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
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