Mini-story (no. 4) with Chinese characters at HSK2 level

王医生给同事们打电话，问他们：我的侄女不见了。她可能出事了。你在你的医院里见过她吗？

同事：不巧，她不在我这里。

王医生：哦。谢谢你。

同事：不客气，希望你能很快找到她。

（王小姐的爸爸妈妈去了警察局。）

妈妈：我的女儿不见了！

警察：你们从什么时候发现她不见了？

妈妈：昨天上午开始。

警察：你的女儿多大年纪了？

妈妈：她今年23岁。

警察：她是大人了。应该可以照顾自己的。也许她在朋友那里。

妈妈：我打电话给她的朋友们了。没有人见过她。

警察：可能她去旅游了。

妈妈：不会的！她还在上大学。她没有那么多钱去旅游。今天她打算回家看我们的，但是直到现在都没有出现。我们还知道她昨天下午也没有去她打工的饭馆。

警察：你太紧张了。也许等一下她就出现了。

警察2：等一下。这样看来,从上星期开始已经有两位女性不见了！

同事们 / tóngshìmen / colleagues

侄女/ zhínǚ / niece

出事/ chūshì / to have an accident

不巧/ bùqiǎo/ unfortunately

哦 / ó / ”oh”

警察/ jǐngchá / police

局/ jú /agency, office

发现 / fāxiàn / to discover

年纪 / niánjì / age, year of one‘s life

应该 / yīnggāi / must, should

照顾 / zhàogù / to take care of

自己 / zìjǐ / oneself, here:herself

许 / xǔ / to allow

打算 / dǎsuàn / to plan, to intend

直到现在 / zhídào xiànzài/ until now

出现 / chūxiàn / turn up, reappear

打工 / dǎgōng / job

紧张 / jǐnzhāng / tense, nervous

这样 / zhèyàng / in this way

看来 / kànlái / to seem

位 / wèi / counting word for people

女性 / nǚxìng / female person, woman

How to type in Chinese characters on a computer

It is easy to look up a character when reading a Chinese book, but how to write Chinese characters on the computer? Obviously there are not enough keys on the keyboard of an ordinary computer to allow assigning one key to each of the thousands of characters.

A common solution is the use of input editors, which allow converting a phonetic notation into a character. Very commonly used are input editors which allow writing the Chinese words in latin letters (e.g. in Pinyin, the official Romanization system for Mandarin in mainland China) and then suggest a selection of characters to you from which you can choose the right one. Another type of input editors is based on phonetic symbols instead of latin letters (Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao), which is more common in Taiwan.

There are also input methods that are not based on phonetics but on the shape of character components which are assigned to each key and can be combined to words (e.g. the Cangjie input method). Input methods based on the composition of characters can be faster to type in than phonetic input, which requires the slightly more slowing down action of selecting the intended characters from the phonetically identical ones. Shape based input methods, however, require more knowledge and training for being used.

To increase the speed of typing with phonetic input systems, statistics can be employed to display the most frequently used characters associated with a certain pronunciation first and by word prediction methods to allow autocompletion.

For learners of Chinese as a foreign language, input editors allow writing Chinese characters even with reading ability only. The common everyday use of computers has at the same time led to fading handwriting skills among native Chinese.

电脑 / diànnǎo / computer

Sources and further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_input_method

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/01/technology/in-china-computer-use-erodes-traditional-handwriting-stirring-a.html