I’m trying to figure out Microsoft IME Japanese input at the moment but i’m not sure how to switch back and forth from english to japanese input
I was going to buy a keyboard that had hiragana buttons but it seems most that are for sale in the US are more for aesthetic than functionality
would it make more sense to get a dedicated keyboard for japanese (of which i do not know if such keyboards exist? i mean i’ve seen the crazy 1000 key keyboards that have tons of different kanji but i assume a kana input that auto-detects/guesses kanji similar to phone input would make more sense?)
6 comments
IIRC
Japanese IME,
ctrl alt,
alt ~
You don’t need to get a new keyboard and even if you did you’d still need to figure out how to change the virtual keyboard layout to use one vs the other.
You can add Japanese IME in the window settings for keyboard layout. As soon as you have two keyboard layouts set up then an icon will appear in the taskbar tray that you can click on to switch between them. You can also do the shortcut win + space to toggle between them.
When you have IME chosen, you still have to tell it whether you want to type hiragana, katakana, or romaji. You can do this by clicking on the A/あ/ア symbol that appears in the tray next to the keyboard icon. There’s probably a keyboard shortcut for that to, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe somebody else here can tell us?
I’m Japanese living in Japan and most people just use a shortcut to turn on/off the Japanese IME.
You don’t need a specialised physical keyboard with kana. In my Tokyo office, I think everyone had keyboards that were similar to Western keyboards (with some minor differences). The Japanese people around me did not use “kana” keys to type.
OT – Near my house was a shop that sold used electronics. A lot of the 80s computers and laptops had some crazy Japanese keyboard layouts but those seemed to have faded away based on what I see in the big electronics retailers. FYI I think those old computers are for older medical, laboratory and manufacturing equipment that still is in use.
I currently have six languages installed on my PC. I only need one keyboard. I pick the language I want in the taskbar. For Japanese I just use the provided IME and romaji input. As you use certain words and phrases they’ll be added to the built-in lexicon (e.g. names of authors, titles of books).
For me, on windows, windows key + spacebar cycles between keyboards, I have ENG, Japanese Google, and Japanese Microsoft. I prefer Google for whatever reason. Shift + caps lock cycles between romaji and kana/katakana/kanji. Seems there are a few keyboard shortcuts for the same thing.