Chinese keyboard layout: what it looks like, how to type on a Chinese keyboard

Chinese is considered one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world. This is due to the wide variety of hieroglyphs and dialects that vary in each province. The Chinese language has about 40 thousand characters. This makes composing a universal keyboard difficult. However, there are ways to make writing Chinese text easier.

What is the peculiarity of the Chinese keyboard

Let's see what the Chinese keyboard looks like. Chinese characters are based on graphemes (mini-characters), of which there are only 250 pieces. It is on them that the keyboard is based. To increase the sound (phonetic) capacity, the keys on the Chinese input device contain not 2–3 functions, but 8–9 each. Consequently, each button indicates 8 graphemes, which increases the input options for the device.

IMPORTANT! The greatest difficulty in writing is that some characters can consist of 3-4 graphemes.

That is why inevitably, characters appear that will be typed by the same combination of buttons, but have a completely different meaning. To avoid this, a sequence of 2 numbers was invented, one of which is used to indicate the number of the trait, the other to depict a group of characters.

Character groups

There are 4 groups in total.

• Basic. It uses only 5 features and 25 characters, which are the most commonly used.
• The second group consists of hieroglyphs, the image of which there is a gap between the graphemes. For example, the character 苗 consists of two components: 艹 and 田
• The third group consists of characters including connected graphemes.
• Hieroglyphs whose graphemes overlap or intersect.

The last two groups are the most difficult to enter, since there are a lot of their combinations. Therefore, the choice among all options slows down the input speed.

Each of the most common graphemes has its own key, therefore, the process of writing basic characters consists in the simultaneous combination of these graphemes.

REFERENCE! Initially, a system of 25 graphemes was created for a typewriter in 1946. However, this device has not received wide distribution.

This was due to the high price, which did not allow to put such a machine into mass production. The device cost more than 12 thousand dollars.

The layout of the Chinese keyboard on the computer

Unlike the European type of keyboard, there are no function keys on the Chinese version (F1 - F12). These buttons are used to switch registers. This is done to increase the capacity of characters on limited-sized devices.

How to print in Chinese

There are two ways to print in Chinese: graphic and phonetic.

Graphical way

The method is to enter text through graphemes. It requires switch registers 7-8 times for this or that symbol. This process is very laborious and requires a lot of concentration and attention. During the operation of the device, manufacturers also noticed that there are 24 commonly used characters. therefore The keyboard has a separate function for entering common characters.

The structural input method provides the highest input speed. However, the learning process of entering information in this way is quite difficult due to the many combinations and registers.

Phonetic way

Phonetic input much easier than graphic, and requires knowledge of transcription. When writing text not a hieroglyph appears, but its transcription. therefore to generate new text, the user needs to print not the character itself, but its pronunciation.

In order to facilitate the printing process, a special system was created - Pinyin. This system, like the famous T9, is also automatically selects the right word or sentencebut by transcription. After entering the necessary word, the automated program itself will select a list of suitable characters. And the user will only have to choose the appropriate one.

It is the phonetic input that is used in Windows when entering text from a regular keyboard. This makes it easier to work in Chinese. And it allows you not to purchase an additional keyboard to type in this language.

REFERENCE! There are also keyboards with a thousand buttons. They are used to manually dial the necessary characters.

However, these devices are not widely used, as their production is very expensive, and functionality is limited.