I have been curious for long, about how Japanese talking over the keyboard works out…
i have seen kanji and Hepburn/latin text type keyboards too, so i am interested in how that goes.
is it like typing phoneticly/Hepburn and some program makes it kanji, or typing in kanji and some program make the words out of the lets call it ” combos “.
if i am entirely wrong, please forgive me and give the right info.
Thanks.
4 comments
the easiest (imo) way to type in Japanese is just using the “Romaji input mode” that converts romaji into kanji/kana
As you expected. You just type phonetically and the Microsoft IME (or Mozc on Linux) keyboard turns it automatically to kana and by pressing tab you can choose the kanji you want it to turn into.
Physically japanese keyboard use a layout called JIS layout, its physically identical to ISO but has more keys on the bottom function row and thus a smaller spacebar.
On mobile, a lot of people use an input not too far away from T9 text input on your old dumb phone. People type incredibly fast with it. The next most common input method is probably Romaji before handwriting. On PCs keyboard actually have one hiragana character per key and one could type like that but I’ve yet to meet anyone who actually uses it like that.
Any Japanese input has suggested text running in the background. It either pops up without being prompted (on mobile) or needs to be triggered by the space key (which is virtually unnecessary for the language in its originally intended use). You type a word and if you need any other characters than hiragana, which is the default, you hit the space bar and get a window of all the possible expressions that fit what you entered. There is a reason why fax machines were/are big in Japan because the language is a pain to digitize.
There are two options. Standard is you can type using the Latin (roman) alphabet and Japanese will appear. Usually one Japanese character for every two Latin characters.
Or you can use a keyboard with Japanese characters on it and one key press will give you one Japanese character. You can then press other keys if you need to modify that character with ã‚›or ã‚œ. This is called direct input. I’ve never seen anyone use it in real life but I suppose it’s technically faster.
With both methods you do some typing and it appears in hiragana, then you can hit a key to change what you’ve typed into kanji or katakana as you go.