So, if the Chinese don’t have an alphabet and use only pictograms comprising of over 6500 characters, how do they type on a keyboard? Do they have really large keyboards with over 6500 keys or do they just say “Screw Mandarin” and type in English (which can’t be true because I’ve seen Chinese characters on webpages/spam emails)? Is there some kind of algorithmic key pressing magic that goes on in order to produce said characters?

  • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Method? Idk my roommate for like 6 years was Chinese and he had a keyboard that he could switch between American English and Chinese. He showed me how it worked and the key caps all had a few Chinese symbols next to each English letter and he could cycle between them as needed. He wasn’t as fast typing in Chinese, but it was the only way for him to communicate with certain family as they couldn’t speak or read English at all.

    When his mom visited her laptop also had a similar set up except on hers the English letters were smaller and the. Chinese symbols were bigger. I assume because she bought it in China or something.

    • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com
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      1 day ago

      I know those types. Was he Chinese not Taiwanese? He might be older then? Parents generation use those methods typically. Not romanized