JIS keyboard on laptop

[naryn]

It's my understanding that most people will say, dont bother getting a japanese keyboard on your new laptop, the Japanese dont bother writing in kana so you should just write in romaji too. I appreciate that native speakers may find it faster to type romaji and then change it to kanji than bother learning the kana keyboard but my question is this:

Typing in Romaji means thinking in Romaji. Every time I type Japanese I'm thinking in terms of the Latin alphabet. Typing in kana would enable me to do on my laptop what I can do on my iphone, which is think in Japanese sylabaries. Further consolidating the link in my mind between the sounds and the symbols without the stepping stone of romaji....

I was wondering what peoples thoughts are on this and especially anyone who has used a JIS keyboard to type with kana

 

[Mike Cash]

Learning kana ain't that big a deal. If you need reinforcement, do some more handwriting.

The only reason to learn the kana keyboard would be to brag to your friends about it.

 

[nekojita]

You normally don't even see much romaji as the default state immediately converts to hiragana anyway.

I don't see how it would help you remember the sounds, there's no sound connection, just memorising which key to hit for which kana (or reading your keyboard if you hunt-and-peck).

On a touch-screen I do like the flick method, although I'm not that fast with it.

 

[SakuraFujiko]

I haven't used a JIS keyboard but on my phone I find it so much easier to just write in romaji than to use the kana version. Maybe it's just a getting used to but I find I write much faster when using romaji.

 

[Mike Cash]

I tried the Japanese voice input the other day and was very surprised at how fast and accurate it is. Now I just have to find out what the commands are for punctuation and changing the 変換.

 

[Mike Cash]

I tried the Japanese voice input the other day and was very surprised at how fast and accurate it is. Now I just have to find out what the commands are for punctuation and changing the 変換.

Then I tried it again last night and it totally sucked....

 

[naryn]

I noticed that the Japanese apple store allows you to order with US or GB keyboards. So the opposite question: If there's no point in getting a Japanese keyboard I'd just get the British one instead so the keys are less cluttered. Does anyone know if there's anything you CAN do with the JP keyboard that you cannot with the foreign ones, I know the jp keyboard has extra keys for japanese....

 

[nekojita]

As far as I know, you can do everything with a non-JIS keyboard.

The additional keys are for some functions (switching between settings). With a non-JIS keyboard they're moved to things like Ctrl/Alt combinations and function keys instead.