Japanese keyboards

[Coffeesan]

I hope this is the most relevent section. Soooo I want to talk to my Japanese girl on facebook in Japanese but I currently cant see any way of writing in Hiragana or Kanji on an English keyboard (other than pasting every single character individually) which obviously isnt realistic. So I can only think of 2 options: 1.) buy a seperate Japanese keyboard, 2.) download some kind of software that allows me to open a 'virtual Japanese keyboard'. I personally think the 2nd is the way to go but I have no idea where to look. Could anyone recommend anything?

Also..... I've always wondered how Japanese keyboards actually exist in the first place... 48 Hiragana + the Katakana symbols is a lot of keys not to mention numbers as well as other non-language keys like spacebar, return, home etc and Kanji? I know their keyboards are somewhat bigger than ours but I really cant see how they can fit everything on a keyboard..

 

[Mike Cash]

Romaji input is the most common way. Do a search on "Japanese IME" and you'll find everything you need to know.

 

[thomas]

Windows IME has been around since Windows 95 and allows you to read and enter hiragana, katakana and kanji on non-Japanese OS. So no need to acquire a new keyboard. Here's a useful guide on how to install and use IME on Windows 7.

Btw, compare my English and Japanese keyboards below.

Oh, and Mike was faster....

 

[Coffeesan]

Romaji input is the most common way. Do a search on "Japanese IME" and you'll find everything you need to know.

Cheers buddy I'll give it a google.. I kinda just feel Romaji is being lazy... Its still english letters, non japanese characters, the japanese speaker is still having to put effort in to read another languages conversion of their hiragana, just makes me feel like I'm only making a half assed effort at making things easier for the recipient :/

 

[Half-n-Half]

Cheers buddy I'll give it a google.. I kinda just feel Romaji is being lazy... Its still english letters, non japanese characters, the japanese speaker is still having to put effort in to read another languages conversion of their hiragana, just makes me feel like I'm only making a half assed effort at making things easier for the recipient :/

Romaji input means it takes a string of romaji characters that you input i.e. aiueo and automatically converts it to hiragana as you type i.e. 窶堋?窶堋｢窶堋､窶堋ｦ窶堋ｨ with an option to convert it further to kanji by pushing space after you have typed it. It shouldn't spit out romaji again unless you set it to.

 

[Coffeesan]

Romaji input means it takes a string of romaji characters that you input i.e. aiueo and automatically converts it to hiragana as you type i.e. 窶堋?窶堋｢窶堋､窶堋ｦ窶堋ｨ with an option to convert it further to kanji by pushing space after you have typed it. It shouldn't spit out romaji again unless you set it to.

Ah I see so I would just type stuff like ''Ka Wa Bi Mu Chi'' etc and it would convert the syllables into Hiragana, would spaces have to be used? Or could I write something ''Ichi'' and it would recognise and seperate them into I and Chi in Hiragana? Having a look at the IME thing at the moment..

 

[Mike Cash]

If romaji input somehow feels lazy or less authentically Japanese to you, take some comfort in the fact that practically every Japanese person who types Japanese also does it that way. It is quicker, more convenient, and just in general a heck of a lot more practical.

 

[Coffeesan]

If romaji input somehow feels lazy or less authentically Japanese to you, take some comfort in the fact that practically every Japanese person who types Japanese also does it that way. It is quicker, more convenient, and just in general a heck of a lot more practical.

Ha yeah I can understand that.. Even the few Japanese I've spoken too have admitted English is far easier to speak in once you're fluent in both. In comparison Japanese is unbelievably inefficent and complicated compared to English.

 

[Mike Cash]

Ha yeah I can understand that.. Even the few Japanese I've spoken too have admitted English is far easier to speak in once you're fluent in both. In comparison Japanese is unbelievably inefficent and complicated compared to English.

I was speaking strictly in terms of inputting the Japanese language via a keyboard. Saying that Japanese is inefficient is just wrong and saying it is more (or less) complicated than English is an oversimplification of the matter. When you say "Japanese" in that sense, are you referring to the language itself or merely to its orthography? It is important not to conflate the language as a whole with the system for representing the language in written form.

 

[Glenn]

Anyway, I'd recommend the Google IME. It's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than Microsoft's, and in just about every way you could imagine.