Chinese Character Input Methods - Wubihua and Pinyin

[holyman]

[edit]this topic has been split from the Characters vs Phonetic writing systems topic - Roddy[/edit]

i think a lot of mainland chinese are using 'wubi' or '5 strokes' rather than pinyin and a lot of hk'ers and taiwanese are using zhuyin. think both are more efficient than pinyin. so i doubt they'll be really in for pinyin. and i think for 5 strokes, one gotta learn the chinese characters look like b4 knowing how to type its radicals. so learning difficulties only apply to foreigners like us. i find a decrease in writing speed after typing chinese on the pc for a long time, but not in remembering or writing the characters

[roddy]

>> i think a lot of mainland chinese are using 'wubi' or '5 strokes' rather than pinyin

Very very few in my experience - only those who type so much that it is worth the investment in time that learning the wubi system takes. It seems to be considered difficult to learn, although once you know it your typing speed can be very quick indeed - up to 160 characters a minute.

Roddy

[PollyWaffle]

Yes, the '5 stroke method' must take people an enormous amount of time to master but once this is accomplished it is quite a fast & efficient way to type.

edit: am i really out of it or did this post move?

Polly

[Quest]

most people in hongkong use Cang1 Jie2 仓颉, similar to wubi

[skylee]

Cangjie is VERY difficult to learn/master. I use hanyu pinyin. There is another input method called jiufang (九方), which is said to be very easy. Does anyone know anything about it?

[pazu]

Holyman, in Hong Kong people used Cangjie usually (or a writing pad), for me I'm very good at typing Cangjie which means I can type about 108 Chinese characters a minute.

Skylee, I've tried Jiufang too, but because I'm much better in Cangjie so I didn't really try much about Jiufang. But after learning the basic rules, I can type my name without any problem, so I supposed it was easy to use.

And there's another popular Chinese input method now, the T9 Chinese, which is used on mobiles. I've tried counting my speed but I could only type around 20 char/minute.