Quote:
Originally Posted by Detective-san
I'm not sure I understand, it says that you don't need a Japanese keyboard right? Then the question of how they fit all the Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji letters still stands. Now that I think about it, this goes double for Japanese phones, how do they make everything fit?
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You type phonetically in Roman characters. For example, ひ is hi ("he"). I entered Japanese input mode and typed "hi" - the computer instantly changed it to the Japanese character.
That's Hiragana. If I wanted to convert it to Katakana (ヒ), I follow the same procedure, but use a shortcut that converts the character to Katakana. If I type certain words (such as "anime") the system will offer to auto-convert it to Katakana. Since Katakana is used only for foreign words, it's not a big issue.
How about Kanji? The system recognizes certain words and offers to convert them. For example, to get 昼ご飯 (hirugohan - lunch), I typed "hirugohan," which appeared to me as ひるごはん. The system pops up a small menu with some Kanji conversion options (which isn't a big deal for this word, but in some phonetic words there are many different Kanji selections, and the computer will generally choose the most common ones by default, requiring that you may need to choose the one you intended). I can either select it, continue typing (and if I go for long enough, it automatically converts it), or force a conversion and then continue typing. It's a pretty good system.
This is all for Roman keyboards. Based on what I've seen in J-dramas, the methods I've described are used in Japan as well. I'm sure there are Japanese keyboards, too. The difference would be that their keys put out Hiragana characters with a single keystroke, as opposed to having to type out each one phonetically with Roman characters.
I can't explain how it works on phone - probably similar.
It is partly for this reason that people in Japan (and China) are said to be having problems with writing Kanji. It is much easier to recognize something in reading than to write it on a blank sheet of paper. With computers, people can easily write and have the computer come up with the various Kanji (so long as they know the pronunciation behind it). Writing Kanji is a very different matter...