How do Asian keyboards work if their languages contain so many characters?

Question

Obviously they work or they wouldn't have computers. But with over 20,000 characters in Chinese, how exactly does this work? Random question. Just interested.

Answer 1

While I don't know specifically how Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean keyboards work (as their language is slightly more complicated when it comes to typing than Japanese), I'm sure they're similar for Japanese keyboards which function like this:

Syllables all have their own designated sound. You type the sound on your keyboard (usually they are just regular QWERTY keyboards with English and, for Japanese only, the basic hiragana above). To get kanji you press the spacebutton (because Asian languages do not use spaces in their regular writing) and select from a list of which you want. Computers have been designed to have the kanji for that sound listed in order of most common, so it's generally not difficult to get the correct one.

Answer 2

I can only speak for Arabic. The writing system contains no capitals, but some letters have as many as four different forms, depending upon whether they're used separately, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word (or sometimes a combination of words). The end result is about the same number of keys, but moving in the opposite direction -- ie, on an IBM Selectric, the ball moves from right to left.

Answer 3

I have never used this...but there are only a limited number of strokes that can be used in characters...9 I believe...an Asian keyboard..can be done by strokes..so that you add strokes on top of other strokes...sort like putting the tail on the Q after you have typed the O.

Answer 4

let me tell u how isaw loots of them ok so we have A B C ... they have that same thing but when they wanna put it on the keyboard they but bside the letter A or B ... they put 2 or 3 letters like the mobile phone :D

Answer 5

They use their own symbols like these:
http://www.geocities.jp/nikotuk/jpen-keyboard.jpg
Most Chinese simply use A-Z keyboards.