As keyboards have English letter here in the U.S, do keyboards in other countries have local language?

Question

Since my own keyboard has English lettering, here in an English speaking country, do keyboards, in for example, China, have Chinese lettering? And how does that work, considering that there are over 2500 characters in basic Cantonese? I've just always wondered.

Answer 1

You can search Google for Chinese keyboards...

I've heard several solutions for chinese, japanese, korean,etc. One is a keyboard with a couple of hundred keys for the most used words (normal vocabulary is rarely more than 1000).

Another that came with windows is one that's popular in Japan. You type the Roman (normal alphabet) word sound and as you get close, a window pops up with the possible choices that begin with that sound. Then you can select one - mouse or keyboard...

But of course, with graphics, the brush or pen is the quickest way. That's why the Japanese made the fax machine so popular - the easiest way to send messages written in brush-strokes.

Of course, other languages (Russian, greek, hebrew, arabic) have their own keyboards. Even in Europe, different laguages have different keyboards with layouts special to that country and special characters (like accented vowels, accents, etc) that are only relevant to that language. Just to make life interesting, Hebrew and Arabic are written from right to left, backward from european languages.

The original QWERTY keyboard layout, for example, was designed in the arly dsays of typewriters to spread out letters so a fast (english) typist would not jam the keys.

Answer 2

Yes. Very few people can use Chines typewriters, they are complex, with many keys.