(Note: This continues my explanation of typing Chinese that I started yesterday. In today's post when i reference the "picture above" I actually am referring to yesterday's picture. The picture you see for today is of my keyboard and all the various symbols on it that are used for typing Chinese.)
Without further ado, here are explanations of the most common ways people input Chinese.
1. Pinyin = this is basically "spelling" chinese characters by using english letters. "Ni" (sounds like "knee") and "Hao" makes the two characters come up that mean "Hello." Pinyin has an extra problem though in that you must select the tone, using the 1,2,3,4, and 5 keys. So it would be "ni3" and "hao3" as both of them are third tone. It's not perfect though as even with the tones, there are still many words that are pronounced the same way and have the same tone, so you still have to choose the exact word you want from the drop down menu, but the tone does specify it a bit.
Some pinyin programs let you type without putting the tone in, but this just means that you have even more words to go through in the list, since you haven't narrowed the amount down by using a tone. This is how it works on phones, as to my knowledge you can't specify the tone when using pinyin on a phone. I say "to my knowledge" because nobody in Taiwan uses pinyin, so even though it's what i use, it's hard to pick up tips about it in Taiwan. Pinyin is the preferred way of inputting chinese in China, but not in Taiwan. I will describe Taiwan's way below, but for the most part i'd say that China's way is better. It is by far the fastest way to type chinese on a phone (despite no tones), and it allows native speakers to communicate with foreigners. It helps immensely in business when somebody can tell a foreigner how to spell/write/pronounce something, because for the most part pinyin is just English. So it allows foreigners to take down notes, and to be able to show to people, and just help overall communication. However since Taiwanese can't do this, they are at a big competitive disadvantage when interacting with foreigners, and this can cause foreign companies to go with Chinese companies instead.
2. Be, Pe, Me = there is an official name, but this is what most foreigners call it. Essentially it's an alphabet of less complicated characters that each represent a sound, and groups of these sounds come together to make up a chinese word. Some examples of this alphabet are a character for the sound "e" a character for the sound "ying" a character for the sound "ne." I used to use this for learning Chinese, but I quickly found that despite the fact that it's the way that Taiwanese learn Chinese, it's quite flawed. Sometimes the groups of sounds used don't really match the pronunciation of the word, and sometimes they ad an extra sound that is used for writing that is not actually pronounced, just to help differentiate it. Granted we have all this in English as well, but the great thing about pinyin is that it's new, so it's able to avoid all those mistakes and inconsistencies. It's pretty much the same as if somebody decided to clean up the way we spell English words so that it makes more sense and there aren't all those rules that are broken for specific cases.
Be, pe, me is pretty useless when typing on a phone though. this is because there are so many characters in the alphabet (over 40) that they all can't fit on the screen. So the way this is handled is that it will show a few characters, then you choose one, then it shows some more, then some more. This does logically work though as with be, pe, me there are specific beginning sounds, middle sounds, then ending sounds. so it will show you the choices for beginning sounds, then move show you the middle and ending sounds. The problem is that you can't type quickly because you have to wait for the screen to change, and depending on what you wrote it can be mixed around, so it's quite troublesome and time consuming. It's just not worth it. Which means....
3. Handwriting = is the most prominent way of writing chinese on phones in Taiwan at least. Yes it seems crazy, but drawing each character is the way most people choose. Or to be more accurate people usually start with be, pe, me, but then get sick of it and move over to writing the character on the phone, then get annoyed and go back to be, pe, me, and so on. The biggest problem with handwriting (other than the time it takes) is that you have to use two hands to do it, one to hold the phone and the other to draw. Which is pretty dangerous when on a bus or subway, but like nature's creatures, it seems like most people here have evolved so that they can stand on the bus and write on the phone without falling down.
Within the handwriting style, there are two options. One is just to take the word when you finish and give you the options of what it thinks you meant. The other is to go by "stroke order." When writing chinese there is a specific order to the way you draw it. As if writing chinese wasn't enough, I also have to remember the exact procedure in which it is written. Oh and since we are complaining, one drawback of handwriting I forgot to mention is that there is no auto fill. You must choose the character you want from a list, so it is extra time consuming.
Now there are other ways to type input Chinese. As I mentioned before there are quite a few characters on each key of a keyboard. One is obviously english letters, one is be, pe, me characters, and the other two are for other ways of typing chinese. One of these is for using the "root" of the word in combination with the attributes of what a word looks like. You can see in the word above that it's actually two symbols next to each other, so if you want there is a way to type based on using common symbols of how a word is written. I also believe that the first symbol is the root of the word and this is how you look up a word in a chinese-chinese dictionary by going by the root of a word first then looking for the word you want based no the other parts of it. I actually don't know much about this, as it seems some mystery that Taiwanese know how to do, but not how to explain. Also I don't know many people who use this input style on the keyboard.
By now you are thinking that after all these years, there must be a better way. Well there kind of is. A few years ago a guy decided to sit down and make the "best" and fastest way to input Chinese, and to be quite honest he succeeded. The way he did this is by making sure that every single word has a specific input, so you NEVER have to choose from a drop down list. Unfortunately there are a few reasons why it's not widely used. The first reason is because people are just too set in their ways, they have a method that they are used to and don't feel like learning a new one, cause the fact of the matter is that learning a new input method is almost like learning another language.
The second reason is that it's at times very logical, but at other times it's insane. To make every word specific, he had to come up with ways to differentiate from between words which sound and are inputted the same way using the original methods. He did this in many different ways, but using their "root" or their "sound" or their "meaning in english" or their "tone" and by using english letters which are similar to the shape of a word in chinese. All meaning it's a lot to keep track of. Granted once you get used to it, it's supposedly incredibly fast, but most people think it's not worth all the time to get used to it.
The final reason is that the guy wants to get paid, so he sells it. Most people are not going to pay for this when they already have a way they are used to. And this will never spread to wide use unless it's free and on every computer. I can understand he wants to make money, but by charging money, he is basically guaranteeing that people won't use it.
So now you see all it takes to type Chinese. The funny thing is that a lot of the time Taiwanese will just type to each other in English as depending on their English ability or what they want to say, English can be much faster and easier. This is also why while my friends can type to me in Chinese, I will respond in English. It's not so much because i don't know what to say, but because typing it takes forever. Not to mention how confused I can get when seeing a list of words to choose from that are 99% written the same way with one tiny little flick of a line difference, and at such a small size, it's hard to make out.
