typing in chinese

[joycem10]

Just a question for those who use chinese as a native language.

To my understanding, when writing chinese each word has an independent (i think called a pictogram) character which represents that word.

So how do you type in chinese? I cant imagine one key for every character. That would be a helluva big keyboard.

Do the keys represent portions of a character so that for each character you type a certain sequence of keys? If so, typing would be a major skill.

So anyway, can anyone give me any input here?

 

[Stapel]

AFAIK, there are like 20.000 'characters' in Mandarin Chinese. But there is also a more alphabet-like set of characters.

MY father was in HongKong once and his name (Stapel is my familyname) started with the same character as his collegue's name last character, who's name was Horst. So at least the chinese have a character for ST.

 

[Renata]

I'm no expert (took 2 years of Chinese language in high school, and know several Chinese people), but I know a little about it. From what I remember, Chinese typing is not a lot like English typing. There's different input methods. (caveat: the following will probably not be exactly correct, but should be somewhat close) The simplest (from an English-speaker's standpoint) is Pinyin-to-Chinese conversion. The typist uses a slightly modified English keyboard (English letters plus shift-type keys to handle the tones) to type in the Pinyin transliteration of the Chinese character. The word-processing program then offers a list of possible characters (any particular sound in Chinese can have several corresponding characters), and the typist chooses the right one. Then on to the next word, and so forth. A slightly more accurate method (pulling up fewer options for each word) uses a set of 20 or 30 keys to code to various of the common 'sub-characters' found in Chinese writing (for example, the sound-indicated bits that Stapel mentioned) -- 2-5 of these are entered for the desired character, the typists gets the list of possibilities and chooses the right one, and so forth.

Renata

 

[joycem10]

very interesting and confirming the difficulty in typing chinese. one question, what is pinyin?

 

[funxus]

Someone said it was much faster typing in Chinese than with the Latin? Arabic? (the one used in english) alphabet.

 

[Renata]

Pinyin is a system of transliteration for Mandarin Chinese into letters. I don't have the right keyset to transcribe it but it sort of looks like this (only turn the carat upside down, and ignore the dots; they were the only way to format it right):

./...^... _
Ni hao ma

which reads 'How are you' (not literally, but in essence). The lines above the words signify the tones (Mandarin has four: first tone is a flat high note, signified by the line over 'ma'; second is a rising note, like over 'ni'; third is a down-and-up, signified by the upside-down carat; and fourth is a sharp falling tone, signified by '\' over the word).

Renata

 

[nihilistic]

As Renata said, Pinyin is a transliteration system from chinese to english. It is in fact the official system adopted by the Chinese government.

When typed out, usually either the tones are omitted or numbered:
ni hao ma
or
ni2 hao3 ma1

 

[nihilistic]

There are many ways of typing in chinese.

1. Pinyin: You type the transliteration and select the character among a list of characters that has the same sound. This is the manner people like me who can read but can't remember the structure use. Looking through the list is cumbersome, so usually I type in a whole phrase at a time. Even if the word has to be typed alone, I would type a phrase and delete the unneccesary character(s).

2. Structural: This is the most common form of input used if you will be doing it professionally. You enter the structural makeup of the word and usually (99%) you will get the exact word. This of course requires extensive knowledge of the written language structure. It also requires a modified chinese keyboard if you don't have the placement memorized.

3. Keystroke: If you see a word that you can neither pronounce nor make out he meaning and you can't type structurally, then you may have to count the keystrokes and search that. This is similar to pinyin, but much, much more cumbersome.

4. Others: There are many other systems depending on either a different form of transliteration or a different kind of structural interpretation. I know that Taiwan is trying to push a alternative standard just so it is different from pinyin, but chances are that all those formats will become extinct eventually.

 

[Renata]

'ma' in ni hao ma is fourth tone? And here I thought that was one of the only three or four phrases I still remembered accurately ....

Renata

 

[nihilistic]

Originally posted by Renata
'ma' in ni hao ma is fourth tone? And here I thought that was one of the only three or four phrases I still remembered accurately ....

Renata

D'oh, I made a typo. It's the first tone. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Jeratain]

Originally posted by funxus
Someone said it was much faster typing in Chinese than with the Latin? Arabic? (the one used in english) alphabet.

I don't know what it's like to type in Chinese or Latin. However from the above explanations, it sounds much easier to type in Arabic than Chinese. Arabic is written right to left, and it has its own alphabet with every character. Essentially, if you know how to spell a word, you can easily type it. Arabic is similar to english cursive (script). When you have one character, it is alone and looks different. When you have more than one character in the same word, they are linked together. So when you type out, the word processor links the characters together for each word. Not too difficult so long as you know the language.

 

[Silverflame]

My mom's computer has a chinese keyboard. It's just like a regular keyboard, with the english alphabet and stuff, but each key also has one of those characters of the alaphbet-type thing. I can't really explain it. There's like twenty or so of these alphabet characters and each has a sound. This alphabet is rarely used and is primarily for children or novice learners. Kind of like Hiragana in Japanese if you know what I mean, only this alphabet is written very rarely. Whatever, it's too hard to expalin.Then four other keys have the tones (up down updown and dot). So for one character you type out it's spelling and out comes the list. I guess it sounds like pinyin, but it's with an english keyboard. I am now very confused