Like how do you fit all the Chinese characters on a Chinese laptop, wouldn’t that take up a shit ton of space?

Sorry I’m a big ignorant American who barely speaks English so I got no fucking idea.

  • Kumikommunism [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    6 天前

    Japanese uses either a “regular” keyboard with latin letters that you use to spell approximations of Japanese sounds, or something like what western phones used to use where you have 10 buttons that each allow you to select from 5 characters each by flicking. Like this The second is what most Japanese speakers use on our phones. In both cases, after typing something (usually several words) you have suggestions displayed to you that match the pronunciation of what you just typed.

    With a standard keyboard as an example ka -> か -> 化

    Here’s a good video you can skip around https://youtube.com/watch?v=to8QUll9_gM.

    • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      6 天前

      Interesting, I’ve never heard of pinyin before.

      I wish I had the time and energy to learn Mandarin, always thought it’d be interesting to learn a language that so structurally different to European languages but sadly I just don’t have the brain for it. I’m still trying to get decent at Spanish.

        • casskaydee [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          6 天前

          Is 我对你有信心 a better way to say “I believe in you”? I feel like I have only ever seen 我相信你 mean like you believe what someone is saying

          • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            6 天前

            Is 我对你有信心 a better way to say “I believe in you”?

            Not native, but, I don’t think that’s a better way to say it. 我相信你 can, contextually, also mean ‘I believe in you’.

            • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              2·
              6 天前

              还有更自然更地道的说法：

              我老是[记不住]我所学过的语法和词汇

              老是比“总是” 会听起来更加 colloquial 反而“总是”听起来更加书面一些

              “记不住”这个语法搭配 ［动词+不住］特别好用。意思就是根本做不了[什么]。［记不住］是你怎么也［记住不了］语法和词汇

                • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  2·
                  6 天前

                  Sorry I didn’t want to discourage you. I want to give some targeted grammar tricks to say the same sentence in a smoother way. I also went through the same learning steps as you and would have previously constructed my sentences in the same way, til I encountered the more ‘natural’ sentence constructions

                  (Also, I tried to give my feedback in Chinese cos I know you’d be able to handle it, rather than Englifying it for you)

          • KoL_Enjoyer [comrade/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            6 天前

            洗手间在哪里？

            洗手间 - Bathroom [literally wash-hand-room]

            在 - (is) at [many usages but here it means is]

            哪里 - where? [a where-question pronoun together with a character meaning inside]

            All of these are words contained within the first or second official level of Chinese for foreigners (the HSK exam), and building a basic sentence is actually quite easy :)

            It can be daunting to start learning Mandarin because of the characters and tones, but the total disparity from English makes it fun to explore - a whole different world of language!

      • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        6 天前

        In addition to pinyin, people also just write the characters by hand using their fingers, like on a phone. There’s also things like Zhuyin, used in Taiwan, that are usually harder for non-native speakers to learn than Pinyin. You learn the most common character components/sounds and then ‘build’ full sentences that way.

  • TrustedFeline [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    6 天前

    I haven’t really started learning chinese, but I toggle the pinyin option in linux and it’s pretty cool. pinyin is the standard way of phonetically spelling chinese with latin letters. As I understand it, you type the pinyin (without diacritics), and the autocomplete-like function usually figures out what you mean. 你好 . I got that by selecting pinyin mode, typing “nihao” then hitting space. As I typed, it offered a bunch of different options for other ways the pinyin could be interpreted