innovative learning
books
Buy Pre-Publication (before 20-10-26) at £34.95 plus shipping Download "Look Inside" SampleClassical Pulse Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine:
Complete Mai Jing A-B-C Pulse Method
By Jamie Hamilton
ISBN 978-1-7391434-3-5
448 pages, 7 × 10 inches, portrait format
83 black and white numbered illustrations/figures
Forthcoming: publication day 20th October 2026
RRP £44.95
Pre-publication order via Stripe link available till 20-10-26 at £34.95, with shipping to UK address: £38.65
Keys to Chinese New HSK 1-6 Chinese-English Dictionary:
1800 Essential Characters Ordered by the Traditional Radical Method.
Edited and Compiled by Jamie Hamilton
ISBN: 978-1739143404
Buy dictionary on Amazon
aha-Tone Writing system
An innovative method of learning the tones of Chinese. Turbo-boost your Chinese language learning with this amazing learning system. The Aha-Tone font writes in the correct tone for each character,
so it embeds that knowledge as you use it. This is supported in any application that can use Chinese fonts. e.g. Word.
guide to aha-tone (book)
We can write the tones directly above the characters to embed them better for the learning.
When we can visualise the character with the tone "as one" we won't forget the tone, and we will be able to read the character with correct tone with ease.
A simple guide to using Aha-Tone System is now available from amazon.
Aha-Tone Font (download)
This revoultionary way of displaying characters will radically boost your learning!
The different tones are written with marks above or below the character to better represent their sound. The Aha-Tone font is made to automatically display the tones.
The font is available for free from the Gumroad site below
Here is a sample of some text using Aha-Tone font:
Notes on using the Aha-Tone System
Characters covered
The system currently covers about 8,000 characters. These are most of the standard characters found in Table of General Standard Chinese Characters (通用规范汉字表) supplied by the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The font system includes all of the 6,500 characters called “common” in the table and nearly all of the remaining less common ones. In general these are the simplified character set, so traditional characters are not yet covered.
We plan over time to add more characters to go beyond the immediate need of learners.
Font collection
The Aha-Tone System is collection of seven fonts. Currently we offer as a complete system the following:
Aha-Tone (Tone 1)
Aha-Tone (Tone 2)
Aha-Tone (Tone 3)
Aha-Tone (Tone 4)
Aha-Tone (Tone 4)
Aha-Tone (Tone 5)
Aha-Tone (No Tones)
The first on the list is the main font, the others are alternates. These fonts are supplied for free, and you can use them for any publication, website or software.
Aha-Tone and duo yin zi
“Aha Tone” is the main font in the collection and has all the standard characters with tone marks. In the case of a duo yin zi character the “standard” pronunciation is that found in dictionaries and the Pleco app. as the first entry.
Open Font Licence
The Aha-Tone Fonts are supplied with a SIL Open Font Licence (OFL) which means, in essence that you can use it for both private and commercial projects, e.g. books and texts, websites or even other fonts, but you cannot sell the font itself in any way. Even if you just modify it or copy a bit of it to make a new font, the new font must still have a OFL and be distributed for free. The Aha- Tone font was itself based on an OFT font (Noto Sans Simplified Chinese) and that is why it itself has to have the same licence. This is called “Share Alike” on the licence and is described as:
“The requirement is for derivative works to remain under the same license to encourage fair collaboration and prevent anyone from locking away contributions.”
This does however mean that you can use it in any PDF, book or software where the font is intrinsically part of the product (like it is in this book) and those products can be used for any purpose and also they can be sold. For more information please see the official link to the Open Font Licence at: https://scripts.sil.org/OFL
Font versions and updates
We will supply the most up to date version of the Aha-Tone font via the Keys to Chinese website at www.keystochinese.co.uk. Please use this site for the official up to the minute version of the font system. We will add new characters to the font as time goes on, so do return to the site for the latest version.
Font download and installation
Instructions for how to download and install the font on your computer is not too difficult. Just search “install a font on my PC” to find out how. When installed the font should work in most applications involving writing e.g. Word, Excel, Notes.