How on earth can the Chinese and Japanese use computers, given that their writing uses thousands of different characters? The keyboard must look like something off a Wurlitzer pipe organ. –Nora Krashoc, Knoxville, Tennessee
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(1) Figure out which of the 50,000-plus Chinese characters you want to use. It should not be necessary to point out that each character stands for a word or concept (usually) rather than a sound as in English. However, I did have one guy recently who thought Chinese had 50,000 different sounds and wondered why we English speakers felt we had to scrape by with a few dozen. Also, lest 50,000 characters seem a little extreme, I should point out that you can get by with about 3,000 to 4,000.
(3) Enter the syllable into the computer phonetically using roman (i.e., our) letters. This takes up to six keystrokes plus, in some programs, one more keystroke for the tone. Typically this pops up a menu of possible characters, six characters or so at a time.
So, if you’re Chinese, do you hate computers? On the contrary, you think they’re great, because the alternative is to write out your damn language longhand. This is even more of a pain, since one Chinese character can have as many as 36 strokes. (Max per English character: 4.) You could try a Chinese typewriter, but they’re clunky and expensive. A computer with decent Chinese word-processing software, in contrast, lets you achieve a reasonable approximation of touch typing, assuming you use the same program long enough. (Every program is different, needless to say.)
