The Chinese language is quite peculiar and has a number of peculiarities. One of them is the lack of an alphabet. It is, of course, difficult for us to imagine what this could be, but it is a fact. Here, words in writing are indicated by hieroglyphs - one or a whole set. There are over sixty thousand hieroglyphs in the Chinese written language. With ours that 33rd letters cannot be compared. This state of affairs can easily cause shock and even horror for those who are just starting to learn Chinese. One can only guess what kind of keyboard the keyboard could have had if pinyin had not been invented.
It is thanks to this unique system that the people of China do not have any special problems and difficulties when writing a huge number of hieroglyphs. And the most interesting thing is that for this they use a simple keyboard with a normal English layout.
1. What is pinyin
It is a typesetting system that has existed for several decades. To be precise, it was invented in 1958. Among the authors-inventors and Zhou Yuguang (Zhou Yaoping) is a Chinese economist, linguist and long-liver. In the PRC, the system has its own official status. In Taiwan, it has been recognized as the official romanization standard since 01.01.2009.
If we explain it in an accessible language, then with the help of pinyin, almost every character in the Chinese language can be shown in the format of letters of the Latin alphabet. For those foreigners who decide to learn the language, the system is very helpful.
All modern children's books in China are published in hieroglyphic and pinyin formats. This is now standard practice. In principle, if you understand it well, it works quite simply, and most importantly it is convenient for the user.
For example, you need to write "look" in Chinese. If we take the Chinese letter, then here the word is denoted by one hieroglyph - 看. The way this hieroglyph sounds is written on the keyboard, moreover, in Latin letters - "kan" ("kan"). But it is 看 that jumps out on the monitor screen. In the same way, absolutely all words are written in Chinese.
After all, the Chinese print not only single words, but also sentences. For typing, they, like everyone else in the world, are helped by the famous T9. As a rule, the inhabitants of China write hieroglyphs on the display, and the system already numbers them.
For the most part, representatives of the older generation use this method. For them, this option is much more suitable. Older people find it much easier to work the old-fashioned way, and not with the relatively young advanced system. There is also such an option as voice dialing. In addition, using it, you can tighten up your pronunciation when learning a language.
2. A bit of history
If with the global computerization came relief in terms of typing, then in the days of typewriters it was not so easy for the Chinese. The fact is that in these old-style printing devices there were several hundred letters on which the symbols of hieroglyphs were drawn. But working with such a machine was oh so difficult, if not painful.
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Another method has appeared - a structural one. Its essence lies in the fact that all hieroglyphs, without exception, are a set of graphemes, that is, sticks, squiggles and something like 丨, 丶 and 乙. There are 208 of them in total. Those who invented and developed the structural methodology, on the keyboard, place the five most frequently used, namely 一, 丨, 丿, 丶, 乙 plus the 25 most commonly used kanji.
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At that distant time, the method was truly revolutionary. But if you compare it with the pinyin that is popular today, it was quite inconvenient.
Continuing the topic, read how the Chinese have grown fond of Russian sweets and are ready to order them by mail or rake them in supermarkets.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/240520/54636/