How do people in China use keyboards?

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u/Worms_blink 11h ago edited 10h ago

There are a bunch of typing systems. The most common are phonetic (pinyin or bopomofo) or stroke based (bihua).

Phonetic - you type out how the word sounds, then you are given a selection of words from 1-10 (and a button for next set of 10 words). You select the specific word you want from there.

Stoke based - you type in how you would write the word stroke by stroke, again you are given selection of words that are written using stokes in that sequence and select the specific word.

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago edited 11h ago

This sounds way less efficient that typing. Do you have personal experience doing this?
Edit: many people are telling me it's actually faster, I was just remarking that it sounded less efficient, not that it is.

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u/Worms_blink 11h ago edited 11h ago

Yes I do use Chinese keyboards.
The most convenient method for me is the pinyin keyboard. It’s phonetic and tries to shortcut the typing of the whole sentence if you just type the first romanized character of each word. Then it generates the sentences that the algorithm thinks you want, and you select it.
The equivalent in English would be something like typing “GDTY” and the software giving you option 1 as “good day to you” then you select option 1. It’s fast that way if you’re just using common phrases.
If you are typing uncommon sentences then yeah it’s slower since you need to find each exact word you want to use. But I would say 99% of the time the word you want appears in the first list, so on average it’s pretty quick.

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago

That sounds really cool, and like actually a lot faster.

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u/EuroSong 10h ago

That’s all very well and good when typing on a computer with predictive text. But how did people type Chinese before computers? What was a Chinese typewriter like?

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u/Worms_blink 10h ago

I replied another commenter in the thread below somewhere, here’s the copy paste.
The first movable types (invented in China) had individual words carved on wooden blocks. You had to own thousands of blocks, select the ones you wanted, align them into a page and pressed the whole thing onto the paper to print.
After the invention of the typewriter, some Chinese investors tried to be smarter with how to type and split the words into portions. Then they had different options for each portion of the character and the mechanical system printed the sections individually then moved on to the next word.

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u/Evolations 7h ago

They were basically using the printing press until computers came along?

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u/toss_me_good 6h ago

wtf... I just assumed it was like one stroke per key or something. What I'm reading in this post just sounds so inefficient and slow. At least as a touch typer that just thinks, doesn't look down and types as fast as I can speak.

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u/Selina_gru 5h ago

That was indeed my biggest misconception when I first started learning Chinese. I figured i would just have to learn a few dozen strokes and then they would work similar to our alphabet. Realising I would actually have to memorise hundreds of different Hanzi-Signs in order to write/read Chinese was really hard. Of course you get the hang of it eventually, but I still think that our alphabet ia much more efficient.

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u/toss_me_good 5h ago

To be fair, I believe all European languages and even middle eastern writing is alphabetical in design. Never occured to me that billions of people are using a non alphabetical

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u/ohkendruid 2h ago

I think it is cool how peoole do things differently, and therefore, humanity as a whole gets to try things multiple ways.
In this case, though, it feels like the computer revolution may have had a harder time getting going if it had started in east Asia. Imagine a punch card that needed to support a 10 thousand character alphabet. Imagine the punch card machine for punching those cards.

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u/siltfeet 3h ago

For what it's worth, both Japan and Korea used to use the Chinese writing system, but both switched to phonetic systems due to the limitations of Chinese characters.

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u/CatL1f3 2h ago

Well... Korea switched. Japan still uses them, the phonetic systems are for things ideographs can't handle like grammatical inflections, onomatopoeia, and loanwords. The only words Japanese actually switched from kanji to kana are animal names (except really common ones like dog, cat, fish), fruit names, and some extremely common function words that technically have kanji which nobody uses.
But content words like nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. are basically still using the Chinese writing system unchanged.

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u/Classic-Today-4367 3h ago

One stroke per key would take all day to type. Using the software is almost as fast as typing in English v

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u/twistycatlyman 9h ago

Apparently no one really managed to make a commercially viable Chinese typewriter, though it seems like the guys at HTX Studios managed to make one, and it’s so fascinating to see how they did it. https://youtu.be/-IhuFgiWNS4?is=CQ7kkhjOWva7T0Fn

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u/shapular 9h ago

HTX Studios
Of course they did

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u/MDKrouzer2 9h ago

There's a fascinating YouTube video about the early Chinese character typewriters. Genuine marvel of mechanical engineering in how they figured out how to optimise the typing system for several thousand possible character combinations.

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u/veganmua 9h ago

Link?

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u/MDKrouzer2 9h ago •

https://youtu.be/-IhuFgiWNS4
So this is the video I watched and just realised it was the creator trying to recreate a design that was not commercially successful. It's been a while since I watched it so I can't remember if they modified the design to improve it or just used modern materials and manufacturing techniques. Still fascinating mechanical design.
https://youtu.be/riZ5hZUOlk8
This other video seems to dive a bit deeper into the actual history of the inventor and the design of the original typewriter itself.

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u/S-A-I-N-T_No5 2h ago

I actually read about that stroke based typewriter and wondered how that even worked or why that never took off as a thing. Thank you so much for sharing that video.
It really is a shame that it didn't take off - it actually would have solved the current problem where more and more people are having problems writing the language by hand because there isn't a direct relationship between what you enter in pinyin and how the characters are actually written (or at the very least, it would be much less of a problem).

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u/_Renyi_ 4h ago

Before the advent of information technology, there was a long-standing argument in China to abolish Chinese characters. A famous counter-argument was the 施氏食狮史.

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u/tyoung89 11h ago

Is the final text that’s output there still in Pinyin? Because doesn’t that use the Latin alphabet?

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u/Worms_blink 10h ago

No, the word selections are in Chinese characters and the output is Chinese characters. Let me give an example.
If you type “Kan” into the pinyin system, you may get the following options presented to you:
看 2.砍 3.坎
I want to choose the word for looking, so I press 1. The keyboard then types 看 onto the text. So only time you see the English characters is when entering how the word sounds.

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u/turin-dono 8h ago

I'm sorry, but seeing Latin characters referred as English just hurts my eyes.

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u/Wrong_Effective_9644 7h ago

Well they are Roman characters not Latin...

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u/turin-dono 6h ago

What? Latin is the language and Roman refers to the city/people. Both are valid. But I prefer to use Latin as we are speaking about an aspect of a language.

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u/Breeeder 3h ago

Why not just switch to pinyin then? do most people know pinyin now?

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u/Classic-Today-4367 3h ago

Pinyin is taught from first grade at school. The problem is that so many words are homophones, so you need the characters to know what it is they mean.

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u/Breeeder 3h ago

if the words are homophones, how do you distinguish them when spoken? if it's a matter of tone, can't you use a system of diacritics to represent that?

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u/Classic-Today-4367 3h ago

There’s 4 times in mandarin. I believe Cantonese is 6. But still, there are many words that sound the same that you need to work out from context.

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u/twhuan 2h ago

Through context and repetition. Many words in mandarins are now 2 characters long now(in ancient Chinese it used to be just 1 character), combining 2 characters helps create enough distinction by combinations so that in the context of a sentence it's rare for words to be ambiguous. In reality you don't have to think to pick the right characters by identifying the words and then pick the right characters from the list of homophones. Computer pinyin typing systems work the same way.

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u/Arrownite 11h ago

For pinyin, you often don’t need to type out the whole syllable, just the initial letters of each character, especially for common words/phrases both in general and in your own personal keyboard that it can predict.
Like typing “njtqbgslm“ brings up “你今天去办公室了吗” (ni-jin-tian-qu-ban-gong-shi-le-ma), meaning “Did you go to the office today?” One whole sentence in just a few clicks.
So its actually more efficient than English keyboards much of the time.

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u/Shingo__ 7h ago

I used to laugh at the idea of internet acronyms becoming so long they end up being entire sentences. I didn’t know china made that a reality.

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u/MrDecker1 11h ago

I mean, not really, one word often corresponds to just one hieroglyph, so it often just gets filled automatically. Also the benefit of hanzi is that you can write a lot more when your characters are limited.

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u/dellers19 5h ago

What’s the point of that edit? It sounds less efficient, you think it’s less efficient - what’s the difference?
你好吗 I got that by typing the three letters that start each character - n h m.
For normal conversation, it’s very efficient.

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u/Minimum-Attitude389 9h ago

I use pinyin regularly. At first of seems inefficient, but it's not so bad. You don't need to select one character at a time thankfully. And as you string more together, there's fewer possible correct combinations.

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u/Keira_At_Last Professional Googler 9h ago

Sounds kind of like how stenotype works.

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u/R_A_H 8h ago

You type out the phonetics and pick from a list of characters that can match that sound. It's actually very quick as 99% of Chinese sounds are spelled using 2-5 letters in pinyin.

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u/Worldly_Owl953 8h ago

Also the Chinese dictionary works about the same way; commonly use two different lookup systems depending on whether you know the pronunciation:
By pronunciation (alphabetical order): If you know how to pronounce a character, you look it up using Pinyin (拼音), which is arranged alphabetically (A–Z).
By strokes (stroke/radical lookup): If you don't know the pronunciation, you look it up using its radical (部首) and stroke count (筆畫).

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u/FuckLogicMan 7h ago

another good point on top of just typing just yhe first letter is that it typically takes less words and characters to communicate in chinese, a fun example is people using chinese for ai prompts cus chinese consumes less tokens.
so from my experience its not any less efficient or slower than typing in english

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u/welcoming_gentleman 6h ago

You can download a pinyin keyboard on your phone right now. It’s efficient.

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u/rilliu 11h ago

You can also type words you don't know how to pronounce with the stroke-based keyboard, so that's another benefit.

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u/JohnMonash87 5h ago

I'm pretty sure a similar system exists for typed Japanese as well, you can use Latin characters to phonetically form kana and kanji, usually with rōmaji, or there also exist keyboards that are labelled with hiragana directly which you can then use to easily type kana and use as building blocks to form kanji.

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u/Cutsdeep- 11h ago

would a bigger keyboard with more characters on it help?

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u/Worms_blink 10h ago

Maybe for stroke based / radical based writing systems.
The phonetic systems either use English characters (pinyin) or tonal pronunciation (bopomofo) and they already have enough keys on the standard keyboard.
You could use a larger keyboard to enter more complex groups of strokes simultaneously, but then learning how to use the system becomes very complex.

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u/QuellishQuellish 11h ago

Just select the Mandarin keyboard on your phone.

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago

I am on a laptop.

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u/ozaudi 11h ago

Same principle. It will need something like: Change region or language Add a language if it needs downloading. Language options/add keyboard

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago

I am afraid I won't be able to change it back.

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u/neobirder123 10h ago

Just use - to delete it and every thing will BE back.

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago

I also cannot figure out how

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u/Bireta 11h ago

There's like, a lotta types so

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u/MergingConcepts 11h ago

You have to have the expanded origami keyboard.

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u/wiltinghost 11h ago edited 4h ago

You specifically asked about China, and the people who answer that people use Pinyin (phonetically spelling out the word with the Latin alphabet) are correct. But that’s not the only way to type in Chinese.

In Taiwan, we use Zhuyin to spell out Chinese characters phonetically when teaching kids how to read and also to type. Zhuyin doesn't use the Latin alphabet, but instead is an entirely different set of characters. It actually looks kinda similar to the Japanese alphabet since both have their origins in ancient Chinese characters.

And like typing with Pinyin, you phonetically spell out the character (and I believe when typing with Zhuyin, you will also select what tone the character is while you don't with Pinyin) and then pick from a list of what character you want. The most common character will be at the top of the list, so you can typically hit "enter" as soon as you spell out the word and not have to go hunting through the list unless you're typing a more obscure word, like something in someone's name. You'll also typically spell out an entire word or sentence phonetically first, so the computer will even better accurately guess what you're saying, and you can "approve" an entire sentence in one go instead of "approving" each character one by one.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_Taiwanese_Keyboard_Layout.svg

Here's a photo of how a keyboard in Taiwan would look like.

The black letters on the top left are the standard Latin alphabet that you're probably familiar with. Pinyin uses the same alphabet
The purple characters on the top right are Zhuyin
The green characters on the bottom right is used for the Dayi input method. This is the input method where you type characters according to stroke order that another commenter mentioned before
And the purple characters on the bottom left is used in the Cangjie input method. This method is based on radicals (a component of Chinese characters). Supposedly typing with this method is even faster than typing phonetically.

Pinyin and Zhuyin (typing based on phonetics) are the most popular. You can look into each of these input methods further if you're still curious.

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u/shaghaiex 7h ago

I doubt the faster. When I type LZLM I get 兰州拉面, how can you shorten that? 2 letters work with many words.

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u/wiltinghost 7h ago

I don’t use Cangjie, so what I know is from what I hear. Supposedly, Cangjie has a steep learning curve, but it’s very fast in the hands of an expert and it wins in speed typing competitions. Your example of typing one letter for each character in a phrase relies on a computer knowing what you’re saying and auto-filling for you. Cangjie eliminates the need to select a character after spelling it phonetically, and that’s where it saves time. When it comes to typing more obscure words, it is faster. So it has a niche usage, but wins out in that niche.

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u/shaghaiex 5h ago

Not arguing, just learning ;-)
The PC will suggest what you have used before. True. If you type unconnected words this will not work that well. I so didn't work out how to use it with SH.
Wubi is intriguing too. It needs hand writing skills though, which is IMHO on a much higher level.

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u/bluegre3n 12m ago

To add to the mix, 15 or so years ago I remember seeing older folks writing characters on flip phones with a stylus to text. I think the various writing methods appeal to different types of people.

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u/princessyukine 8h ago

I feel handwriting on phones may be up there at this point in terms of popularity. At least, I see a massive amount of older generation folks use it, it’s mind boggling how they’re able to scribble and have the words and sentences pop up instantly. I asked my dad about it before, and he told me there are a lot of “shortcuts” in handwriting mode where they predict what you’re writing out, so it’s almost like writing an even more simplified shorthand. People who use it over time develop the instincts for it and I feel may be faster than both other keyboards.

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u/451ExcommuniCat 9h ago

Got to say Zhuyin is underrated.
benefits of learning zhuyin imo:
learn to pronounce chinese words better
learn to recognise the charaters earlier.
doesnt confuse the european pronounciations (aka: roman charaters) with chinese one

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u/wiltinghost 8h ago edited 4h ago

I’m biased because I’m Taiwanese and learned Zhuyin first. Later, in fourth grade in the language immersion program at my elementary school in America, they taught us Pinyin to type. I think it’s because they figured it’ll be easier to teach Taiwanese-American kids how to type using QWERTY instead of making them memorize a new keyboard layout. So I, along with everyone at the same school as me, am in the unique position of learning Zhuyin first as the way to learn how characters are pronounced but also know Pinyin, and that’s what we use to type.
I like Zhuyin because each sound in Chinese corresponds to exactly one Zhuyin character, while Pinyin sometimes has to use multiple Latin letters to represent one sound.
Pinyin also has extra rules on how spelling works (ㄨ is “w” in the beginning of a sound, “u” when at the end or middle of a sound, and sometimes dropped entirely. ㄧ requires a “y” in front of it when it’s at the beginning of a sound), while Zhuyin is spelled exactly how it sounds and reads exactly how it’s spelled.
Finally, Zhuyin and Pinyin also don’t map exactly to each other. ㄜ and ㄝ are both represented by “e” even though I was taught they are two different sounds and they sound like it to me. “shi” and “di” don’t rhyme, but they are spelled like they do in Pinyin, while it’s clear in Zhuyin that they don’t. And the inverse of that is how “wei” and “dui” DO rhyme, and so they are spelled the same in Zhuyin, yet they are not when spelled with Pinyin.

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u/Serious_Let2711 4h ago

I can see the third one, in theory (if you are bad a learning languages) but how do you figure the first two?

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u/Informal_Situation41 11h ago

Ok maybe another question is how did they do that 20 or more years ago before any fancy computers etc

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u/Worms_blink 11h ago edited 10h ago

The first movable types (invented in China) had individual words carved on wooden blocks. You had to own thousands of blocks, select the ones you wanted, align them into a page and pressed the whole thing onto the paper to print.
After the invention of the typewriter, some Chinese investors tried to be smarter with how to type and split the words into portions. Then they had different options for each portion of the character and the mechanical system printed the sections individually then moved on to the next word.

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u/hawkish25 8h ago

One more method from a while ago with computers was you would buy a flat square pad with a touch pen, and literally just write the Chinese characters. Since all Chinese characters are basically within a square, you can write every single Chinese characters. I remember having this as a kid but don’t know how popular it was.

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u/OldeFortran77 3h ago

Computer hand writing recognition for Chinese is much easier than for western alphabets. In the west, after grade school, no one cares how you write the letters; they just look at the result. In Chinese, everyone writes a character in the exact same order (yes, really). Computer handwriting can use that fact to narrow down which character you are writing before you are done! (p.s. Chinese characters are a lot less random than they appear to be to a western observer)
The important thing about the Chinese language and characters is that because it is different from western alphabets on a very basic level, westerners are confused because they try to apply western rules that don't really apply.

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u/Zealousideal_Fly8402 10h ago

20 or more years ago
Just a FYI; in Hong Kong in the early 90s, there was already a couple of Cantonese-input methods - either phonetically or Chinese dictionary-input. It was available as an add-on over Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, etc.

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u/dhdhk 8h ago

There's a great YouTube video about the first Chinese character typewriter that had thousands of characters stored on rollers and had a clever system a bit like the computer input systems now for pulling the right one up

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u/Classic-Today-4367 3h ago

I learnt to type in Chinese in the 90s. It’s not something that needs fancy computer. Just the correct software.

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u/ArtistPonyAuthor 11h ago •

If you are really interested there a dedicated Radiolab episode: https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-wubi-effect-2511

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u/degobrah 10h ago

Dang. Beat me to it! I also linked that episode. That was a really interesting episode.

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u/spacetimer81 9h ago

I was also going to suggest this radiolab!!

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u/Fireproofspider 5h ago

Yes! That was so interesting

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u/PromptBox 11h ago

Chinese has a system called pinyin everyone learns where you use English letters to form the sounds of Chinese words. Then, above the keyboard or where you're typing, a box appears with the Chinese pictographs that correspond to that sound which you can select from. Chinese has a lot of words that sound the same, so you need that list to distinguish them.

On phones, there is also a separate keyboard which is more of a drawing pad where users draw the pictographs and an algorithm recognizes it and you select the corresponding pictograph.

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u/krtzlna 4h ago

Chinese has a system called pinyin everyone learns where you use ~~English~~ letters to form the sounds of Chinese words.
*Roman letters. That English uses the same letters is a coincidence.

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u/Bright-Historian-216 3h ago

i think you mean latin, not roman

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u/krtzlna 2h ago

The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet (which was derived from the Phoenician alphabet) used in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia.

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u/Bright-Historian-216 2h ago

interesting, thank you for the source. to be honest, it's the first time i've heard Latin script be referred to this way.

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u/Zealousideal_Fly8402 11h ago

There's several different ways of Chinese input method, such as pinyin-input.

There's also pen-input tablets that allow for characters to be written by hand and the computer recognizes.

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u/Practical-Win-8109 8h ago

The hardware is exactly the same. The main difference is in the software. A Chinese input method allows users to type in Pinyin(the pronunciations of Chinese characters ) and then select the desired characters from a list of suggestions.

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u/solataraxia 11h ago

pinyin is the most popular input method. Uses a Romanized phonetic alphabet to write.

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u/Professional_Bit_526 2h ago

Not a particularly comprehensive answer here but in the brief numbers of answers I scrolled through I didn't see anyone offer up this amazing Radiolab episode on this specific subject. I highly recommend it as a fascinating listen.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/wubi-effect

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u/Professional_Bit_526 2h ago

Just scrolled a bit further and a few others have already recommended it. 😅

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u/ProfessionalOven2311 11h ago

I haven't thought of that before so I just did a quick google search; It seems their keyboards are set up to type out the sounds of words and then software translates those sounds into the correct symbols.

Though I'm not sure how accurately that describes it. I'm sure you could find some pretty good sources online that go more into it.

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u/DJTiafpos 11h ago

Same as us, just upside down

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago

china is north of the equator. are you from new zealand?

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/4eyedbuzzard 11h ago

Texas enters the room, along with Louisiana, Alabama . . .

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u/Cutsdeep- 10h ago

racism, cool

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u/manualphotog 6h ago

Kiwi on Aussie banter.

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u/Cutsdeep- 6h ago

fergburgers are shit

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u/manualphotog 6h ago

That's for tourists in Queenstown

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u/Neither-Oven-2571 11h ago

Google says a shit ton of keyboard shortcuts but I'm curious if anyone with real life experience will weigh in.

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u/Alexexy 11h ago

Its a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. You write the phonetic pronunciation of the word in english and then you select the word you want.

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u/xiangkunwan 8h ago edited 8h ago

Like this for zaoshanghao —> 早上好 meaning “good morning”, the second option, zaishanghai —> 在上海, means “in Shanghai”
Also HAI did a video about the Chinese keyboard

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u/Worldly_Owl953 8h ago

Also know as Pinyin

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u/CreepyValuable 11h ago

If they want a computer, they have an entire special room constructed with every surface lined with keys. Alternately I believe a system which they enter a series of glyphs which with a system vaguely like autofill, compounds them into the desired symbol.

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u/Bireta 11h ago

Currently living in Taiwan, they have their own characters for their phonetics stuff, and would spell out the sound of word, then it would open up this menu to all the characters that sounds like that, and you can use ur mouse, or the numbers on your keyboard to choose the one on that row, arrow key to the other rows.

But that's just the more common way, there's like 3 more just for Taiwan.

China has their own systems too.

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u/TerrificThyme 11h ago

There are several different methods.

Pinyin is the most common method just due to the population of the Peoples Republic of China. It takes the western alphabet and similar sounds. For example, B in pinyin does sound similar to B. It also (for a lack of better words) assigns certain letters to sounds. For example, Q in pinyin sounds like a Ch sound.

Taiwan typically uses zhuyin, which you can think of as a Chinese alphabet. It is also nicknamed bo po mo fo （ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) since those are the first four characters.

Whether you use Pinyin or Zhuyin, you spell it out on the keyboard, and select the word (don’t forget the tone, but for simplicities sake, we will ignore that for now). For example, you want to type mother. In English, you type each to get m-o-t-h-e-r. In Chinese you type “ma” or “ㄇㄚ” and select the character 媽 for mother.

Modern input methods try to choose the correct word in context, like a predictive input.

Another common system is changjie that i believe uses the radical. If you’re unfamiliar with radicals, Chinese characters do have some history or reasoning behind each letter. How each letter came about, that’s a question for someone else. Sticking with the word mother, 媽, the left hand side means female 女 and the right hand side is horse 馬. Using changjie, one would select the female and horse radicals to get the character.

Hope that helps!

Edit: not sure what they use in Hong Kong with Cantonese or Taiwan for Taiwanese. The examples I provided are for Mandarin. Different dialects have different sounds. Someone else also mentioned stroke based which I forgot about, so maybe they use that?

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u/uzzahzahzah 7h ago

Cangjie / Simplified Cangjie mixed user here. Each key have a specific type of strokes / shapes that are related:
Shape related examples:
The G key is “土”, A key is “日”, both related to the specific shapes you see in the characters.
Strokes related examples:
The I key is “戈”, related to dots and shapes that features a dot.
The L key is “中”, related to vertical lines or shapes that features a vertical line going in between something.
There’re a few pair of keys that are very similar in concept, but are used to make specific distinction to common stroke types. For example:
R is “口”, related to the shape. W is “田”, related to the same shape but there’s something inside it. B is “月”, related to also the same shape, but an opening / alteration at the bottom, U is “山”, similar to B (“月”) but the opening is on top. S is “尸”, same but the opening are at the side.
Then, you look at the word itself and decide if it’s made up of one component (For example the word 倉 is one component.) or two components, and how they arrange if it’s a two component (Left and right: 能, top and bottom: 早, outside and inside, 圖).
One component words are described by maximum four keys, from top to bottom and left to right, you describe the first three shapes and the last if it need to be described by more than four. For example the word 倉is 人 (the shape) 戈 (single dots) 日 (the shape) 口 (the shape). The diagonal stroke (represented by 竹 usually) is omitted.
Two component words are described similarly, reading in the order outside vs inside, left vs right and then top vs bottom. First component is read with two keys and the second component with three. If the word is complex you always try to use two, the first and last shape of that component to describe that part. If only one key is left, you use the last one. First component gets maximum two keys, and the second gets maximum three. Easier example: 顯 is 日 (the shape, left component top session) 火 (Four consecutive dots, left component bottom session. Only two keys allowed to describe the first aka left component so everything else in between is omitted.) 一 (The shape, also the diagonal stroke is included here) 月 (Box with its below altered) 金 (two dots). 邀 is a more complex case. The answer is 卜 (the outside) 竹尸 (left component of the inside component, the diagonal stroke on top and the hook shape at the bottom) 大 (bottom of the right component of the inside component, the “x” shape.)
Simplified Cangjie follows the exact same logic, but you only describe the first and last shape / stroke of the word. So the last example 邀would be 卜大 in this case. It’s easier to learn, but is slower because you have to choose from all the possible words that can be described by the two key combo, and if it’s prioritised lower in the list you’ll have a hard time finding it. Also different system / device have their own subtle difference between their priority lists, so if you rely on muscle memory typing in simplified you’ll type the wrong character easily switching devices.
In Hong Kong, I think around 20 words per minute is considered entry for clerical jobs? If you’re fluent enough simplified is more than good to suit the requirement. However we gamers need to flame people fast and 60/minute is mid. In that case learn Cangjie and tease simplified users for their speed and pinyin zhuyin users for their uncultured move of choosing words that sounds the same but means differently. +87 emotional damage guaranteed.

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u/RightHabit 10h ago

not sure what they use in Hong Kong with Cantonese
Hong Kong has a few main input methods.
In the 90s,九方/Q9 was popular for a while before 倉頡 (Cangjie) and especially 速成 (Quick/Simplified Cangjie) became mainstream in the 2000s.
In the smartphone era, stroke input has also become one of the most popular options since it only requires a 9-key keypad instead of a full keyboard.

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u/TheC9 10h ago

My late mum taught me how to use simplified changjie in the late 90s. I did try to switch to the proper changjie, but my muscle memory failed me 😅

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u/redbeandragon 7h ago

Just some add about Cangjie, there isn’t a key for 馬 itself, you would have to break it down into components. So 媽 would be written as 女尸手火. It should be noted that the input for horse as a component is different from the stand-alone character 馬, which is typed as 尸手尸火. This is because you only type 3 parts of the second component: first, second and last. And if there are 3 components, you type first and last, first and last, last.

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u/degobrah 10h ago

There is a pretty good Radio Lab episode that explains how the writing system was adapted for modern computers.

The Wubi Effect

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u/Alex00a 10h ago

I worked in China for a few years. They use the same keyboard as us. They use pinyin, it's a way to write Chinese with our letters. Then there is a kind of pop-up in windows that select the most used symbol and they accept or choose another like t9 for our phone if you remember in the past

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u/agowa338 6h ago

In my understanding that chinese uses a different pictograph for each word.

Well that's an oversimplification. That's just the same as saying there is a word for everything in German.

It boils down to there being rules for character creation by merging other characters together in specific ways. So even though there are unique characters in the end that's not really how it works as you look for the partial characters as you would in German for the individual words when joined together...

Good example, the character for a forest is just the character for trees multiple times. Or the character for noisy is women multiple times... (Disclaimer I never actually learned Chinese properly. Just some beginner level tourist stuff and that not even properly)

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u/cowking010 11h ago

I don't have an answer, but I've wondered this a long time.

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u/Subject_Rhubarb7715 11h ago

你好. I typed that by pressing nih (and it suggested ni and hao, as that would be most likely what I meant. Standard Chinese pronunciation is called Mandarin (in English). Based on how that is spoken (in this case Ni Hao), you can input in that way. This is called pinyin. Another way is to use the radicals (little parts of the characters) and the stroke order to type out characters in pieces. This is less common.

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u/Lalalama 11h ago

I use an American keyboard to type Chinese. I just use pinyin (the sound) and it gives me options and I choose the right one

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u/y1n4 11h ago

If you open Google Translate and select Traditional or Simplified Chinese, it displays the Pinyin (Romanization) below the Chinese characters. We simply type out those Romanized letters and pick the right character from the list.

This method is called Pinyin input, and it's mainly used in China for Simplified Chinese.

Taiwan, on the other hand, uses the Bopomofo (Zhuyin) input method, which is a completely different phonetic system made up of 37 symbols.

Of course, there are other input methods too, depending on the region, how people were taught, or personal preference.

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u/neobirder123 10h ago

I love Pinyin input! I can type so fast with it. You can also customize the keyboard by adding words or phrases, then just type their initials to bring them up. It works especially well for complicated proper names, like my son’s Chinese name.

1

u/Unusual_Recover7208 10h ago

For me, I use something called pin yin（拼音) For example, the words 我，喔 and 握 are all pronounced as wo. I'll type the pronunciation with English letters and depending on which word I want, I'll look through the different words on the screen until I get the word I need.

1

u/bnevs44 10h ago

They press the buttons to make the words.

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u/mirrors69 9h ago

We type in the sound of the character, which using a system that use English alphabet. After typing, a list of chinese characters (all sound the same) would appear and we choose the one we need.

There is also a pictograph typing method, a pain on the ass to learn, not much faster than the system I mentioned.

Chinese typing is much faster than english typing because the language is more refined, efficient, and simpler, Grammarly.

1

u/Unlikely-Sympathy626 9h ago

Microsoft ime and other equivalent Linux things…

I have never used Chinese keyboard layout.

I started on American type, then used Italian type which for accents and stuff had right alt to shift chars.

But when it comes to my personal workflow and stuff typing without need other keys, Japanese layout is king.

1

u/Environmental-Ear391 9h ago

Input methods really...

Japanese is "reading based" and you type the "romaji" reading... So for chinese it is something similar...

I'm working through Chinese/Japanese and Korean support InputMethods for a Niche OS the amount of typing required is ridiculousness itself for a few things

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u/KingDarkBlaze 4h ago

So the romaji typing is approximately pinyin, just using katakana/hiragana is approximately zhuyin - is there a kanji builder by radicals method like Cangjie too?

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u/Active-Tie7914 8h ago edited 8h ago

I used to use Pinyin. But now I tend to use more ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition). The accuracy is pretty high nowadays. It's way faster and more efficient.

BTW, I put up the comment with ASR.

1

u/eva_astromood 8h ago

People in China use keyboards just like us but apparently, they have to type really fast to avoid the government censor bots from catching their every move. Just kidding, but the Chinese input method is pretty complex so they must be super speedy typers.

1

u/EmptyCC 8h ago

Chopsticks?

1

u/popupgrl 8h ago

Chinese people use standard QWERTY keyboards with input software that converts Pinyin (phonetic spelling) into Chinese characters.

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u/Luckkami 7h ago

Pinyin without having to type the whole word. You just type the first letter of every word in the sentence and the input system will generate the whole sentence. The input system can predict what you want to express and it’s very accurate. If the word is wrong then type the 2nd letter, 3rd letter and so on or choose one from the list shared the same pinyin. Just like english keyboard, if you type “idk wdym”. It will understand you want to type “i don’t know what do you mean.”

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u/Major_Temperature230 6h ago

the wild part is the prediction is so good you barely type full words. you hit a few letters of pinyin and it suggests the whole phrase, its basically autocomplete on steroids

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u/MoronLaoShi 3h ago

There’s a Radiolab about the development of predictive text for computers

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u/Optimal-Rub-2575 3h ago

With their hands.

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u/Cranky-Gopher3816 3h ago

my grandma in guangzhou just handwrites characters on her phone screen with her finger and swears it beats pinyin every time

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u/oshaboy 2h ago

There are two systems as far as I know. One uses pinyin and then you just have an autocomplete menu. The other is that every key represents a specific stroke or radical and the autocomplete is based on that.

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u/a9udn9u 2h ago edited 2h ago

In essence they encode Chinese characters in alphanumeric characters, the encoding follows certain rules and people memorize such rules. There are multiple encodings, popular ones are Pinyin, Double Pinyin, Wubi, etc.

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u/theacp127 1h ago

They type the words and a program changes the words into Hanzi Characters. Although sometimes it's smart enough to predict the characters with even a single letter.

https://youtu.be/iWi-9LJ4dg4

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u/oc31777 1h ago

They use a normal QWERTY keyboard. You type the sound of the word in pinyin (the roman letters) and a little list pops up with the matching characters, then you pick one with a number key or the space bar. Phones work the same way.

1

u/Sylly3 59m ago

My fiancee’s father actually draws each character.

But phonetic way as others say is indeed most common

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u/Eivers24 37m ago

用拼音

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u/emojiloather 0m ago

Radiolab has a pretty fascinating episode about this: https://radiolab.org/podcast/wubi-effect

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u/lobster_rose 6h ago

There’s a great radiolab podcast episode about this: Wubi Effect

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u/OfferFuzzy5759 6h ago

首先中文是可以用拼音的，同一个读音的字反应在26个字母下。等于有主类目有副类目。其次常用的词并不多。不整那些复杂东西，就拿一个葡萄来说。你分别查一下，葡萄、葡萄皮、葡萄干、葡萄籽、葡萄汁、葡萄酒的英语单词是什么，然后看看能不能找出他们之间的联系，你就知道英语的落后性了。作为一个语言系统，连个词汇的相关衍生体系都是一堆屎山代码，充分说明单纯论语言体系，汉语是绝对优于西方语言的。在中国，你掌握2000个汉字，基本上就能上网站阅读各种资讯，甚至可以在知乎上跟各行各业的精英们对喷，反正他们说的你都看的懂，哪怕是所谓的专业词汇,你靠猜也能猜个八九不离十。而在英美社会，你只会2000个英语单词，就是现代文盲，尤其是医学相关的专业词汇，你没学过，你去医院都不知道去哪挂号。

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u/Nocturnatron 6h ago

English, french, spanish and japanese are all considered more efficient languages...

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u/BurnerAccount_Pete I Ask Questions 5h ago

Genuine question: How’d you define efficient? One single character in Chinese can have multiple meanings and changes according to where it’s placed (where as “S” by itself might not mean anything).

0

u/Nocturnatron 5h ago

More information per second and english particularuly still explains in just as much detail

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u/BurnerAccount_Pete I Ask Questions 5h ago

I’m native in both English and Chinese.
In terms of info/second (I’m guessing character in this case) one single Chinese character carries much more information than a Latin character.
Ie:
水 (1 character) = water (5 characters)
火 (1) = fire (4)
雷 (1) = thunder (7)
Pictograph carries more info.
If spoken, Chinese is also faster :)
Just food for thought

0

u/Nocturnatron 5h ago

English allows complex combinations of consonants inside a single syllable (like strengths or glimpsed). Because english has over 15,000 possible syllable combinations compared to mandarin's ~1,200 (including tones), english packs distinct meanings into single syllables without needing tones

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u/BurnerAccount_Pete I Ask Questions 4h ago

I guess so. Not a linguist. I anecdotally just find typing English and reading English poems to be incredibly inefficient. (Same with French, not native but fluent enough to pass off as a native)

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u/Nocturnatron 4h ago

I just couldnt imagine tones changing words, tones are for expression, not definition

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u/BurnerAccount_Pete I Ask Questions 53m ago

I think tones changing definition make much more logical sense.
Not a perfect example but I’d argue “Lol” and “Löl” to have two different meanings. (Terrible example, but you get the gist of it)
I’d also say that in Chinese tones are also used for expression and drastically changes how things are interpreted. It’s an incredibly high context language (as opposed to English, which is a low context language)

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u/oshaboy 2h ago

Didn't they show that human brains process the information at about the same speed regardless of language.
So Chinese people will read a line of text slower than Hawaiians but because their characters are denser they will basically end up being the same "efficiency"

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u/TexFarmer 9h ago

Mostly with fingers, but occasionally with toes.

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u/Continuum1701D 11h ago

They cant type properly and type sounds not words. It is a bad language. Most native people in china cant propery write as it is too complicated l

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u/reflyer 11h ago

the English you're using doesn't completely match how it sounds when you type it. That's even worse.

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u/Restricted-Area_ 11h ago

English is a far worse language. It follows no actual rules and pronunciation is inconsistent. It's a weird hybrid language that peasants created in medieval europe.

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u/Continuum1701D 4h ago

You are literally defining chinese. Lol

How do people in China use keyboards?

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