I've thought about learning how to type in Chinese for a long time. I would really like to learn Boshiamy just because of its sheer coolness, but the software is proprietary and I couldn't bring myself to pay for an input method software. I poked around online today looking for other options.
I downloaded NJStar trial (so much for not paying for input software... this one would cost money too.) The input methods that require the least amount of training are Bopomofo and Pinyin. I know Bopomofo well, but it requires a Chinese keyboard. To try this input method, I had to bring up a keyboard map on the screen and follow along. I get better precision because I know exactly how to spell in Bopomofo but the process of finding the symbols on the keyboard was slow. My experience trying Pinyin was the exact opposite. I don't know how to spell in Pinyin so I relied on the wikipedia Bopomofo to Pinyin phonetic map. It was slow figuring out how to spell, but once I knew how to spell, typing was very fast.
Overall I had an easier time with Pinyin because it was easier to guess the sound->Latin alphabet mapping than the symbol->key mapping. This is the fruit of my labor. Anyone who can read Chinese can attest to the disparity in the aforementioned blogger's writing skill and mine.
你好﹐ 我的名字是呂悅純 。我住在舊金山附近。 我以經結婚了。 我在一家軟體公司上班。我今天在學中文打字﹐ 可是學得很慢。 尤其我沒有注音符號的鍵盤﹐ 而且也不會拼音﹐ 所以特別難。
Maybe I should blog in Chinese every once in a while to help improve my Chinese writing.
On a separate note, now that I know I have to pay for an input method anyway, I think I'll try Boshiamy next.
7 comments:
I'm curious why you got NJStar when Windows has a (free) built-in IME for Chinese with five or more different methods (no Boshiamy, though)?
As for the zhuyin keyboard, I can't use the standard layout because it lays out ㄅㄆㄇㄈ in "alphabetical order" on the English keyboard, and I never learned the order. Instead, I use the Eten (倚天) layout, which has a more English-centric mapping, like b = ㄅ, p = ㄆ, m = ㄇ, etc.
Wow, I could actually read your Chinese paragraph! Write more so I can practice my reading abilities :-)
Really? How do I do that? Do I need the original Windows disk?
Yah, the standard layout for zhuyin sucks. I'll probably have better luck with Eten. I'll try it out.
What I really want to do is type Chinese in Emacs. Unfortunately I haven't had any success with that. I can't even get Chinese to show up correctly yet.
Dude, you can type in Chinese too? Now I feel _really_ behind.
The IME should have been installed with the East Asian language support built in to Windows.
You just need to enable it. On my Windows XP (SP2), it's in Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages (tab) -> Details... (button). There, you can add the "Microsoft New Phonetic IME 2002a", which is listed under "Chinese (Taiwan)". E-mail me if you need more help with that.
Ah, Emacs. Can't help you with getting Chinese on Linux...
While I can type Chinese, that says nothing of my proficiency (or lack, thereof) in it! I totally envy how you're fully fluent; I can't fully express myself in Chinese (too many freaking 成語!), and I probably know only 800-900 characters (enough to read comic books, ha ha).
You need to learn pin-yin..
Long time no see.
最近也不知道為什麼常常想起你們一家人！
http://iokeng.funny.net.tw/modules/newschina/
告訴我你的聯絡地址，我寄個中文鍵盤過去好了！
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