Dumb question - How do Japanese people use computers?

[AngryAmish]

Obviously in Japan lots of folks use computers. Their language (like many others) consists of pictographs or symbols rather than letters. Do they just have giant keyboards with lots of symbols? Do they use another language?

Relieve my ignorance, please.

[fujiyama]

1. Check these links out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language_and_computers

[montanto]

2. chopsticks!

[Kerrytravelers]

3. There are a ton of cool pics on the links!

Japanese



And here are some others...

Arabic


Armenian


Greek


Hebrew


Russian


Thai


Chinese

The codes of three input methods are typically printed on the Chinese (traditional) keyboard: Zhuyin (upper right); Cangjie (lower left); and Dayi (lower right).

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Japanese actually uses a mix of phonetic and ideographic symbols.

The kanji, basically imported Chinese ideographs, do indeed give the most trouble.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. I can tell you now I use a Mac in Japanese

1. (After unpacking computer) Go to System Preferences and add Japanese to the language menu.

2. Toggle Command-Space to bring up Japanese hiragana input (Hiragana is one of the syllabaries used to write Japanese).

3. Type the word you want phonetically on the English keyboard. The Japanese hiragana symbols appear on the screen with a line under them.

4. If the word can be spelled with hiragana alone, just hit Enter.

5. If not, press the space bar for a menu of kanji with that pronunciation. If the first kanji suggested is the one you want, hit Enter.

6. Repeat steps 3-5.

7. If you want a word that is written in katakana (the other syllabary), bring up hiragana, engage the caps lock, and type away. To go back to hiragana, disengage the caps lock.

Once you get used to it, this is not as laborious as it sounds. My typing speed in Japanese is about half my typing speed in English, which is pretty fast.

I've seen the Japanese keyboards with hiragana on the keys, but I've never learned to touch-type them. However, I assume that the principle is the same: hiragana input converted to kanji.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. They have keyboards with 25,000 keys on them.

Touch typing? Fucking forget about it.

:7

Just kidding - they have the same size keyboard, but have a very cool system of using a couple keystrokes to get one character, and also ways of being able to change multiple characters into one idea/concept.

It's insanely fucking cool to watch and play around with. I have no idea what the hell I'm typing, since I don't read any of the languages, but I play around with my Japanese partner's computer sometimes. And I've played around with Chinese keyboards, too - those are really fucking wild.

[KittyWampus]

9. Imagine Japanese SKYWRITING!

:D

[Lisa]

7. I couldn't resist looking -- on the Arabic keyboard, the numerals ARE Arabic!

That is, ones that Westerners would recognize, since we did copy their math!

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. We did not copy it. THEY pre-stole it.

:P