The characters 幹 and 乾 and 干 First of all, I have mostly learned speaking and listening using nonstandard phonetics, not reading/writing. Let me get this correct. With pinyin gan 干=to do, dry, tree trunk in simplified. 干=dry, tree trunk in traditional. 幹=to do, only traditional. 乾=to do, only traditional. What's the difference between 幹 and 乾? With pinyin qian 乾 = only for Qianlong's name, simplified and traditional The other two don't have this pronunciation. Correct?

Should I learn zhuyin or pinyin? I have learned Chinese for a long time, but mostly only speaking and listening I either just learn by ear, or write it down in English, but I don't use a standard system I have found charts of different systems and have found my own system either matches some of the various ones, matches but used wrongly, or completely different For example, 'good bye' is "jhai! jehn!" Apparently "jhai" is a proper Tongyong Pinyin but does not match 再. "jehn" is just completely my own way I'm noticing that I'm consistently using "!" as 4th tone though Another example, 'west' is "hsi" This time I have used Wade-Giles correctly for 西. A third example, 'myself is "Zhe ji" with an underline for ji. This time "Zhe" is a proper Pinyin but does not match 自 I have used all systems correctly for 己 except Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh I'm also noticing that I'm consistently using underlines for 3rd tone though. Should I just dump the English and learn Zhuyin or fix the weird English to proper Pinyin???