How to Use Your iPhone to Read Chinese Books to Your Children

As I mentioned before, cultivating a love for Chinese in my children is a work in progress.

I like to think that our efforts are bearing fruit. Noey is not as resistant when I speak Mandarin to him, though he is still not very comfortable with stringing his own sentences in response. I mostly get one/two word answers, but I’ll take that for now! With this book-loving boy of mine, I’ve found that reading Chinese books to him has been the key. Sometimes he even picks up his Chinese books when it’s time for bedtime stories — ah, it warms the cockles of my anxious-Mummy-heart when he does that!

There’s only one teensy problem: I’m not always able to read all the words in his books.

Oh no, no hanyu pinyin! How liddat?

Thankfully I have my iPhone.

(Seriously, is there a task that we don’t rely on our phones to help us with these days?)

Ideally, I would like to be able to scan page with my phone and have the unknown word read back to me while its meaning is flashed on my screen. Unfortunately, no one has built such an app yet. However, with a good dictionary app and the handwriting keyboard, I’ve managed to decipher almost every word/phrase that Noey’s Chinese picture books have thrown at me.

This has been very useful to me, so I thought I’d share how I do this. Here’s what you ned to do:

Step 1: Download a good Chinese dictionary app. Try KTDict C-E or Pleco.

Step 2: Install the Chinese Handwriting Keyboard on your iPhone.

To do this, go to Settings > General > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard. If you already have other keyboards installed, it’s Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard.

You will be presented with a list of keyboards to choose from. Select Chinese – Simplified – Handwriting. (This should apply to most modern children’s texts.)

Step 3: Now, go back to your newly downloaded KTdict C-E Chinese dictionary and launch it. Put your cursor in the search bar, then switch to the Chinese Handwriting keyboard by tapping on the globe icon on bottom row. 

Step 4: Use your finger and start writing the word you can’t read. If you write it correctly, the word should pop up as an option on the right of your keyboard. Tap on the correct option to select.

Step 5: Learn a new word! The dictionary should recognise the word and interpret it for you, and provide you with the hanyu pinyin for it.

Step 6: Quickly take a pen and jot down the hanyu pinyin of the word on your kid’s book. This way you won’t be stuck again if you have to re-read the book subsequently.

If you’re on Android, you can skip all these steps and just use Pleco. Install the app, launch it, and click the paintbrush icon to put you in handwriting mode. Then just use your finger and write away! The word suggestions will appear at the bottom of the screen.

*I decided to jot this down after repeating instructions to a number of friends within the last couple of months. I hope this helps other parents struggling to read Chinese like me!