Prompted by my attempt to type 明治以前の穴銭 into YouTube search. Couldn’t find 銭 in the drop-down prompts after typing either あなせん or せん and failed to come up with anything smarter than to copy the kanji from the Wiki page on Japanese coinage.
I’m using Anthy Japanese input on Linux Mint, if this is relevant.
6 comments
If I type あなせん on my phone (using Google’s Gboard keyboard) the first suggestion I get is 穴銭, and If I type せん, then I get 銭 as one of the suggestion, but not among the first ones.
So, it’s definitely your input method’s fault.
If you know the kanji’s other readings then you could also try those, e.g. ぜに should work. If I don’t I’ll try component, or drawing on a dictionary app that has a draw feature.
On MacOS/iOS I also don’t get it by entering あなせん but with rarer readings you can get it by the step-by-step method: 1. あな→穴 2 せん、ぜに→銭.
For this method, kun’yomi works better (also when you’re looking up a kanji in a kanji dictionary by pronunciation). Sometimes you’d need to enter a compound word and delete the extra character.
Just use other more common words with the same kanji, eg 五十銭、銭湯、古銭. Or if you don’t know the character at all use your IME or google translate and write it out
On Windows anyway, the stock Microsoft IME is pretty hopeless, luckily there is Google IME.
Ugh… my patience is short. If I don’t get one from typing quickly, I find it in the dictionary on my phone (handwritten) and copy/paste.