You simply find the relevant menu in your phone, add the Chinese keyboard and then switch to Chinese whenever you need to type in characters. Typing Chinese on a smartphone is almost exactly the same as using a pinyin input method on a computer. #2 How To Type In Chinese On A Smartphone This allows you to quickly switch between English, Chinese and any other languages you might have installed. Once you've installed it, you can toggle between languages by holding the “Windows” key and pressing “Space”. You then click on “Add a Preferred Language” and find the Chinese input method you want to install. If you are using Windows 10, you go to “Settings”, “Time & Language” and then “Language”. Each operating system has its own versions. So now you can see why, with practice, it can be faster to type Chinese characters than it is to type out words in our Roman alphabet! Adding A Chinese Input Method You can just hit the space bar to select it and then keep on typing. And with this input method, if the option you want is the first one, you don’t even need to press ‘1’. You just type the first letter of each character. So when you're typing in Chinese, you don’t even need to type out the whole word. So instead of typing “nizenmezhidao”, if you type “nzmzd”, the input method guesses what you are trying to write and gives it to you as an option. Because of the way Chinese works and the fact that in pinyin, some letters can only be followed by certain others, to write this sentence, you only need to type the first letter of each character. A Shortcut For Typing Chinese Sentences Extra FastĮven better, there is a faster way to type this sentence. And you just select it in the same way as you select an individual character.įor example, if I want to type the question 你怎么知道?nĭ zĕnme zhīdào? (how do you know?), I just type “nizenmezhidao”, and it will give me the option to select the sentence I want. Instead, if you just type the words one after the other (with no spaces), the whole sentence will appear as an option. But if you had to go through the whole process for every character, it would take a long time. If the character you need isn’t on the first page of options, you can simply scroll through the following pages by pressing “down” until you find the one you need. I then hit ‘1’ to select it and the character appears on the page. This will give me a list of options, and since this character is extremely common, it is likely to be the first choice. But a common way is to hit the corresponding number.įor example, to write the character 好 hăo (good), I start by typing “hao”. How you do this will depend on the input method you are using. And from there, you choose the character you need from the list. You will then get a list of all the characters spelled that way. With a Chinese input method activated (an “input method” is a programme for turning keystrokes into characters), you start by typing the character in pinyin. And it's on this system that the most common way of typing Chinese is based.Īll you need to know to be able to write a word in Chinese is how to spell it in pinyin. Schoolchildren in China learn pinyin before they learn how to write Chinese characters – as does almost anyone who learns Chinese as a foreign language. And it's the official system in use in mainland China. But by far the most widely used nowadays is the system known as pinyin (拼音 pīnyīn – simply meaning “phonetic” in Chinese). Several systems of Romanisation have been developed to write Chinese phonetically. #1 Using A Pinyin Input Method To Type In Chinese If you’re ready to get started, click here for a 7-day FREE trial. With Chinese Uncovered you’ll use my unique StoryLearning® method to learn Chinese through story… not rules. So let's get into it!īy the way, if you want to learn Chinese fast and have fun, my top recommendation is Chinese Uncoveredwhich teaches you through StoryLearning®. You'll be typing in Chinese and communicating easily in no time. Plus, you'll also discover how to practise writing in Chinese on your phone, so you can master the stroke order on the go. By the time you've finished reading, you'll be able to start typing in Chinese in minutes, so you can chat online to Chinese speakers. In this post, you'll discover 4 methods to type in Chinese. When using a smartphone or computer keyboard, it’s arguably faster to type Chinese than to type Roman letters. In fact, there are several ways to type in Chinese, and most of them are extremely simple. A common question that people learning Chinese ask, with a language that uses a writing system made up of thousands of characters, how do you type in Chinese?
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