How Do the Chinese Use a Computer With Their Complex Language?

Question

The Chinese have no alphabet. So how do they manage to use keyboard devices. Much the less, handheld ones. They would need to have a large keyboard to hold all the various charaters, since every word has a different sign. I know that everything on Chinese computer systems is not translated into the Roman alphabet.

I can't find anything on the web to answer this question. Does anyone know?

Answer 1

There a couple of different methods
the first is that they use radicals (parts of a character) that each have a different key (or quite often, a shift to get to a different radical) - this method is more common in Taiwan. But this keyboard still has English on it, as there are many people who want to type in English or in Latin based characters. To change, they choose what language the keyboard is looking at (in the language bar)
Another method used a lot in Taiwan is the zhuyin (bo-po-mo-fo) method. This is the phonetic way of characters. Type in the phonetic combination and the tone, and then choose the character you want.
The Third method is to use the pinyin input method - pinyin uses Latin characters, so they can use a normal keyboard with out any extra radical signs on it. This is the most common way, and the easiest for people out side of China to type Chinese. Much the same as the other two, you choose which character you are looking for when you type in a word.
As for handhelds, most often it is pinyin, and works on the same principle - type in a word, gives you a choice of characters. Also popular for handhelds is a write on screen - just lets you input the character right on the screen, and it recognizes it.

Answer 2

They had a keyboard with "parts" of characters that they could use to assemble a "word" in Chinese as early as the late 1980s. I saw one being used by a Chinese reporter when Lee Ping and his gang passed through Chicago on their way to Washington.

Since then, I believe they have gone to ones using Roman letters to spell out the Chinese words.

Answer 3

They have alphabets. It's called hanyu pinyin. They type out the sounds of the chinese words in english and the programme will figure out the words for them. rather useful. But i still prefer english though.

Like for example when you want to type a particular character, u type in the sound of the word. Since many chinese characters have the same sound, the programme will list a series of characters with that same sound. You just select the character u want. It sounds slow and tedious but it's more effective when typing a "phrase", as there are lesser same-sounding "phrases", and the programme narrows down the selection. The "phrases" i mentioned are actually chinese words that consists of at least 2 characters.

Read up on hanyu pinyin at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_pinyin

Hope this helps :)

Answer 4

I can't explain it but here is a site that might help. http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/wong/teaching/chinese/notes/node10.html

Answer 5

That's a good question I will rate you for this.

Answer 6

ela mou nte