How many letters chinese language has?

Marc Clifton

Jorgen Sigvardsson

"The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 20,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are now commonly in use." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language[^]

Hamed Musavi

Yes, but the problem here is how to place hundreds of letters on an standard 102 keys, keyboard where many already used for numbers and other symbols. Using Ctrl, Shift, Alt to make more room is an option, but even using these, several hundred is too much. Now it's not important, because the problem was totally wrong. No problem exists at all! But it was interesting that there's such applications.

// "Life is very short and is very fragile also." Yanni
while (I'm_alive)
{
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Hamed Musavi

Well:confused: This is what exactly my friend said! So the question arises again: How do they use keyboard? How they arrange 10,000 letters on a keyboard?!

// "Life is very short and is very fragile also." Yanni
while (I'm_alive)
{
cout<<"I love programming.";
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Rage

Hamed Mosavi wrote:

what type of keyboards do they have

Yeah, that's a bit of a problem in China; administration is very slow, due to the 500 people it requires to type a letter on a keyboard with 20,127 keys. I heard that they are trying to build a robot to replace these people that would hit the keys automatically. But they first need to build a software, and since they are using a plain Chinese compiler, it takes ages.

Don't follow any man spiritually, don't do anything that will get you in sh*t if god is real - Bradml[^]

realJSOP

Hamed Mosavi wrote:

it's not important

Precisely.

Hamed Mosavi wrote:

several hundred is too much.

I just sent a letter off to the Chinese government asking them to reduce the complexity of their alphabet by adopting the new metric alphabet. It only has ten letters.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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Hamed Musavi

:laugh:

// "Life is very short and is very fragile also." Yanni
while (I'm_alive)
{
cout<<"I love programming.";
}

Jorgen Sigvardsson

They probably use morphemes (mentioned in the article), and let the computer help in picking the right symbol. I just don't know. :) The Japanese language also uses Chinese symbols - a.k.a. Kanji in the Japanese language. Then they also have three other "alphabets", which they use in conjunction with Kanji. Two of the alphabets*, Hiragana and Katakana, are of Japanese origin, while Romaji is the roman alphabet. When typing on a Japanese computer, you use Hiragana and Katakana to spell the words. The computer will then provide you with a list of possible Kanji. I suppose this Chinese input works the same way, but using those special morpheme symbols. * It's a bunch of syllables, and not really an alphabet per se. It serves the same purpose as our alphabet does though.

Chris Meech

fingers. just like everybody else does. :-D

Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]

Duncan Edwards Jones

The most common characters are on the keyboard Less common characters are built up over multiple key strokes from glyphs (character parts)

'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd

realJSOP

Hamed Mosavi wrote:

How do they use keyboard?

With their tongues.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

jratcliff7740

I have studied Japanese many years ago. What I found was that in Japanese, there was two sets of a basic alphabet Hiragana and Katakana. Then there was the pictograms that were called Kanga. You could use the alphabet to write out the word or use the pictogram. I saw a program that would allow the user to type in the letters and it would convert them into the pictogram. I am not sure if Chinese works the exact same way, but I think it would be close.

Jorgen Sigvardsson

:laugh: The most obvious answer! :-D

Hamed Musavi

oh ya! the problem solved. Thank you.

// "Life is very short and is very fragile also." Yanni
while (I'm_alive)
{
cout<<"I love programming.";
}

Chris Losinger

Hamed Mosavi wrote:

How do they use keyboard?

http://en.wikipedia.org...

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youbo

let me tell you something about chinese.first a chinese character rabal have two ways when writing : one way is that it depends on its form,the other is that it depend on its pronunciation. the first way: there is only 26 letters in english.all english words are made up of 26 letters.but in chinese there are hundreds of "letters".it have three comfigurations like : left and right,up and down and surround like 国,围 and so on.it also have basal stroke like :horizontal(一,二),upright,bend to left,bend to right and so on.one chinese character is made up of one or some elements before.they also look the letters like horizontal as horizontal in writing.so it put the same stroke in the same key,like this :一,王 are in the "G","二","土"are in the"F","三"is in the "D".here "一,二,三"are like the chinese letters in chinese characters writing.all chinese letters are made up of these "letters".these letters are put in the 26 keys.when you knock some keys,it will appear some similar chinese characters,so you should make a choose.because some keys means some chinese letters may compose some similar chinese characters. this is the way by its form. the second way is that it depend on its pronunciation like english very much. in this way chinese only have 26 english letters too.some letters can compose a character in english,some letters can compose some chinese character pronunciation.you know there are hundreds of chinese characters........like the way choose one from some before,you will write out a chinese character in this way.that is all.ohh,i am tired.sorry to my pull english lever......

JimmyRopes

Hamed Mosavi wrote:

Yes, but the problem here is how to place hundreds of letters on an standard 102 keys, keyboard

Make them very small. :rolleyes:

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Hamed Musavi

Very interesting, indeed. Got my 5. Thanks.

// "Life is very short and is very fragile also." Yanni
while (I'm_alive)
{
cout<<"I love programming.";
}

Russell

:cool:

Russell