chinese input method...pinyin vs wubi

[warakawa]

hello, I want to ask experienced Chinese typists whether you had experienced these two method, which do you prefer, which is more efficient in the long term?

thanks.

[dali3927]

I'd say it depends what you want to achieve, for the purpose of learning Chinese, definitely pinyin input, but if you want be a sort of professional typists, probably wubi, after tons of training, you can probably type faster than pinyin input, however, to learn wubi would not be a easy task, think twice though.

[Zomac]

pinyin helps you can type what you can speak, but it fails when you don't know how to pronounce a character in the standard mandarin.

1. A typist may encounter some surviving characters that aren't spoken daily, such as 覃(surname), 啜(泣), 鑫淼(name), 匍, 坼, 囿(于), 涅(盘).

2. Classical chinese readers may find it hard to look up the characters in "埏埴以为器，当其无，有器之用。凿户牖以为室，当其无，有室之用" (laozi) in a dictionary without the help of Baidu.

3. Dialect speakers may also find it hard to type characters such as 乜, 瞓, 叻.

pinyin is good if you plan to stick to the proper, modern and conversational mandarin. But for a "typist", wube or any root-based method can solve those problems easily.

When compared to speed, fairly speaking, both can also achieve more than 100 characters / minute and it's enough even for a reporter and book editor, so wube's claim about 300 characters / minute may be irrelevant for choosing a method.

What makes the different for me is "blind typing" - to type without looking at the monitor or without moving your eyeballs to the toolbar from an input box. In pinyin, you often need to pick up a character from their homophones. Many new pinyin methods also try to remember what you've typed before and put your previous choice in a prior position. This makes "blind typing" impossible.

Wube user also needs to choose a character that share the same set of roots, but the choice is often limited, none in most cases, 2 to 3 in some.

For a native chinese, I will definitely recommend wube rather than pinyin because they will have more chances of encountering the scenarios mentioned above. But a chinese learner may not need it.

I don't use wube but using another "notoriously difficult" method called cangjie. Without a well-recognized romanization system in hong kong, this method is prevalent. In my rough estimation, the average speed is 30-60 chars/m, 60-100 chars in media, but some of them just abandon learning it at all. They switch to use pen-based, simplified cangjie or weird Cantonese pinyin method.

[warakawa]

I a native Chinese speaker, I was born in Shanghai and immigrated to Australia when I was ten. I have not seriously studied Chinese after leaving China but I want to get back to it. My speaking is fine, however my writing is mediocre, I have forgotten lots of Characters that I learned back in China.

In my opinion, pinyin is good for someone who wants to practice pronunciation while Wubi can help one to memorize the way to write a particular character. Do you think this view is correct? Is writing Chinese important anymore? Since everything is done using computer these days.

[KonW]

pinyin is better

wubi used to be faster but the latest "smarter" ime (like sougou, qqpinyin) had made them almost the same (unlike what it was like when pinyin users had to use windows's 智能ABC Microsoft拼音, etc)

older ppl prefer wubi cause most of them didnt learn pinyin during their youth, and that time(80s, 90s) they were the most exprienced computer users in china (so no wonder they type faster than pinyin users)

however , nowadays, wubi users had gone less and less,,

if a native chinese find some character he cant read, he can use the 笔画 function in the pinyin ime or 拆分(you type 大 and 力, "夯" would appear in the candidate, three 水 would give you 淼)

[jbradfor]

Does the google pinyin IME have this 笔画 function? If so, how do you enable it?

[feihong]

On the Mac, this feature is known as structural pinyin (结构拼音). You activate it by pressing shift-space instead of just space.

Details: http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/osx5.html#jiegou_pinyin

Maybe it's the same with Google's IME?

[deathtrap]

I'd like to use these IME's and other applications. Sougou IME, qqpinyin, QQ, the Youku official application so you can download their videos, and some other chinese apps. But I have this preconceived notion that they all include some form of spyware or other malware, either for ad purposes or other nefarious purposes like tracking.

Am I being paranoid?

[deathtrap]

Oh and I want to use a different IME because I find the microsoft IME to be severely lacking, and the fact that you can use the Writing Pad(So you can handwrite and have it detect what character you're writing) without buying a full Windows 7 license is annoying as all hell.

[gato]

Yes, you are being paranoid, but that doesn't mean you are not right.

[feihong]

@deathtrap: I don't think you are being paranoid. Avoid Chinese software unless you really feel like there is no alternative for what you want to do. If you must use Chinese apps, you can install and run them inside a virtual machine to isolate them from the rest of your system.

But for the examples you gave, there are good alternatives. For example, you can use QQ through a free app called Pidgin.

[deathtrap]

What about Sougou Pinyin?

[roddy]

If you're not sure about Sougou Pinyin use Google Pinyin - it's remarkably similar, to the point that when they first came out there was a spat about copying of code. I ditched Sougou in favour of Google as I was finding the update pop-ups a bit intrusive, although to be honest they're not that bad.

There's massive competition for traffic in China, and if a firm can reset your browser home page or default search engine, install a toolbar or show you pop-ups, they'll quite happily do it.

[deathtrap]

Well I installed Google Pinyin, but all the menu options are in chinese and I have no idea what they mean.

Are there any English translations out there?

[jbradfor]

@deathtrap, there's a thread on google's IME with some help on the menu options: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/12348-google-ime-google-chinese-input-method-editor/

[Hugh]

I agree that pinyin-based input methods are easier to learn and may benefit learners. However, in the long-term Wubi could be a lot better, and not just for the efficiency.

To type in Wubi, you have to use the structure of the characters. So you'll be reinforcing your memory for Chinese characters whenever you type, which is a huge benefit.

[imron]

Agree completely with East Asia student. This is one of the main reasons I like Wubi. I think it's invaluable for Chinese learners.

[renzhe]

The main strength of Wubi for typists is that you can touch type.

With intelligent pinyin input methods, you cannot touch type. That's why Wubi will always be faster, by an order of magnitude.

For a casual typist, intelligent pinyin is the most obvious choice, because there's no learning involved. Wubi can be a good learning tool, though. For a typist, touch typing is a must, and there is really no choice whatsoever. You need Wubi or Cangjie or something similar.

[Player01]

I tried almost every pinyin and input method out there and have to conclude that Sogou Pinyin is the fastest and most accurate pinyin shurufa. It is easy to learn too.

p.s. most of the time in games i just type pinyin (no tones) since it saves even more time and most native mandarin speakers can understand it.

[jizza]

Does anyone know how to disable the "Shift+space"ｏｐｔｉｏｎ　when inputting English?Ｉｔ＇ｓ　ｔｈｅ　half moon/full moon problem that both google pinyin and sogou pinyin suffer from. As you can see from above (and that was done naturally, mind you) it's a big pain for English typists to accidentally enable the shift-space moon option.

Any help is greatly appreciated!Ｉ＇ｍ　ｇｉｏｎｇ　ｏｕｔ　ｏｆ　ｍｙ　ｍｉｎｄ　ｈｅｒｅ．　／

Ｔｈａｎｋｓ