Not to be racist, but how do people in Asian countries text? China has over 60,000 characters. Amirite?

They probably know how the letters of the english alfabet sound like and they sound out their words with it

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Yes, but they have many different characters for all sorts of different sounds. So what if they're texting and they need a character that isn't on their keypad/touchscreen?

by Anonymous 14 years ago

You don't have a keyboard with every character on it, you type the pronunciation of the character you want in engish letters, a list of characters with that pronunciation comes up, and you pick the one you want.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

pinyin :P They use a qwerty keyboard and type it like it were an English word, and then once they type the similar pronunciation in English letters, a list of words you can select pop up. Oh wait, I just posted something that was posted already, oh well :P

by Anonymous 12 years ago

HAHAHAHAHA WTF ALFABET

by Anonymous 13 years ago

HAHAHAHAHA acronyms

by Anonymous 13 years ago

It's sad how you had to put "not to be racist" in front of a non-racist post. Says a lot about society...

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Not to be racist but my dog is an 'inside dog'.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I only put that because there are some people out there who WOULD be offended by that, and call me racist. I'm not a racist person, so I'm trying not to offend anybody.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

This isn't racist...

by Anonymous 14 years ago

This isn't racist. But I'm still singing this song. You're a little bit racist, you're a little bit too, I guess we're both a little bit racist, admitting it is not an easy thing to do!

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Everyone's just a little bit racist!

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Because Asia and China aren't one and the same? I have no clue how people text in Chinese*, but there are languages in Asia that use actual letters.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

asia includes a lot of different countries with a lot of different languages with a lot of different characters. india and japan are both in asia but their languages are completely different, for example.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

China is the only one with that many characters though. To the best of my knowledge all the other asian countries have phonetic alphabets.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

That's what I was trying to get at, basically.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Except Japan has two different alphabets and they use some characters from Chinese too.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Why did you put "except" when you are basically agreeing with his post while providing additional information?

by Anonymous 14 years ago

FYI-- I'm a girl.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

My bad. I didn't look at your profile.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I know, but when they text they use one of the two phonetic alphabets on the keyboards so Japan doesn't have a problem with typing because they don't have to use kanji all the time, they can just use hiragana or katakana.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

In China and other Asian cultures, the way you pronounce the characters has been converted into the Roman alphabet, so they use that alphabet to type in the romanization of the Chinese character (called pinyin), and they are then given a screen with all the possibilities that that romanization can have. They select the right one, and voila! It doesn't take a lot of time because you can put more that one character in at a time and it will give you the phrase. Also, Chinese smartphones have the capability for them to write the character on the screen and have suggestions pop up. I know because I live in China and am learning Chinese. :)

by Anonymous 14 years ago

In Japanese too, at least something very similar. You type the romaji and, depending on what you've chosen, it automatically becomes hiragana or katakana. Then, if you need a kanji, you choose it by pressing space, though if you've been typing for long the hiragana automatically becomes kanji too.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Some computers/phones have you put a number indicating the tone right after the pronunciation, with no space. That way, it can deduce one character and you can type a lot faster.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

People speak English in Asia, they can text in English

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I don't see why there are so many down votes on this, I have been to China and people there all speak English very well. Children begin learning it in primary school (grades K-2). I'm sure they text in Chinese, but everyone speaks English.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

no they don't, you go down the streets and you hear the word "hello" but that's it because no one knows anything else, there are some people who can speak English but it is very primitive and everyone else will just give you a blank stare, look confused, laugh then call their friend over to help then and the friend will do the same thing. At least that's what happens in Shanghai, China. I've lived here for 2 and a half years so i would know...

by Anonymous 14 years ago

@1221813 (ilovesss): Oh, I went to Beijing. Everyone including random pedestrians wanted to practice English on us, and they spoke fluently.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

How is this racist!? People these days..

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I don't think that China has over 60,000 characters. But the language Chinese might.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I'm Arabic, although we don't use the same letters or alphabet, we use the English letters to text and type. You just have to use the pronunciation of the word to spell it. As it was said ^^

by Anonymous 14 years ago

just install a chinese keyboard on your ipod and have a look. :)

by Anonymous 14 years ago

On iPhones, iPods, and iPads, you can just draw the characters/phrases: http://www.maclife.com/files/u1928/IMG_0002_2.png

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Actually, in Chinese, there are a lot of different symbols making up the character. A bit like letters put together to make words. So the keyboards have the basic symbols and you can type them together to make characters.

by Anonymous 13 years ago