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I remember when I first started learning
Japanese, I wondered how Japanese text entry could work on a
computer. I pictured some horrible keyboard with hundreds of
keys, but in reality, Japanese computers use the same QWERTY
keyboards as everyone else. Japanese input is accomplished
through a front-end processor, basically a program that ships
with Japanese Windows and all copies of Mac OS X that handles
converting your text into the correct mix of hiragana, katakana
and kanji before it's pasted into your document. With Japanese
text input selected, you type some text with the keyboard -- for
example, "aoi sora" which means "blue sky."
Hit the space bar, and the computer will convert the text you've
just typed into the kanji/kana combination it thinks you want,
although sometimes problems can occur here, as there are often
alternate or archaic kanji in the computer's dictionaries. When
you get used to the system, you can enter Japanese text quite
quickly, although there's a downside -- entering Japanese into a
computer becomes so easy that it's easy to forget how to write
kanji manually. As with operating systems, there are various
kanji entry systems on the market, and users will rally around
one product or the other -- users of EG Bridge might flame fans
of ATOK, with both camps expressing their disgust for Kotoeri.
Although the Japanese enter words in romaji these days, i.e.
normal alphabetical order, there is an alternate kana layout for
keyboards that some still use (which is why there are kana
characters printed on the Japanese USB keyboard that we
sell).
The Japanese love to abbreviate long, hard to
pronounce words. Whether its lopping off some kanji to change
Tokyo Daigaku (Tokyo University) into the more manageable "Todai,"
or coining new terms by combining kanji into words like
"Hanshin," which uses characters from Osaka and Kobe
to refer to the general area of both cities, the Japanese are
efficient speakers. They also use many of the common
abbreviations found in English, but sometimes they can sound a
little odd to English ears. The Japanese find it easier to
pronounce some acronyms such as JAL (Japan Air Lines), ANA (All
Nippon Airways), LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and
even VIP as if they were normal words (e.g. "jal"
"ana" "lax" and "vip") rather than
as a series of letters. Believe me, the word VIP sounds very odd
when you hear it pronounced as a word rather than spelled out.
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