How do chinese or japanese PC keyboards work when they have thousands of different characters

Question

How do chinese or japanese PC keyboards work when they have thousands of different characters

In: Technology

Answer 1

They type phonetically and use a piece of software in Windows / whatever OS called an IME (Input Method Editor) to find the correct characters they want to type from a list. Usually it detects the correct one based on the context of what they’re typing, so it’s pretty fast, but sometimes you have to select the correct one, especially when typing names and proper nouns that may have unique character combinations.