Welcome to Learning typing Chinese with Bopomofo
Here, allow me to introduce how millions of East Asians type their languages every day, using Chinese Bopomofo as the example.
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Welcome to Learning typing Chinese with Bopomofo
Here, allow me to introduce how millions of East Asians type their languages every day, using Chinese Bopomofo as the example.
Click on the “Next” button below to continue.
East Asian Input Methods
An “input method”, or “IME” for short, is a piece of program which compose and select the right characters, out of thousands of characters in the target language, based on the combination of a limit set of symbols that fits into a keyboard. Zhuyin, or Bopomofo, is the syllabary of choice for typing Chinese in Taiwan.
An IME can be as simple as a mapping table, or it can be smart and anticipate the desired output with a few simple keystrokes.
As you read this, a few of these characters are shown randomly here.
Typing with an IME
We will be demonstrating with JSZhuyin, a fully implemented IME that works right on this page.
You will be learning to type the sentence 您好，世界！, which means “Hello, World!” in Chinese.
Before we start, take a look at the keyboard layout below. This is the typical keyboard layout of Zhuyin, along side with Qwerty.
When you are ready to start typing, click on the input box on right.
Courtesy of Sakurambo on Wikimedia.
Say Hello
To start typing the first phrase 您好 (Hello), you'll need to type the corresponding syllabograms that would compose the phonemes of the two characters in Mandarin Chinese, which is ㄋㄧㄣˊㄏㄠˇ.
Start typing by hitting the corresponding key on your keyboard when you found the syllabogram from the image below.
As you type, the syllabograms will be put into a holding area, instead of appearing right in the text box. A list of possible phrases will show up too.
You can use the Backspace key to remove incorrect symbols and characters.
Confirming a phrase
Excellent! It looks like JSZhyin has found your desired phrase, 您好 (Hello), for you. Click on it on the candidate list, or press Shift and 1 at the same time to confirm it.
Typing punctuation
Press Shift and , (comma) keys at the same time to type a full-width comma.
Saving keystrokes
We have now advanced to the next phrase, 世界 (World).
The corresponding syllabograms are ㄕˋㄐㄧㄝˋ, but I want to teach you a trick that would make typing faster, especially on touch screens: you could find the same phrase by typing as little as two keys, like ㄕㄐ.
Once you found the phrase in the candidate list, click on it or press Shift and the number key to confirm the selection.
Finishing up
You are almost done saying hello to the world in Chinese!
Press Shift and 1 at the same time to type a full-width exclamation mark.
您好，世界！
We are done here and thank you for playing with the tutorial. You may continue typing here for fun or read some Wikipedia articles on related topics.
- Learn how syllabaries are different from alphabets.
- Learn Hanyu Pinyin, which composes Mandarin Chinese phonemes in Latin alphabets. It‘s much easier to learn Pinyin than the legacy Zhuyin syllabary.
- Know more about Zhuyin and find out how it ended up only being used in Taiwan, and not other places.
- Check out Katakana and Hiragana, the Japanese syllabaries that not only useful for typing with IMEs, but as part of the Japanese writing system itself.
- The Korean IME works by following the same logic set in the writing system itself, from the 15th century. It combines Korean alphabets, jamo, into Korean syllables, Hangul. The legend claims that it’s a “writing you can learn within a morning”.
- Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are collectively known as “CJK” in the realm of information processing research and engineering, where IMEs play a sizable role.
- If you are still reading, you are probably a language or information processing geek like me. Tell me what you think on Twitter!
About
Hi! My name is Timothy Chien and I made this tutorial. Check out the JSZhuyin project on it’s GitHub to find out where this is come from and make a suggestion on where it should go.
You may also take a look at my portfolio if you are interested in what I do.