I suggest you use Sogou Pinyin, which allows you to type whole phrases and even sentences at a time, guessing the correct characters from the context. You can also use shortened pinyin (like ‘dbq’ for ‘對不起’, etc.) Ctrl+Shift+F to switch to traditional (“full-form”) characters:
She finds it such a chore to press CTRL-SHIFT a couple of times? Time for a merge with the 'Psycho Xiaojie" thread …? [/quote]
I don’t mean switching between input methods, I mean changing the setting of the Xin Zhuyin method between zhuyin fuhao and Hanyu pinyin. But you’re right, it does only take about 15 seconds to change and she is a psycho xiaojie.
I recently upgraded my mac and the pinyin text input is a great improvement over the previous version. It has predictive text that works over 2 or even 3 characters. This probably isn’t new but in my old mac something as simple as keyi I would type ke and then have to scroll down 4 pages to find the yi.
i second this! mac traditional pinyin input is great! i can type whole sentences and not have 1 problem (most of the time), and it learns quickly what you generally type. i have the “Use Dynamic Prompt" setting unchecked…this way i can type random taiwanese-english words by just pressing enter…for example 太over了吧！, or when i forget to turn off chinese i can just hit enter and the english will stay. also i can hit the tone number after the word then space to narrow a search down
i hate using the windows ime, always have to go through 3 pages for something simple. the windows vista/7 one improved a LOT though (it comes with office 2011 i believe as well for cha p)
same with me here about changing the keyboard mapping to pinyin, taiwanese people get SO CONFUSED when they try to use their computer again :roflmao:
i would say unless you already know bopomofo and love it to death, just use pinyin to type. most of us can’t actually think that fast in chinese to really benefit from using a faster system anyway. i’ve heard wuxiami (is that right?) is the fastest from some people.
i also enjoy using google’s ime. it’s great. it defaults to simplified, but that’s an easy setting to change.
I tried learning Cangjie, but it is just too ridiculous. You can type faster with characters you know, all right, but if you stumble across a character which you cannot decompose, or which you have forgotten, you have to look it up - all the speed advantage down.
I bought a book in Taiwan about Cangjie. Although it is in Chinese, it is quite easy to understand, because it has all the common characters in a dictionary listed at the end. It also shows graphically which part of the character is which key, so it is quite nice to understand.
Also, all the Taiwanese I told that I can write Cangjie, were just like “what? I don’t know anyone who can type like that”. Personally, the only person I saw using Cangjie was a police men, but apart from that, thats all.
Bopomofo is quite nice to learn, though. First, other people cannot use your PC to type Chinese (harhar), and second, your penis length will increase of 1. So really nice to learn. Also, you have to type the tones, which will help you remember them.
[quote=“Hellstorm”]I tried learning Cangjie, but it is just too ridiculous. You can type faster with characters you know, all right, but if you stumble across a character which you cannot decompose, or which you have forgotten, you have to look it up - all the speed advantage down.
I bought a book in Taiwan about Cangjie. Although it is in Chinese, it is quite easy to understand, because it has all the common characters in a dictionary listed at the end. It also shows graphically which part of the character is which key, so it is quite nice to understand.
Also, all the Taiwanese I told that I can write Cangjie, were just like “what? I don’t know anyone who can type like that”. Personally, the only person I saw using Cangjie was a police men, but apart from that, thats all.
Bopomofo is quite nice to learn, though. First, other people cannot use your PC to type Chinese (harhar), and second, your penis length will increase of 1. So really nice to learn. Also, you have to type the tones, which will help you remember them.[/quote]
I think I know why I was under a misapprehension…I used to work in trading companies here 15 to 10 years ago and I think back then all the International Trade graduates (girls) were forced to learn cangjie. Hence I thought everyone used it. Now no one uses it because there’s faster, sexier methods.
Personally I’ve noticed that Taiwanese are better at identifying tones than Mainlanders when I’ve asked people in the past. The Mainlanders usually have to say all of them out loud until they ‘hear’ the right one. It’s probably easier for young Taiwanese because of typing bopomofo.
My friend’s sister uses Cangjie. When I’ve asked her how to type it before, she couldn’t really explain it. She told me learned it as a kid and just remembered how to type characters by memorizing their key combinations. (She works at an insurance office and just types stuff all day long) When she really can’t figure out a character, she switches to bopomofo, especially for name characters that aren’t commonly used. She said she prefers Cangjie because it’s much faster for her.
Back to the OP though, young Mainlanders use Hanyu Pinyin, and older ones use Wuxi (a kind of character-building one like Cangjie). They also have a system called ‘Stroke Order’ that’s on mobile phones. Lots of…what’s the best word here…farmers use this method. It has the strokes on keys 2-9 and you just ‘draw’ the character using it. Such a pain in the ass and it takes forever. Typing 是 for example would be | ⸣ - - | | - ㄟ (backwards, it’s a pie but i dont know how to type it) - Mess up that stroke order and you have no hope. I type very fast using pinyin, personally, but only on my computer and my iphone. It learns which words you type the most often. Pinyin requires more key presses to spell out ‘sounds’ that exist on one key in bopomofo, but pinyin also can parse full phrases correctly without explicitly hitting the tone number, which bopopmofo doesn’t do. However, bopomofo gets you to the actual character faster when going one by one. Also, speakers of latin-letter languages have an automatic speed advantage using pinyin because we know where the letters are already, and don’t have to learn the positions of bopomofo on the keyboard.
Computer input is such a personal thing that there really isn’t a way to say which one is best. It depends on the person and how comfortable they are with each input system. If you suck at writing characters, stick with pinyin/bopomofo. If you are Korean/Japanese and suck at speaking but can read/write everything, maybe a character-building type is better for you.
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