| I shoulda done this fun fact right after the one about Japanese writing back on Cammy's birthday (Jan 6th!). Anyhow, as complicated as Japanese writing is, a lot of people have wondered how on earth they type! What must a Japanese keyboard look like with all those alphabets, symbols, etc. Well, the fact is that their keyboards look almost exactly like ours! They've got a few extra keys, but they're 90% the same because they use our letters to type in Japanese. |
| It's probably a good idea to go down to the Fun Fact from Jan 6th at the bottom of this page and check it out real quick. That'll help you understand Japanese writing, and that should make my explanation of how typing works a bit easier. OK? OK. Here's the explanation... |
| They phonetically type Japanese letters using western letters, and the computer auto-translates it. One of the most important buttons on a Japanese keyboard is one that switches between the alphabets of Hiragana, Katakana, and Romaji (western). That determines which alphabet is default for the auto-translate program. The other really important key is one that auto-translates Japanese letters into Kanji characters. It sounds very complicated, but once you get used to it, it works very well, and it's not much slower. |
| Here's an example of how you'd type "Tokyo" in
Japanese... First you'd make sure the default alphabet is Hiragana (which is usually is). Second, you'd type the keys t o which the computer would automatically translate into the Japanese letter "to" (  ). Third, you'd type the letter u
which they computer would auto-translate into the Japanese letter "u" (  ).
Fourth, type the letters k y o which will
auto-translate into the Japanese letter "kyo" (  ). And finally, you'd type
u ( ) again. So you've typed toukyou, which the computer automatically
translated that  . Then the computer should recognize that word
as "Tokyo" and translate that into the Kanji...  . . If the computer doesn't
recognize the word you're trying to type, or if translates the wrong Kanji, you can hit
the Kanji auto-translate button over & over and it'll scroll through a list of the
most likely words. It's very a very smart program, but If that doesn't work, there
should be a way you can pull up a list of kanji and find what you need that way. And
that's basically how Japanese keyboards work! |
| Wow, sounded really complicated! But it's not
really. Here's a quick summary... you type "toukyo"
and the computer instantly translates that all into and then ! See,
it wasn't really so hard ^_^ |
