Fast Chinese character input method?

[LinZhenPu]

Is it worth it to learn the Wubi Xing input method due to the speed it offers over Pinyin?

Or has anyone had any success with speedier Pinyin input methods? Which ones? Ideally I'd like to find something that has support for Windows, iOS and Android.

The is also the fact that Wubi gets you to think on a level of constructing the characters rather than just typing the Romanisation and recognising the character you want from a list of homophonics. But is it worth the learning curve?

[imron]

It is not worth learning Wubizixing for the speed it offers over pinyin input methods.  In any case, as a learner of Chinese, the main speed restriction won't be your typing, it will be your thinking in Chinese that slows you down more.

 

That being said, there are plenty of very good reasons for learning Wubizixing.  Like you mentioned it helps you reinforce character knowledge and think about the shapes and components that make up a character.  It also allows 'blind typing' - that is, you can type the correct character without needing to look at the screen or the keyboard.

 

For windows, I'd recommend 极点五笔 and something like KingSoft's Typeeasy (打字通) for actual typing practice.

 

For Android and iOS, I'd just go with handwriting recognition over Wubi (that's what I do).  For me, typing Wubi is strongly connected to muscle memory and typing with an onscreen keyboard would destroy a lot of that.  You won't get any speed benefits from it either, and the handwriting will give you the same active recall and character practice but without the hassle of typing Wubi on a small screen.

 

Anyway, I think Wubi is worth the learning curve, but it will require a reasonable amount of sustained practice before it starts to pay off.  I'd also say that you'll probably not make much progress unless you already know maybe 1,500-2,000 characters.

[Publius]

Forget about Wubi.... Unless your job involves a lot of typing, like data entry, most likely you will forget how to type in Wubi after a couple of years. It has a steep learning curve and a steep forgetting curve.

Modern Pinyin input methods all support 整句输入, which is pretty fast. There's also voice input, arguably the fastest, but sometimes impractical.

百度, 搜狗, 谷歌 are probably the most popular pinyin input methods. They support the platforms you mentioned, also support voice and handwriting input (which I think is a good way to practice your characters).

I personally use 讯飞输入法 on my phone and 轻松粤拼 + 谷歌拼音 on computer.

[imron]

For learners of Chinese, Wubi has benefits that a native speaker won't necessarily appreciate (because for the most part they already know how to break down characters in to component parts).

 

As long as you are typing enough, you won't forget it.  I do minimal typing in Chinese these days, but still use Wubi as my primary input method.

[Publius]

If you keep using it, you can retain some of your Wubi skills. But don't expect to type at a speed much faster than Pinyin.

Yes, you learn how to deconstruct a character (sometimes counterintuitively) first. But to use it efficiently, you have to rely on muscle memory. It's like touch typing. When you see "the", your fingers reach for the letters without you actively thinking. And one of the reasons Wubi is faster is you type a whole phrase no matter how long with four strokes. I don't see much benefit in terms of improving your understanding of individual characters.

One of the benefits is with Wubi you don't need to know how to read a rare character or if your Mandarin isn't very standard. But then, if you don't know how to break down a character, you don't know how to break down a character. There's no way around.

Well, it's up to you whether to learn Wubi. But I agree with imron, speed should not be the reason.

[imron]

I don't see much benefit in terms of improving your understanding of individual characters.

The biggest difference for learners is that using Wubi requires active recall (you think of the character and then type it) vs Pinyin which uses passive recall (you type the pronunciation and then pick the one you recognise as correct).  Active recall requires a more thorough understanding of a character and so if you regularly perform an activity that trains your active recall then your understanding (and memory) of those characters will be better than if you only train passive recall.  This is far less of an issue for native speakers, because they will have spend years in primary and secondary education practicing active recall of characters, even then though 提笔忘字 is a real thing for native speakers too and will only become more pronounced as natives speakers rely more and more on pinyin and sentence based input methods.

 

Even though Wubi uses muscle memory, I'm still thinking of the components when I type them e.g. if I'm typing 安 then I think the 宀 finger and the 女 finger and that's what I press.  My fingers now know which shapes go to which keys and I can't help but think them.

 

You are right that you can type long phrases with Wubi, but you don't have to.  In fact, I find that I rarely type anything longer than a 3 character word with a given set of 4 keys, mostly it's either single or double character combinations and the longer ones I'll split up in to shorter component parts e.g. I'd type 中华 人民 共和国 (3 sets of 4 keys) rather than 中华人民共和国 (1 set of 4 keys) because with the former I get a better sense of putting the character together by it's shapes.

 

It's not the most efficient, but like I mentioned earlier, learners have a different set of priorities from a native speaker and it's perfectly possible to adapt Wubi to suit those priorities, even if it's then different from how a native speaker would use the same tools.

 

 

 

But then, if you don't know how to break down a character, you don't know how to break down a character. There's no way around.

That's right, and Wubi does have its quirks  There are certain characters that are broken down in a very obscure way e.g. for the longest time I could never figure out 追 because it uses a single 亻 root for the first two strokes of the character, even though there is no connection in either form or meaning to 亻.

 

Despite the occasional bumps though, I still think Wubi is a really useful thing for students of Chinese to learn.

[889]

Remember too that along with full sentence construction, services like Google Pinyin also support shortcuts: e.g., type wbzdndmz and you'll get 我不知道你的名字.