of Wordls like Zhidao 知道 very difficult. If sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes not.

You know what I mean? Please change this AFAP! :)

In Taiwan it would be said tou2fa1 and on the mainland it would be tou2fa5. So you've just got to remember where the neutral tones are I'm afraid!

Skritter is going by mainland rules. You are wanting Taiwan rules.

If they changed it to Taiwan rules, I would drop all tonal prompts in disgust. Sorry, an ideal situation would be to have both. Perhaps they could have a little setting under language selection. HOWEVER, you are wanting Taiwan standard. Sorry, but many of us want Mainland standard.

This isn't a problem to be fixed. It is just a decision the Skritter Lords had to make. If they had used Taiwan rules from the start, I question whether I would have even signed up for Skritter.

no, I see you didn't get it.

I don't want to use Taiwanese.

It's just that I want that the same is correct when I'm training only the tones and when I'm studying the pinyin.
let's say tou2fa5 is correct (as I want to study mainland chinese). When I am asked for the tones of this word (writing method) writing 2 and then 1 it is correct as when I write 5. So if I write 2 and 1 I do it wrong but don't get a Mistake by skritter. but If I am asked to write the pinyin I would get a mistake for writing 2 and 1.
this makes it very confusing for me to learn what's right... sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.. and the next time I am asked I am dizzled again

Actually, I'm not sure which he's wanting. Is he just wanting consistency between the two prompts (is there not?). Or does he want the Taiwanese option also. Seems the way the Skritter lot have done things in the past is to accept both ways. That's reasonable. If there's a problem with a particular word, then you can always send a message to get someone to add the alternate pronunciation.

Ok, there's a new post now. Err "...I am asked for the tones of this word (writing method) writing 2 and then 1 it is correct as when I write 5. So if I write 2 and 1 I do it wrong but don't get a Mistake by skritter. but If I am asked to write the pinyin I would get a mistake for writing 2 and 1. "

I hate maths puzzles.

Looking at the bit at the end, I do get your meaning though. "How can I learn things the right way"? Yep? How Skritter have done is is that they've tried to be open to both pronunciations. At least, I think, that's how it's meant to work in theory. It's possible some words don't have both pronunciations added.

At any rate, as long as you write one of accepted ones in it should be correct. Of course, that doesn't help you if you don't know which one is the right pronunciation for you. Well, in an ideal world perhaps there would be a different setting for mainland and taiwanese. But I wouldn't worry too much. By the time you're getting the pronunciation well enough that people understand you, and Chinese starts to be useful, you'll already be used to what needs to be neutral and what doesn't.

Just pay attention when you add word (check a dictionary), listen to people talking, and you'll get it. You'll also get an inkling about what sort of words need to have the neutral tone, and what sort don't. Actually, quite a lot seem not to..

The neutral tone is used a moderate amount in my experience. The thing about it is that I have only come across a hand full of words where you change the meaning by not using the neutral tone. The end result, in my experience, is that if you don't use the neutral tone you are understandable. You just sound a little odd. If you are around mainlanders a lot, you will develop a natural feeling for it. If I think about it, I often screw up which word has a neutral tone or not. If I just speak, I usually get the neutrals correct. I second what Byzanti is saying.

As for 头发 in particular, you peaked my curiosity. I plugged it into my scratch pad. In the writing characters prompt, it accepts both tou2fa5 and tou2fa1.

(BUG or PERSONAL STUPIDITY ALERT) I decided to add reading to that word to see what it did with reading. It wouldn't let me turn on reading for just that one word in scratchpad。 I went to the new my words section and tried there as well. I click the on button for reading, but once I leave that dialogue box it resets to being off. If I pull back up the dialogue, it is still turned off. (Has Skritter learned that my hatred of pinyin is so profound that it is protecting me from myself?)

I can't test to see what the reading mode does. I double checked in a dictionary to confirm it is tou2fa5. (Always double check before posting something on a forum that doesn't have an edit posts function:)

I can relate to the original poster. Scritter is consistently more lenient when asking for tones than writing.
I understand that there are often different, equally correct pronunciations for a word, but I don't understand why in Scritter those are equally correct in Tone Mode, but only one is correct in Reading.

Bug! Let me think about this one. I will have to untangle some code to get the same logic working in both prompts.

We did add the neutral tone exception so that the neutral tones would be less insistent and annoying for learning Taiwan-style, but you're right that I failed to apply it to the reading prompts themselves.

By the way, in Taiwanese pronunciation, I think it'd be tóufà, not tóufā. 发 corresponds to two traditional characters, 發 (fā, "emit") and 髮 (fà, "hair"). Unless I'm crazy? Accepting first tone also in this situation is another limitation of the hackaround I added to not require neutral tones for certain characters.

west316, I think it's not showing the reading prompt as added because you have reading prompts disabled in your study settings. Hmm. We'll have to think about how to do this better when we rework that word popup (and that table in particular).

Yeah, I remember noticing that hackaround a while ago. I just look up the word or ask a Chinese friend if I'm not sure of one of the tones (nciku seems pretty good, usually). Another example for the fa1 vs fa4 is 卷发 juan3fa4 (curly hair/wavy hair). Nick's not crazy....

Yes, in the mainland, 发 (hair) is fà. But in Taiwan, 髮 is always fǎ. The Taiwanese pronunciation for 頭髮 is tóufǎ.

You're kidding me! Aahhh! That's great! Again the Chinese language exerts its might and crushes my puny abstractions under a wave of inexhaustible complexity. I should have known better by now.

Wow. The Taiwanese pronunciation is rather different. After I logically thought about it, tou2fa4 would make sense. 理发li3fa4 or 理发店li3fa4dian4 are the terms for cutting hair and a barber shop. Tou2fa3 is really different, though.

@Nick - Yes, you should have known better. Chinese is a cruel mistress. Every time we think we can finally rest in peace knowing what she demands of us, she gives us a smack upside the head and makes us feel like fools for daring to think we finally have a handle on things.

你敢？！你敢？！

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4502934/Bild%2016.png

here is a picture of this problem...

as you see I write (in the character field) the 1st tone - and it's correct. but if I would be asked to write the pinyin (you know... the other field) writing tou2fa1 would be a mistake.

will you solve it?? PLEASE. I'm so getting stucked on learning these...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4502934/Bild.png

okay, I hope this link is working

itaju, I've got it high on my list, but I'm not getting much done for the moment as I'm visiting relatives for the holidays. There's a bunch of code to write, so I'm saving it for when I get back. Thanks for your patience on this one.

okay, just wanted to know it's in line :)

merry christmas and a happy new year :D

It looks like I won't be able to do this at all without some larger changes. The individual characters are not loaded for reading prompts, so we don't have any way to tell what full tones might be valid for those characters, which is the hack the current workaround system is built on. We're going to need a better system before this can work at all for reading prompts, and that's going to take a while. Sorry!