How Chinese Keyboards Work
Day 301 / 365
The Chinese language is pretty crazy. The Alphabet is made up of these characters consisting of several strokes. The number of strokes can go up to 64. The total number of characters is over 50,000. Although you wouldn’t need to know all of them, you would still need about 3–4000 to get by.
Which makes creating keyboards for typing Chinese tough. Even with the 26 letter keyboard for English, the keyboard can get quite big, how does one go about making one for 4000?
The Pinyin typing system
Pinyin is a typing method in which the users type out the Chinese characters using English letters based on their pronunciation. The computer software then converts them into the actual Chinese characters. It is like the Hinglish keyboards that we use in India, where if you type “Kaise ho” it will convert it to “कैसे हो”
Even with the Pinyin system, it can get a bit tough as many Chinese characters sound the same but are written differently. In that case user type numbers after a syllable to specify which version they are referring to.