Words for cooking, making?

[english-learner]

Hi, I am kind of new to the community. All very interesting as I saw first hand VN food preparation outside my hotel at many small eating places all about.
Nhất tự vi sư , bán tự vi sư : This I like. i tried the Vdict google and EvTran translator on this phrase and got a very different result -something about Buddist monks and a professor which shows the shortcomings of the machine translation! No doubt it will improve with time.
I am slowly learning some Vietnamese with goal for communication with friends now and ̣for my another trip to VN.
Chào Birgit,
I worked out your thank you "Cam on rat nhieu" for the reply as Cám ơn rất nhiều. I finally figured out the microsoft on-screen VN keyboard doing this. Think i would like to buy a dedicated VN keyboard. Without using the correct special VN characters and accent marks can native readers/speakers figure out the meaning? Does written vietnamese use exclamation point?
Rod

There is no dedicate VN keyboard. Vietnamese people use a software to transfer the symbols, characters,... into accent marks/symbols. Ex: to make the accent symbol ~, the key x is typed double. (type in telex way)
Vietnamese people, in many cases, can understand the without-accent- symbol Vietnamese. However, in some cases, the meanings is distorted and this leads to misunderstand.
THe exclamation point, of course, is used in the Vietnamese written language.

Nhất tự vi sư, bán tự vi sư is a Chinese-Vietnamese proverb
Nhất tự vi sư, bán tự vi sư is a expression/saying/proverb coming from the Confucius theorem , a Chinese great thinker, in the very old days.
It means who teaches you only a word even a half of word is still your teacher. But this is the words by words meaning/sense
The saying implies that the teachers/masters deserve to respect by everyone. They even is respected more than the king/emperor and parents. It is Confucius theorem/Confucianism.

[n4qnx]

Thank you english-learner for the explanations. My english is good as my 1st language but my spelling may be inconsistent (poor)! I made friends with a fellow I met on the street in Sai Gon (I was there April-May 2008). We have been emailing each other since then. He includes a Confucius quotation with each message which I enjoy.
OK on the software based VN keyboards you use. I found some more trouble tonight using the Microsoft PC on-screen Vietnamese keyboard. Some of what I type in, especially the rising and falling accents, (maybe other marks too) looks correct but in reality are something else I think. Not correct when I check what I have typed into the vdict translater compared with the same thing cut and pasted from your's and others vietnamese language postings. The vdict on-screen vietnamese keyboard appears to work fine but is not usable for text-only for single to two words at a time? Maybe this can be fixed to work on text as well.
Rod

[english-learner]

Thank you english-learner for the explanations. My english is good as my 1st language but my spelling may be inconsistent (poor)! I made friends with a fellow I met on the street in Sai Gon (I was there April-May 2008). We have been emailing each other since then. He includes a Confucius quotation with each message which I enjoy.
OK on the software based VN keyboards you use. I found some more trouble tonight using the Microsoft PC on-screen Vietnamese keyboard. Some of what I type in, especially the rising and falling accents, (maybe other marks too) looks correct but in reality are something else I think. Not correct when I check what I have typed into the vdict translater compared with the same thing cut and pasted from your's and others vietnamese language postings. The vdict on-screen vietnamese keyboard appears to work fine but is not usable for text-only for single to two words at a time? Maybe this can be fixed to work on text as well.
Rod

There are two ways to typed Vietnamese on computers. One is called VNI, the other is called Telex. In my opinion, you should use Telex, it's more comfortable than using VNI. Because you fingers wil not "stretch far"
as using VNI.
For example, to type the word: Kỹ thuật , you have to type the following keys: KYX (space bar) THUAATJ

[n4qnx]

Thank you. How do I get Telex or VNI?

[english-learner]

Thank you. How do I get Telex or VNI?

In my opinion, you should practice to use Telex, it takes you less time to practice than to use VNI
The way to type the accent symbol (higher/lower...) with telex I' ll say later.
Now i'm very busy

[andrew]

I like to use VPSKeys (google search for it... this forum won't let me post links). It lets you customize the keystrokes you want to use for special characters. For example, you can use the / key to add the symbol for rising intonation, and the \ to add the symbol for falling intonation.

If you know how to write Vietnamese using ASCII characters (common in emails), google search for "vnkeys" and it will take you to a website that converts ASCII Vietnamese to standard Vietnamese text. For example, you can type that familiar quote in ASCII this way:

Nha^'t tu+. vi su+, ba'n tu+. vi su+

and then you can convert it using VNKeys so that it looks like this:

Nhất tự vi sư, bán tự vi sư

[birgit]

Does anyone know, which kind Mac Apple uses? I can change to a "vietnamese keyboard" on my Mac.