Wierd Question #1: What do keyboards in China look like?

Here is a link to give you an idea. Not really sure how it works.

http://www.datacal.com/dce/catalog/chinese-bopomofo-layout.htm

A few years ago I read an article about how the Chinese needed to update their keyboards in order to keep pace with the rest of the world. At this time, they could only correspond with people who read Chinese. Many of their keyboards were not equipped with other languages.

LOL, colorbook, your reply has made me smiling happily. But no, there is definitely no such weird keyboard in China mainland. In fact that kind of Bopomofo has been cast away almost half century ago in China mainland (but I doubt it is still in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao).

Nowadays, the keyboard used by most of Chinese in mainland is the keyboard of international stardard. If they wanted to input Chinese characters into computer, just select the relative input software. For example, I input some Chinese as below:

纽约网友好奇心一如中国网友的好奇心，彼此彼此！

(If you wanted the Chinese above shows properly, you need to select "View"- "Encode" - Simplified Chinese (GB2312) in your IE. or you will just see some scrambled characters on your screen)

The input software that I used here is Wubi input software, just press Ctrl+SpaceBar, the software would occur on the screen.
(Note: Wubi, Chinese Pinyin, means "Five strokes")

But for the convenience of Chinese computer newbies, like for the convenience of pupils to learn how to type out Chinese characters, some keyboard manufacturers may print relative strokes on the surface of a relative key to help these pupils to remember every proper place for every Chinese stroke (it depends on how a Chinese input software to separate Chinese characters).

Re: Wierd Question #1: What do keyboards in China look like?


Regarding how a Chinese keyboard looks, see my post above.
Yes, All Chinese people who want to use computer have to learn to read and write English, but usually they just learn 26 English letters -- that is to say, they have just known ABC (and plus "Hello!" and "Good morning!" )! There are less than 1% of them who can read and write English to communicate with English speakers.

Thanks for your update, oristarA, and explanation of the Chinese keyboard. The article that I read surely misinformed me.

That was a really good question.

I've been wondering about that every now and then, but forgot to ask it every time I was online.

I have seen pictures of those old "keyboards" with hundreds of keys to press. The Chinese must be thankful for software that lets them use a much simpler input method!

Sometimes in typing classes, teachers here would block out the letters on the keys, to force students to memorize their location! You could only take the covers off so you could see the letters after you reached a certain speed.

OristarA, "bopomofo" made me laugh!

taiwan keyboards
My family in Taipei have keyboards with English alphabet.

However, each key also has a 'stroke" for the Chinese characters. You have to input the Strokes in correct stroke order for the proper character to appear in your document.

I have been learning mandarin and it was very easy for me to use the keyboard. (I think I hit control and the stroke key )

I imagine they look kinda like keyboards.


I just turned over my keyboard and there are chinese characters molded into the plastic on the back. How about yours?

No molded characters at all. Some characters that look like Japanese and some that look like Korean on the label... it was made in Thailand.

Oddly, mine was made in Mexico.

Re: Wierd Question #1: What do keyboards in China look like?


It's five or six years ago that there were less than 1% of them who can read and write English to communicate with English speakers.
Nowadays it's quite different.There are more and more Chinese people learning English.Even pupils can keep a diary in English.
We read English magazins,Newsweek,Reader's Digest for example,not only college students but aslo Chinese citizens.

This is my keyboard,no characters on it.

There are various input methods (IME's you can d/l for Office XP, for example) that lets you emulate Chinese characters on a keyboard.

The two most common methods are pinying and wu bi.

Pinying
You type in the pinying pronounciation for a chinese character, choose the character you want, and press the corresponding number key.

Wu bi:
You type in a combination of radicals and number of "lines" you want for the character and once again, the character is displayed.

These methods are not cumbersome at all, and with a little practice, I can type an entire chinese 4 page essay in a little under 30 minutes.

It sorta looks like a mah-jongg set!

Phoenix - that pic got me all dizzy

It is very interesting and busy at the same time :wink:

And you are right, it does looks like a mah-jongg set - cool!

Oy.

Re: Wierd Question #1: What do keyboards in China look like?
Ch-check it out