So, if the Chinese don’t have an alphabet and use only pictograms comprising of over 6500 characters, how do they type on a keyboard? Do they have really large keyboards with over 6500 keys or do they just say “Screw Mandarin” and type in English (which can’t be true because I’ve seen Chinese characters on webpages/spam emails)? Is there some kind of algorithmic key pressing magic that goes on in order to produce said characters?

  • oceanAEnglish
    14·
    1 day ago

    There are a handful of methods of input pinyin is taught in China and Zhuyin is taught in Taiwan.

    Pinyin is romanized and much easier to learn in my opinion but mashes similar sounds together in a confusing way that isn’t obvious. Zhuyin uses a Chinese derives writing system and is more accurate towards how it’s pronounced but a little more difficult to learn especially for foreigners.

    There’s a good podcast episode, maybe overheard at National Geographic on the wubi method and why the creator thinks it’s the best. Essentially pre-pinyin this genius guy came up with another method of input that even today is the fasted way to input Chinese but not as easy to learn as pinyin. Pinyin also carries over some ideological baggage as China wants everyone to learn the same first language at least so the main method of learning and input is pinyin. This is annoying for dialect speakers who have to type pinyin even when the pronunciation is off like Sichuanese or not even the same language like Cantonese.

    Personally pinyin is a genius system that makes the language very easy but it can also be too much of a crutch for foreigners.