Google Pinyin was released about a year ago. I must admit I didn’t really know what to expect when I downloaded it and installed it. I am only a beginner and the Google Pinyin site is written entirely in Chinese so I didn’t expect to get very far. About 60 seconds later I was typing simple sentences in Chinese. It’s that easy to use.

As you can see from the image above, imputing Hànyǔ pinyin (without any tones) activates a drop down menu with Chinese character suggestions. This kind of software is known as an Input Method Editor (IME). An IME is a program or operating system component that allows computer users to enter characters and symbols not found on their keyboard.

Using Google Pinyin and MDBG online Chinese-English dictionary I can complete my class assignments in double quick time.

Shawn over at Scattered-notes has gone to a great deal of trouble to translate the setup options and other configurations for Google’s Pinyin Input Method Editor. Thanks Shawn!

Jetorz has outlined 5 big advantages of Google Pinyin.

Google Pinyin is currently only compatible with Windows. It works fine with Firefox.