March 26, 2025 BY ALFONS, IN The rise of Pinyin

New book by Alfons

Testing line heights, fonts and trim sizes. My new book on Hànyǔ Pīnyīn is getting along well. It will still take some time, though. So many things to do. Still getting up around 6-7 am, a bit of somatic movement practice, and then working every free minute until late, around 11-12 pm.

However, creating and working on a self-chosen, self-defined project, as it presents itself, as it is brought to life, organic unfolding—it gives life meaning and purpose, I can definitely feel that. And I do enjoy that feeling.

March 18, 2025 BY ALFONS, IN The rise of Pinyin

Input efficiency for novel Pinyin input scheme

Ok, now it’s two days later. Two days with hardly any sleep and constant starring at my computer screen. Which is beautiful, btw, this nano texture screen on my MacBook, I love it so much.

And a few walks in between, to think about how to fix the terrible problems I kept running into. Well… sometimes we need to slow down, so that solutions may come to us. I guess solutions, in their very nature, they also don’t like running targets.

I’ve been working on the numbers based input helper for about 3-4 months now, and I think it’s beautiful, too. I mean my frontend, which I can’t show you just yet.

It’s just… this entire idea of typing text using numbers seems flawed to me. I guess in this sense I’m pretty old school. In my mind and heart numbers and words are from two different realms. Nevertheless, it’s the most efficient input method.

But since I want to type text without using numbers I had to come up with an input scheme that can do just that.

This is why I developed my Twin Tone input scheme. The idea behind this scheme is that there’s no double vowels (twins) in the Chinese language, at least not in the romanised script called Pinyin.

This input scheme allows for writing Chinese (using Pinyin) without having to type numbers. There’s only one drawback: it’s terribly inefficient. A lot more characters have to be typed than result in actual text (depending on the text, there’s close to a 50% overhead).

That’s why I was trying hard to find an optimised, streamlined scheme. And to solve this problem, I used statistics. I had to find out which letter combinations are permissible for using in a Pinyin typing helper scheme.

The result of this work was my optimised Twin Tone input scheme. But the original design was very hard to implement from a software developer’s perspective. Therefore I created a much simplier variant, which I named, Twin Tone Variant (TTV). It’s a lot simpler, and also much easier to learn from a user’s perspective.

Turns out, this works very, very well. I’m very happy with it. And despite the slightly larger overhead, it’s more convenient to use than the numbers based input—since with TTV-Input the fingers can stay on the homerow on the keyboard.

So.

That’s my contribution from a teachers’ and inventors’ perspective. I blurred the input letter combination since it was so much work to find this scheme. Maybe in the future billions of people will use it. I probably should get it patented. But I have no idea how.

If you’re a business angel, investor, or startup incubator, I would like to team up with you; with me being Educational Director or Head of Innovation of a new Startup focusing on Chinese language related projects, all without Chinese characters.

Furthermore, I would like to start a Publishing company in Taiwan (for one, to have a legal basis for the work that follows, and secondly, to get temporary residency and a work permit for Taiwan.) But I’m open to other countries as well. Any help, a point in the right direction, or suggestions for partnering up are very welcome. 🙏😊

March 16, 2025 BY ALFONS, IN The rise of Pinyin

Designing Chinese Pinyin input methods

Over the past few months I’ve typed out 20 stories (Peppa Pig, Xiǎo Zhū Pèiqí) in Chinese language with Pīnyīn. This can act as base for some research.

First of all, the word count: 10,024 words, 53,115 characters, 11,842 vowels with diacritics. Questions arise. Answers are possible. For example:

Which tones are the most frequently used in the Chinese language? In vernacular modern Standard Chinese, that is, as Peppa Pig stories are written with that. Any Chinese teacher will say Chinese has 4 tones, and “Nǐ hǎo”, is as common as “Zàijiàn”, but is it really?

Finally, with Pinyin I can answer this question. Here is a screenshot of a software I designed to do the counting:

Clearly, the most common tone-marked tone in Chinese language is À, the 4th tone on the letter A. This is surprising to me, and relevant for Chinese Pinyin input method designs.

For example, after a lengthy calculation and reasoning, I found the following: By making à the default letter instead of a, there could be approximately 2.35% fewer keystrokes necessary to type such text in Chinese Pinyin. For the above text that would be exactly 1,356 fewer keystrokes.

While at it, the complete vowel depository looks like this:

It seems like, as if in vernacular (modern spoken) Chinese, the most common vowel is the letter I, by far, which came as a surprise to me, too.

If we look at the total word repository from the dictionary CC-CEDICT, we get a similar picture in many regards, but quite different counts for the neutral letters A, E and U. However, keep in mind that this is not spoken Chinese, but a repository, and thus more an academic exercise than a look into the soul of the Chinese language:

So far I have created two systems for Chinese Pinyin input (with two more in the making):

🍏 Method 1. Number marked Pinyin Input

Chinese Pinyin is written with diacritics. However, even modern computers notoriously lack convenient ways to input diacritics. Therefore many input systems have emerged. One of the most common ones is “number marked Pinyin input” which will automatically change the numbers 1-4 into the respective  diacritics as we type.

For example typing dang4 (or da4ng) will produce dāng.

I’ve spent quite some time to write my own software to do so, and in quite a few variations, too. Here’s a screenshot of one of the Proof of Concepts I’ve created:

When typing with numbers we need one extra keystroke to produce a vowel with diacritic. This means:

  • A definition: I will call vowels with diacritics, such as “ā, á, ǎ, à”, dvowels – the word vowel with a “d” in front, d for diacritic.
  • For 11,842 dvowels we need double the amount of keystrokes than for vowels without diacritics, in total 23,684 keystrokes.
  • This means, when typing, for example, 10,024 words with 53,115 characters (as in the Peppa Pig texts above), we will not have to type 53,115 keystrokes in total, like in a language without diacritics, such as English, but 64,957 keystrokes in total.
  • The math for this is: 53,115 characters – 11,842 vowels + 23,684 dvowels = 64,957.
  • How much is that in percent? 11,842 / 53,115 * 100 = 22.295

To write Pinyin Chinese with diacritics, with the number marked Pinyin input method, we have a keystroke overhead of 22.30% .

This is unavoidable and the bare minimum. It is the most direct way to input Pinyin without predictive typing methods, where a computer will suggest possible words in advance and allow the user to chose a word, rather than type it.

The qualm I have with number marked input is twofold:

Qualm 1) Reaching up for the number row is inconvenient, especially for longer typing. We humans can get used to most any inconvenience, but still it is inconvenient, or let’s say, not ideal in terms of ergonomics.

However, there’s plenty of room for optimism, I mean optimization. For example, with the stats above it became clear that a 4th tone a (à), is by far the most typed vowel with diacritic. This means, improvements can be made. For example, one idea I had yesterday:

Problem: When using number 4 to produce the 4th tone, we need to use the left hand for both keystrokes: key a and key 4, which are both on the left side on the keyboard.

Solution: It would be easier and faster if we also could use, for example, key 8 to produce the 4th tone, too. In this way we can use both hands for typing, and be faster, and more comfortable.

I’ve made a proof of concept for that, too, and it seems to indeed be quite an improvement in the typing experience. To be observed.

Qualm 2) The bigger problem I have with using numbers to type text is the thing in itself, why do I have to use numbers to write text? This doesn’t make sense to me. I understand that it is for reasons of convenience, especially when it comes to predictive text and assisted typing. But coming from a humanist background, it seems unacceptable to me to have to use numbers to write down words.

This bigger, psychological, “I stand by my principles” problem I will try to solve with inventing input methods that don’t need numbers to input text.

🍏 Method 2. Twin Tone Pinyin Input, TT-Input

If you’ve never heard of this input method before: I’ve made this one up. It’s my own invention. It’s something new.

Years of frustration, months of intense work and research, and 16 hour days of complete obsession led me to produce a robust, alternative system that reliably produces Pinyin text without the need to use numbers.

I’ve also created a proof of concept, a working software implementation. I’ve had many different attempts and angles at this problem, and ran all of them against the 102,000+ words from the CC-CEDICT dictionary. However, most of the algorithms produced an error rate of a minimum of 5%, which is unacceptable.

But this, TT-Input, this one is flawless:

Twin Tone Input (TT-Input) works by repeating a vowel twice and then typing a marker to produce the diacritic: “r” for á (2nd tone), “v” for ǎ (3rd tone), “f” for à (4th tone), or repeating the vowel one more time for the 1st tone.

For example, typing aaa gives ā, aar gives á, aav gives ǎ, aaf gives à.

aaa → ā 
aar → á 
aav → ǎ 
aaf → à 
Buufyoofng daaanxiiin → Bùyòng dānxīn

This means, just like in Telex for typing Vietnamese, we don’t need to reach up to the numbers row to produce a diacritic. Instead we use letters to type letters.

But now for the overhead. How much worse is it in terms of keystrokes?

  • With TT-input, we need 3 keystrokes to type one dvowel.
  • For 11,842 dvowels we need a total of 35,526 keystrokes.
  • This means when typing 10,024 words with 53,115 characters (as in the Peppa Pig texts I’ve transcribed), we will need to type 76,799 keystrokes in total.
  • Here’s the math: 53,115 characters – 11842 vowels + 35526 dvowels = 76,799 keystrokes in total.
  • The percentage for that is: 11,842 * 2 / 53,115 * 100 = 44.59

The “TT-Pinyin Input” keystroke overhead is 44.59%. As opposed to 22.3% with number marked input.

Which means: In publishing, a standard manuscript page is often 250–300 words, which translates to 1,500–2,000 characters (including spaces). Let’s say 275 words and 1750 characters, including whitespace. To type 1 standard manuscript page, being an average typist with ~300 KPM (60 WPM):

  • 5 mins 49 s (1,750 keystrokes) – English (No Diacritics)
  • 7 mins 6 s (2,135 keystrokes) – Chinese (Number-Marked Pinyin)
  • 8 mins 26 s (2,530 keystrokes) – Chinese (TT-Input)

To conclude, for today:

The 22.30% overhead for number-marked Pinyin input is the minimum possible for producing diacritics, if we disregard predictive text and assisted typing algorithms.

Opening keys 4–9 for number-marked input could be a game-changer. Assigning tones to the right-hand number row allows left-hand vowel input + right-hand tone selection, creating a parallel, two-handed input flow. This could speed things up significantly.

The 44.59% overhead for my latest invention, Twin Tone (TT) Pinyin Input, is double that of number-marked input. While TT-Input improves ergonomics by keeping the fingers close to the home row, the extra keystrokes could slow down typing overall, and also take a toll on the finger joints for the extra stress. On the other hand the shorter traveling distances for the fingers could improve comfort and rhythm, and might be worth investigating this input method further.

March 16, 2025 BY ALFONS, IN Disquisition and deliverance

Obsession – the only way to live

“Being obsessed over doing something, and be busy with it day and night, is the only way to live.” My best friend commented, while peering over my shoulder last June. This was the time when I decided to improve my handwriting…

…and filled hundreds and hundreds of pages with calligraphy and lettering styles, using the practice sheets I had designed myself, with lines angled at 17 degrees, and a new book on handwriting, (which I’ve not finished.) Furthermore, I went to countless bookshops and stationary stores, spent days inspecting the shelves of libraries, including the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, National Library in Vienna, Austria… to dig up official documents and research papers on the official Austrian handwriting style…

…for almost half a year, in my sparetime, I didn’t do much else. After all, my forsaken home country is one of the few countries that has such a thing: its own handwriting model, the Austrian Schulschrift, last revised by the Austrian Ministry of Education in 1995. And why not, why not learn to model my own handwriting using the Austrian model? …

…maybe because even the Austrian government keeps saying that it’s just a model, and we shouldn’t aim to copy it perfectly. They are right in that sense, perfection is unattainable… for the Os are unlike the German egg-shaped Os… in the Austrian model they are perfectly elliptical, and that’s something humans just can’t draw.

My friend Georg, who made that comment, he himself is living the way of passionately being obsessed over something and doing only that, day and night, too—but not as a teacher, like myself, but as a musician. Next to sleeping, there’s hardly anything else he and his fellow musicians do, other than practicing, playing and creating music.

We have purpose. Our obsession with what we think of as our work fills us with that rare, highly saught after, ethereal substance called “purpose.” Purpose, an invisible good that seems to nourish us spiritually, fills our lives with meaning, and aligns all our actions to that purpose.

As for main main profession, being a teacher of somatic education, this obsessing over topics doesn’t always yield movement lessons. But for once I can say……for once I can say that I have completely and fully understood what Moshé Feldenkrais meant by saying,

“You learn the official handwriting style first,
and only then you develop your own.”

Up until now this quote was only a toothless paper-tiger to me, a bland quote that has been repeated up and down in any Feldenkrais training ever done, cited without passion, quoted not knowing the obsession and the striving for perfection, joy, and purpose. Maybe that’s why—up until last June—this quote never resonated with me, was never convincing. Baseless, emotionless, irrelevant.

But now I understand. Now I can talk from experience. I had to become 50 years old to undo the damage done to me in public schooling, and learn how to use body, mind, hand and pen, to put ink to paper, beautifully, and with great satisfaction.

Here’s a video from my “beginning days” of handwriting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eNLy-YgsKg

Since October last year I have a new obsession: Romanised Chinese writing and spelling, with the latin alphabet, to the official standard of the Chinese government, called Hànyǔ Pīnyīn.

It started as a feeling, a desire to do something with lasting effect. Something that’s like putting my foot down, making a dent in history, leaving a legacy, doing something revolutionary, gamechanging, joyful and amazing… …and quickly, within days after my decision to turn Pīnyīn, the romanized Chinese writing system, into something great in my life, my interest in it turned into my new obsession, leading up to the 12 hour workdays I’m having these days, which always feel too short.

I’m working on a web application as a typing helper (to actually be able to write Pīnyīn,) with a new type of dictionary interface. And a Mac app. I’ve given up on the iPhone app, for now. And now I’m doing research on Pīnyīn input methods, devising new ones, comparing robustness, ease of use and efficiency. And with these tools I’ve already transcribed a few thousand words, every day a few more.

Furthermore, right now I’m writing a book about Pīnyīn spelling according to the Basic rules of the Chinese phonetic alphabet orthography (GB/T 16159-2012), a standard by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Chinese State Language Commission.

I wake up, usually around 6:30am, I do half an hour of Feldenkrais-inspired exercises (without which I would probably break apart,) shave and shower, and then, for the rest of the day……I work every minute I’ve a chance to. And I go to bed before midnight. Monday through Sunday.

“Yes, you’re on the right track,” I hear my friend Georg saying in my mind; and off he goes to his own practice session.

January 27, 2025 BY ALFONS, IN In rage against the machine

We learn what we live

Since around the 1950s, and perhaps continuing to this day, brave individuals have sought innovative approaches to education—Montessori, Waldorf education, Feldenkrais, and even homeschooling. These methods are often seen as a more compassionate and individualized approach, one that respects families, faith, personal development, liberty and freedom.

However, people forgot that they’ve spent staggering 12,000+ hours at school—maybe even as much as 20,000 hours considering homework and what is called “higher education.” In any case, this is certainly more than the supposedly 10,000 hours required to achieve mastery in any area of choice.

We, the people, were schooled in a system that uses curricula and rigid, prepackaged lessons, a system based on collective thinking, certificates, and bureaucratic compliance. We were conditioned to accept the authority of strangers, guidelines, professional profiles, and hierarchies; to believe in the necessity of insurance policies, contracts, and trademarks; and to fear the looming specter of intellectual property battles, cease-and-desist orders, and legal entanglements. Most of it wasn’t for learning to read and write well, or to become good at math, research and reasoning skills—it was about training obedience to a system that measures human worth in credentials and control.

And so, even the brave, they’ve learned what they’ve lived. And they live what they’ve learned. Eventually they pressed Feldenkrais, Montessori—and certainly large parts of homeschooling—into the same system they knew so well.

School. Taking children to school.

Where I live, every morning there’s a traffic jam. Not just from people going to work, but also from people taking their children to school, with private transportation. Completely clogging up all the streets around the many school’s entrance driveways.

And in the afternoon there’s another traffic jam, when children are picked up again, and are put into their extra curriculum classes until dinner time, when they are being watched at home again. Billions of children living under 24/7 surveillance, with not a minute being unaccounted for. I wonder, do these families have surveillance cameras even in their bedrooms?

This is what I was thinking about this morning, when I heard about the Stargate project for the US, and billionaire Larry Ellison’s dystopian vision for society where everything is monitored by AI. I quote, “to keep citizens on their best behavior. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on and we’re using AI to monitor the video.”

On the upside, most people seem to be fine with all this—since it’s the world they grew up to know. They’ve learned what they’ve lived, and they live what they’ve learned.

ChatGPT says that I should tighten up this blog post, smoothen transitions, and highlight the central argument while leaving space for reflection. It says that some phrases, like “billions of children living under 24/7 surveillance” or “do these families have surveillance cameras even in their bedrooms?”, could come across as sarcastic. Softening the tone, ChatGPT says, might ensure my message is received as serious rather than rhetorical.

All solid points. But not today ChatGPT, not today.

January 22, 2025 BY ALFONS, IN In rage against the machine

God, monkeys and our self-image

Moshé Feldenkrais’ book, Awareness Trough Movement, starts like this: “We act in accordance with our self-image. This self-image—which, in turn, governs our every act—is conditioned in varying degree by three factors: heritage, education, and self-education.”

Which means that, for example, it makes a difference whether you think of your chest as a rigid, metal cage, like that of an AI robot… or as a flexible, thick-walled, organic balloon that can expand and contract, twist and bend, and support your legs and arms by being part of the movement — rather than merely being a rigid base with joints on each corner that inevitably will break due to overuse.

Images: Tesla Bot, robotic humanoid, Wikipedia. Adina Voicu, dancer flour motion, 1284217, Pixabay. Font: Tom’s New Roman. Collage by Alfons Grabher.

The way you think of yourself will affect the way you feel, sense, act… eat, walk, talk, look, love, etc. And maybe we can think of the self-image as permanently stored and unconscious, ever available thoughts, internal rules and regulations.

But now get this:

In Christian religion, they teach us that we’re created in the image of God. Genesis 1:27 states: “So God created mankind in his own image”

This means that every person has inherent dignity and value, with a purpose to live, furnished with God’s attributes such as love, justice, kindness and creativity. It invites us to see ourselves as reflections of the highest, most beautiful, most loving, and most radiant being.

Furthermore, this means that our parents, by ancestry, are closer to God than we are, and our grandparents were even closer, and so forth. That’s another logic by which we might love and honor our parents, cherish our family, and respect our lineage. At the same time our children are our offspring, and though they are further down the lineage from God, we hope that the divine spark within them remains just as vibrant. We feel compassion for their journey, guiding them with love and care as we help them grow and thrive.

Which stands in stark contrast to what is taught in public schools.

In public schools, they teach us that humans and monkeys share the same ancestor—essentially some kind of generic, hairy, primitive monkey-man. Monkeys: animals that are often malicious, jealous, destructive, and lazy; always on the lookout to steal food; waging war with other monkeys; and whose leaders dominate their territory by mating with or even forcing themselves upon any female they choose.

And by that logic our parents and grandparents, and all the way up, are ever closer to the primitive, wild and warring monkey-men we supposedly used to be, ultimately originating from some kind of fish or plankton or some highly improbable chemical events at the beginning of life on Earth. And that’s what billions of children are made to believe?

So- which image did you choose for yourself? I mean, in regard to your chest. How do you breathe, how do you move? How do your limbs connect and relate to your center?

And if you would like to explore more about your movements, have a look at my Youtube channel, and follow along one of my lesson, for example this one:

Improving ability, with Alfons, on Youtube, Guided Breathing Exercise : Expand Upper Chest To Breathe Better

December 8, 2024 BY ALFONS, IN Disquisition and deliverance

On breathing

When I first started learning Feldenkrais in a so-called professional training program, some of the teachers kept mentioning breathing with the lower abdomen. And one of the senior teachers went somewhat overboard by taking Moshé Feldenkrais a bit too literally, at least in my opinion: he said we should be able to flip a coin placed on the lower abdomen—by controlling the muscles in that area.

As a software engineer, I wanted to know what that was all about, and if I might be able to learn it. This led me on a journey of browsing through many medical books about breathing, function and rehabilitation; and the vastly larger linguistic corpus of New Age and Yoga-inspired books on breathing.

It also led me on a 2-year long journey of playing the didgeridoo, an Australian wind instrument. I practiced almost daily, for an hour at least, booming away, circular breathing, and using all sorts of breathing explorations, like belly, back, sides, pelvic floor and full chest breathing techniques.  What a time it was to be alive! As for the didgeridoos themselves, at first I just cut some from various PVC pipes, adding mouthpieces made of beeswax. Later, I invested in more pricier originals. I still have two beautifully painted, naturally termite-hollowed eucalyptus tree didgeridoos from Australia in my storage. At this point though, I’m not sure if they’re cherished keepsakes or just dust collectors.

The passion for playing the didgeridoo seemed to happen all by itself, without me needing to motivate myself to practice. Nothing of that sort happened in the New Age breathwork section, though I did visit and attend satsangs with some famous Indian Yogis, Paramahansas, and monks. However, some of the more exciting practices I tried were all from the Western hemisphere, like Holotropic breathing (Stanislav Grof) and Rebirthing breathwork (Leonard Orr). 

And then there was the Buteyko breathing technique from Russia, which took me a while to figure out. Proper resources were scarce at that time. I then practiced twice daily for about a year, and filled almost an entire notebook with numbers and tables recording my progress. I can’t say that I enjoyed it too much, but it did give me the means to keep the mild Asthma in check, which I had since a child.

And then, at some point, my passion for breathwork started to fade. I didn’t go to the Apnoe diving breathing workshop in the Maldive Islands, which my younger brother attended and loved, but for me– my journey into breathwork had already ended.

I did learn a lot, though. The experience and knowledge I gathered is still helping me with my Feldenkrais client work, up to today, in quite a few ways.

Regarding the lower-belly coin flip, supposedly done with the rectus abdominis muscles—which, from a biomechanical perspective, don’t work in isolation but primarily aid in flexing the torso and stabilizing the trunk—I felt confident enough to place that coin-flip where it belongs: in the realm of New Age fiction, Yoga-lore, or perhaps even old-school male fantasies. ;)

As for excelling at breathwork itself, I don’t think I have the talent for it. After all the work I’ve put in, in the long run I still can’t hold my breath for longer than the recommended minimum of 20 seconds control pause in Buteyko breathing. Quite embarrasing, in a way.

But then, I fondly remember the fun singing lessons I took, which cured me of getting overly hoarse from teaching all day. I also fondly remember the following paragraphs from Lilli Lehmann’s book, How to Sing. It’s one of the books I read during the time I was into breathwork, and I particularly like the ending of a particular section. It always helps me put things into perspective and acknowledge how far I’ve come in many of my own journeys, despite my lack of talent in some areas, or the late callings I’ve encountered. Here’s the quote:

Lili Lehman, How to Sing

(Original Title: Meine Gesangskunst, Publication Date: 1924, Translator: Richard Aldrich)

Nevertheless, there are fortunately gifted geniuses in whom are already united all the qualities needed to attain greatness and perfection, and whose circumstances in life are equally fortunate; who can reach the goal earlier, without devoting their whole lives to it. Thus, for instance, in Adelina Patti everything was united—the splendid voice, paired with great talent for singing, and the long oversight of her studies by her distinguished teacher, Strakosch. She never sang roles that did not suit her voice; in her earlier years she sang only arias and duets or single solos, never taking part in ensembles. She never sang even her limited repertory when she was indisposed. She never attended rehearsals, but came to the theatre in the evening and sang triumphantly, without ever having seen the persons who sang and acted with her. She spared herself rehearsals which, on the day of the performance, or the day before, exhaust all singers, because of the excitement of all kinds attending them, and which contribute neither to the freshness of the voice nor to the joy of the profession.

Although she was a Spaniard by birth and an American by early adoption, she was, so to speak, the greatest Italian singer of my time. All was absolutely good, correct, and flawless, the voice like a bell that you seemed to hear long after its singing had ceased.

Yet she could give no explanation of her art, and answered all her colleagues’ questions concerning it with an “Ah, je n’en sais rien!”

She possessed, unconsciously, as a gift of nature, a union of all those qualities that all other singers must attain and possess consciously. Her vocal organs stood in the most favorable relations to each other. Her talent, and her remarkably trained ear, maintained control over the beauty of her singing and of her voice. The fortunate circumstances of her life preserved her from all injury. The purity and flawlessness of her tone, the beautiful equalization of her whole voice, constituted the magic by which she held her listeners entranced. Moreover, she was beautiful and gracious in appearance.

The accent of great dramatic power she did not possess.