Chinese keyboard layout. History: ancient typewriters. Chinese keyboard. In addition

You probably imagined it as a whole organ - a grandiose structure a couple of meters long with hundreds and thousands of keys. In fact, most Chinese people use regular keyboard with Latin QWERTY layout. But how can you use it to type such a myriad of different hieroglyphs? We asked our employee Julia Dreyzis to tell us about this. She has a long-standing love and work connection with China.

Background: typewriters

Over the course of several thousand years, the cunning Chinese managed to increase the number of hieroglyphs to more than 50,000. And although the number of signs needed in everyday life is not measured in tens of thousands, still, whatever one may say, standard set old printing house - 9000 letters.

For a long time, typing was carried out according to the principle “for each hieroglyph there is a separate printed element.” Therefore, I had to work with monster machines like this:

Typewriter from Shuange, 1947 (the principle of operation was invented by the Japanese Kyota Sugimoto in 1915).

Its main element is a bank of hieroglyphs located on an ink pad. A mechanical system is fixed above the hieroglyphs: a handle, a “foot” for gripping and a reel with a sheet of paper. The entire mechanism, together with the reel, following the handle, is capable of moving left, right, forward and backward due to the effort of the driver. To type the text, the typist spends a long time looking for the desired hieroglyph with a magnifying glass, places the system over it and, by pressing the handle, activates the “foot”, which grabs the hieroglyph and, unfolding it as it goes, prints it on a sheet of paper. At the same time, the reel with the sheet rotates slightly, providing space for the next symbol. Of course, the printing process on such a unit is extremely slow - an experienced operator could type no more than 11 hieroglyphs per minute.

In 1946, the famous Chinese philologist Lin Yutang proposed a version of a typewriter built on a completely new principle - the decomposition of hieroglyphs into their component parts.

Electromechanical typewriter by Lin Yutang, 1946

Unlike its large predecessors, the new machine was no larger than its Latin counterparts, and there were few keys on it. The fact is that the keys corresponded not to hieroglyphs, but to their components. At the center of the device was a “magic eye”: when the driver pressed a key combination, a variant of the hieroglyph appeared in the “eye”. To confirm your choice, you had to press an additional function key. With only 64 keys, such a machine could easily provide 90,000 characters and a speed of 50 characters per minute!

Although Lin Yutang managed to obtain a patent for his invention in the United States, it never reached the masses. It is not surprising, because the production of one such device at that time cost about $120,000. Moreover, on the day when the presentation was scheduled for the Remington company, the machine refused to work - even the magic eye did not help. The idea was safely put aside until better times.

But in the era of widespread computer use, Lin Yutang’s idea of decomposing hieroglyphs into their component parts found new life. It formed the basis of structural methods for entering Chinese characters, which we will talk about now.
(By the way, in the 80s, the Taiwanese company MiTAC even developed its own structural input method, Simplex, directly based on Lin Yutang’s coding system.)

Structural methods

There are at least a dozen such methods known, and all of them are based on the graphic structure of the hieroglyph. Chinese characters are puzzles assembled from the same parts (so-called graphemes). The number of these graphemes is not so large - 208, and they can already be “stuffed” into a regular keyboard. True, you get about 8 graphemes per key, but this problem is easily solved.

One of the most common structural input methods is kill zixing(Wubing zixing - “five-line input”). How does it work? I warn you right away: it’s difficult.

In fact, all Chinese characters are divided into four groups:

Basic 5 strokes (一, 丨, 丿, 丶, 乙) and another 25 very frequently used hieroglyphs (each of them has an associated key).
Hieroglyphs, between the graphemes of which there is a certain distance. For example, the character 苗 consists of the graphemes 艹 and 田, between which there is a distance (although in print they are a little “compressed” and it may seem to you that there is no distance between them).
Hieroglyphs whose graphemes are connected to each other. Thus, the character 且 is a grapheme 月 connected to a horizontal line;
尺 consists of the grapheme 尸 and a dash.

Hieroglyphs whose graphemes intersect or overlap each other. For example, the character 本 is the intersection of the graphemes 木 and 一. Well, we have mentally broken down the hieroglyph we are going to introduce into graphemes. What's next? Let's look at the layout first:

At first glance, it may seem that the graphemes are arranged randomly. Actually this is not true. The keyboard is divided into five zones, according to the number of basic features (they are marked in different colors in the figure). Within each zone, the keys are numbered - from the center of the keyboard to the edges. The number is made up of two digits from 1 to 5 - depending on what basic features the grapheme is assembled from.

Well, let's start with the easiest graphemes to enter - the capital graphemes of each key (they are highlighted in large font in the table). Each of them represents one of the 25 frequently used hieroglyphs discussed above. To enter such a hieroglyph, just press the corresponding key four times. It turns out that 金=QQQQ, 立=YYYY, etc.

Thus, 毅=U+E+M+C. To enter hieroglyphs consisting of more than four graphemes, you need to enter the first three graphemes and the last.

The most difficult ones to enter are hieroglyphs consisting of two or three graphemes. Since there are so many of them, several hieroglyphs will inevitably appear, vying for the same key combination. To distinguish them, the developers came up with a special code. This code consists of two digits, the first is serial number the last line of the hieroglyph, and the second is the group number of the hieroglyph (remember the four groups into which hieroglyphs are divided).

Fortunately, when typing most commonly used hieroglyphs, you won't have to think about codes, because the hieroglyphs will appear on the screen after the first two or three presses. And the 24 most frequently occurring characters can be entered with one click (keys are assigned to them).

The disadvantages of structured input are obvious: it is complex - above was only a digest version of its description! To master it, the Chinese even came up with a special mnemonic rhyme. But the structured method opens up the possibility of blind typing, which increases the maximum typing speed to 160 characters per minute. That's why professional typesetters use it. And don’t forget: 160 hieroglyphs per minute is about 500 keystrokes in the same minute!

For structured input, the most common QWERTY keyboard is most often used - after all, the location of hieroglyphs on it still has to be learned. But sometimes you can find keyboards like these with graphemes on the keys:

True, during my entire stay in China I have never seen such keyboards :)

Phonetic methods

Typewriters that use these typing methods simply do not exist - phonetic methods owe their appearance exclusively to computers. After all, using the phonetic method, you enter not the hieroglyph itself, but its pronunciation - and the system already finds the desired hieroglyph. But here's the problem: there are so many characters in the Chinese language that dozens of characters can correspond to the same pronunciation. The desired hieroglyph, as a rule, has to be selected manually from the list, which makes the input process quite slow. Predictive systems like T9 come to the rescue.

The most common phonetic method is the famous pinyin(Pinyin). On its basis, a phonetic input system is built, which is included in the standard Asian Language Pack Windows systems(starting from version XP - before that it had to be installed additionally). Let's see how it works.

For example, we want to enter the word "blogger" - Wangming.
First we dial wang (or wang3 indicating the tone to reduce the number of options). After pressing the space bar, the hieroglyph with the reading is inserted van. But this is not the one van what we need. Right-click on it:

A long string of matches appears. We can, breaking our eyes, look for our van or simply enter the second syllable of the word - min. The system is smart - it itself will find the word in the dictionary Wangming and will automatically select the one you need van and necessary ming. Banzai, we did it!

Google Pinyin and Sogou Pinyin input systems go further - they remember user preferences and make suggestions based on context the right words.
Here's an example of how Google Pinyin parses a seemingly jaw-dropping sequence

And it gives the correct dialing option:
I saw Wang Zhizhi play in the same match with Yao Ming (we're talking about about two Chinese NBA basketball players). It's especially nice that the names are spelled correctly.

There is an alternative in Taiwan pinyin-system - input by zhuyin(Zhuyin). It is not the Latin alphabet that is used, but a syllabary alphabet with symbols like hieroglyphs. Since there are few icons in the alphabet, it is easy to scatter them all over the keyboard. Hong Kong has its own version of romanization for the local dialect - yutphin(Jyutping), it is also actively used for phonetic input.

The main disadvantage of phonetic input systems is that they are quite low speed printing - about 50 characters per minute (compare with kill zixing with its 160 characters per minute). The fact is that entering a hieroglyph using the method pinyin occurs, on average, in six keystrokes, whereas when typing kill zixing Four will be enough. In addition, blind typing is not possible using this method. And then you need to know pinyin/zhuyin, which is not suitable for every Chinese, because from the first grade of school, knowledge (if there was any) had time to erode a little. And it’s not always easy to remember how to read some rare hieroglyph. Therefore, it is gaining increasing popularity in China. kill zixing. Nevertheless, pinyin It is still easier to learn than structural methods. Well, for a foreigner, such a system is simply like a balm for the soul.

As we can see, for phonetic input we also do not need any special keyboard- any keyboard with the Latin QWERTY layout is sufficient. Well, for example, the one in front of you is quite suitable :)

Hybrid methods

These methods are some combination of phonetic and structural input methods. The simplest example- method yinxing(Yinxing - “sound and form”). The hieroglyph is typed by entering the transcription and pointing to the graphic element. A limited set of graphic elements are spread across the keyboard, so theoretically it’s not difficult to remember them.

In practice, hybrid input systems are gradually dying out. They require the user to simultaneously have knowledge of the complex combinatorics of structural systems and good command of transcription. It’s easier to master one thing perfectly.

So is there a "standard" method?

But no. In China, the most popular method is the structural method. Well, we have mentally broken down the hieroglyph we are going to introduce into graphemes. What's next? Let's look at the layout first and phonetic pinyin. Taiwan loves the phonetic method zhuyin(since many taught him at school, and not pinyin) and the obsolete structural method Cangjie(Cangjie). It was invented back in 1976 and has retained all its shortcomings since then: it is very difficult to enter punctuation marks using this method, you always have to guess the correct way to break down the hieroglyph and remember the complex layout (many Taiwanese even stick it on the monitor out of desperation). In Hong Kong Cangjie They teach it at school and clearly prefer it to all other methods.

Recognition based methods

It turns out that none of the listed keyboard input methods is ideal. It is not surprising that the Chinese decided to cling to their last hope - recognition. Both speech and handwriting recognition are now part of the standard Language pack Windows 7. It is suggested that before use it is better to put the system into “learning mode” for at least 15 minutes to give it time to get used to your handwriting and speech patterns.

But methods based on recognition have not become widespread. Keyboard input is still considered more reliable.

Recognition of spoken Chinese is complicated by the fact that the proportion of people who speak with perfect pronunciation is not so large. Dialectal features come out here and there and spoil the whole picture. There is no need to talk about foreigners, for whom mastering four tones is already a feat.

Handwriting input of hieroglyphs seems to be simpler, and now there are many PDAs that support this input method. But this method has not achieved widespread use. The fact is that the majority of Chinese write in inarticulate italics and it can be difficult for them to adjust to the slow outline of each feature. Often the problem is that they simply don't remember the normal order of strokes because they are used to writing shortened forms! So it turns out that input based on recognition is suitable mainly for language learners, which is actively used by online dictionaries. For example, on the website of the popular

Over the course of several thousand years, the cunning Chinese managed to increase the number of hieroglyphs to more than 50,000. And although the number of characters needed in everyday life is not measured in tens of thousands, all the same, whatever one may say, the standard set of the old printing house is 9000 letters.

For a long time, typing was carried out according to the principle “for each hieroglyph there is a separate printed element.” Therefore, I had to work with monster machines like this:

In 1946, the famous Chinese philologist Lin Yutang proposed a version of a typewriter built on a completely new principle - the decomposition of hieroglyphs into their component parts.

Electromechanical typewriter by Lin Yutang, 1946

Unlike its large predecessors, the new machine was no larger than its Latin counterparts, and there were few keys on it. The fact is that the keys corresponded not to hieroglyphs, but to their component parts. At the center of the device was a “magic eye”: when the driver pressed a key combination, a variant of the hieroglyph appeared in the “eye”. To confirm your choice, you had to press an additional function key. With only 64 keys, such a machine could easily provide 90,000 characters and a speed of 50 characters per minute!

But in the era of widespread computer use, Lin Yutang’s idea of decomposing hieroglyphs into their component parts found new life. It formed the basis of structural methods for entering Chinese characters, which we will talk about now. (By the way, in the 80s, the Taiwanese company MiTAC even developed its own structural input method, Simplex, directly based on Lin Yutang’s coding system.)

One of the most common structural input methods is Wubing zixing - “five-line input”). How does it work? I warn you right away: it’s difficult.

In fact, all Chinese characters are divided into four groups:

Basic 5 strokes (一, 丨, 丿, 丶, 乙) and another 25 very frequently used hieroglyphs (each of them has an associated key). Hieroglyphs, between the graphemes of which there is a certain distance. For example, the character 苗 consists of the graphemes 艹 and 田, between which there is a distance (although in print they are a little “compressed” and it may seem to you that there is no distance between them).

Hieroglyphs whose graphemes are connected to each other. Thus, the character 且 is a grapheme 月 connected to a horizontal line;

尺 consists of the grapheme 尸 and a dash.

At first glance, it may seem that the graphemes on the keyboard are arranged randomly. Actually this is not true. The keyboard is divided into five zones, according to the number of basic features (they are marked in different colors in the figure). Within each zone, the keys are numbered - from the center of the keyboard to the edges. The number is made up of two digits from 1 to 5 - depending on what basic features the grapheme is assembled from.

Thus, 毅=U+E+M+C. To enter hieroglyphs consisting of more than four graphemes, you need to enter the first three graphemes and the last. Since there are a lot of graphemes, several hieroglyphs will inevitably appear, vying for the same key combination. Then you have to go through the options, but the computer is smart, it tries to be the first to suggest the most appropriate graphemes.

This layout is far from the only one, but it is one of the most popular. Although it is quite difficult to learn, it opens up the possibility of blind typing, which increases the maximum typing speed to 160 hieroglyphs per minute - that’s about 500 keystrokes in the same minute!

Have you ever asked yourself this question? But yesterday I thought about it. I searched the Internet and this is what I found:

You probably imagined it as a whole organ - a grandiose structure a couple of meters long with hundreds and thousands of keys. In fact, most Chinese use a regular keyboard with a Latin QWERTY layout. But how can you use it to type such a myriad of different hieroglyphs? We asked our employee Julia Dreyzis to tell us about this. She has a long-standing love and work connection with China.

Background: typewriters

For a long time, typing was carried out according to the principle “for each hieroglyph there is a separate printed element.” Therefore, I had to work with monster machines like this:

Typewriter from Shuange, 1947 (the principle of operation was invented by the Japanese Kyota Sugimoto in 1915).

In 1946, the famous Chinese philologist Lin Yutang proposed a version of a typewriter built on a completely new principle - the decomposition of hieroglyphs into their component parts.

Electromechanical typewriter by Lin Yutang, 1946

Unlike its large predecessors, the new machine was no larger than its Latin counterparts, and there were few keys on it. The fact is that the keys corresponded not to hieroglyphs, but to their component parts. At the center of the device was a “magic eye”: when the driver pressed a key combination, a variant of the hieroglyph appeared in the “eye”. To confirm your choice, you had to press an additional function key. With only 64 keys, such a machine could easily provide 90,000 characters and a speed of 50 characters per minute!

Structural methods

One of the most common structural input methods is kill zixing(Wubing zixing - “five-line input”). How does it work? I warn you right away: it’s difficult.

In fact, all Chinese characters are divided into four groups:

Basic 5 strokes (一, 丨, 丿, 丶, 乙) and another 25 very frequently used hieroglyphs (each of them has an associated key).
Hieroglyphs, between the graphemes of which there is a certain distance. For example, the character 苗 consists of the graphemes 艹 and 田, between which there is a distance (although in print they are a little “compressed” and it may seem to you that there is no distance between them).
Hieroglyphs whose graphemes are connected to each other. Thus, the character 且 is a grapheme 月 connected to a horizontal line;
Hieroglyphs whose graphemes intersect or overlap each other. For example, the character 本 is the intersection of the graphemes 木 and 一.

Well, we have mentally broken down the hieroglyph we are going to introduce into graphemes. What's next? Let's look at the layout first Well, we have mentally broken down the hieroglyph we are going to introduce into graphemes. What's next? Let's look at the layout first:

Thus, 毅=U+E+M+C. To enter hieroglyphs consisting of more than four graphemes, you need to enter the first three graphemes and the last.

The most difficult ones to enter are hieroglyphs consisting of two or three graphemes. Since there are so many of them, several hieroglyphs will inevitably appear, vying for the same key combination. To distinguish them, the developers came up with a special code. This code consists of two digits, the first is the serial number of the last line of the hieroglyph, and the second is the group number of the hieroglyph (remember the four groups into which hieroglyphs are divided).

True, during my entire stay in China I have never seen such keyboards :)

Phonetic methods

The most common phonetic method is the famous pinyin(Pinyin). On its basis, a phonetic input system is built, which is included in the standard Asian Language Pack of the Windows system (starting from version XP - before that it had to be installed additionally). Let's see how it works.

For example, we want to enter the word "blogger" − Wangming.
First we dial wang (or wang3 indicating the tone to reduce the number of options). After pressing the space bar, the hieroglyph with the reading is inserted van. But this is not the one van what we need. Right-click on it:

Google Pinyin and Sogou Pinyin input systems go further - they remember user preferences and suggest the right words based on the context.
Here's an example of how Google Pinyin parses a seemingly jaw-dropping sequence

And it gives the correct dialing option:
I saw Wang Zhizhi play in the same match with Yao Ming(we are talking about two Chinese NBA basketball players). It's especially nice that the names are spelled correctly.

There is an alternative in Taiwan pinyin-system - input via zhuyin(Zhuyin). It is not the Latin alphabet that is used, but a syllabary alphabet with symbols like hieroglyphs. Since there are few icons in the alphabet, it is easy to scatter them all over the keyboard. Hong Kong has its own version of romanization for the local dialect - yutphin(Jyutping), it is also actively used for phonetic input.

The main disadvantage of phonetic input systems is the rather low typing speed - about 50 characters per minute (compare with kill zixing with its 160 characters per minute). The fact is that entering a hieroglyph using the method pinyin occurs, on average, in six keystrokes, whereas when typing kill zixing Four will be enough. In addition, blind typing is not possible using this method. And then you need to know pinyin/zhuyin, which is not suitable for every Chinese, because from the first grade of school, knowledge (if there was any) had time to erode a little. And it’s not always easy to remember how to read some rare hieroglyph. Therefore, it is gaining increasing popularity in China. kill zixing. Nevertheless, pinyin It is still easier to learn than structural methods. Well, for a foreigner, such a system is simply like a balm for the soul.

As we can see, for phonetic input we also do not need any special keyboard - any keyboard with the Latin QWERTY layout is sufficient. Well, for example, the one in front of you is quite suitable :)

Hybrid methods

These methods are some combination of phonetic and structural input methods. The simplest example is the method yinxing(Yinxing - “sound and form”). The hieroglyph is typed by entering the transcription and pointing to the graphic element. A limited set of graphic elements are spread across the keyboard, so theoretically it’s not difficult to remember them.

So is there a "standard" method?

But no. In China, the most popular is the structural method. Well, we have mentally broken down the hieroglyph we are going to introduce into graphemes. What's next? Let's look at the layout first and phonetic pinyin. Taiwan loves the phonetic method zhuyin(since many taught him at school, and not pinyin) and the obsolete structural method Cangjie(Cangjie). It was invented back in 1976 and has retained all its shortcomings since then: it is very difficult to enter punctuation marks using this method, you always have to guess the correct way to break down the hieroglyph and remember the complex layout (many Taiwanese even stick it on the monitor out of desperation). In Hong Kong Cangjie They teach it at school and clearly prefer it to all other methods.

Recognition based methods

It turns out that none of the listed keyboard input methods is ideal. It is not surprising that the Chinese decided to cling to their last hope - recognition. Now, both speech and handwriting recognition are included in the standard Language pack of Windows 7. It is suggested that before use it is better to put the system in “learning mode” for at least 15 minutes to give it time to get used to your handwriting and speech patterns.

But methods based on recognition have not become widespread. Keyboard input is still considered more reliable.

And yet it exists!

Experimental Chinese keyboard, senseless and merciless.

Is this exactly how you imagined her?
Yes, yes, Chinese keyboards with thousands of keys exist. True, for obvious reasons, they do not go into mass production, remaining a kind of artifact.
But, you must admit, it’s still nice to know that such a keyboard exists somewhere!

If you need to type something in your native language, but your computer or laptop has an English layout, you need a virtual Chinese keyboard on your computer screen. It is very simple and convenient to use. If you don’t like something, something doesn’t work or doesn’t work correctly, please let us know. For us it is very important. On the website using our virtual keyboard you can absolutely free and online:

Typing on the virtual keyboard is easy and free

We have been testing the site interface and keyboard layouts for your convenience for a long time. And now we are confident in your comfort when typing on our keyboard online on your monitor screen. Here online you can use standard keyboard(qwerty), phonetic keyboard and others. A Chinese keyboard in the form of an alphabet will be added soon. It's easy to type letters, translate them, print and save them, and stay in touch with friends using Facebook and Twitter. And of course - what would the Internet be without Google search and YouTube videos? All these actions are done on our website in 1 click - try it! You can also save your printed documents (to do this, you need to log in using Facebook, Twitter or Google) so that you can continue them later.

And if you need to upload a photo from your computer or phone and get a link, use IMGisto.

Chinese keyboard online on your website - how to get and use it

You can also install our link, button, or the entire online virtual Chinese keyboard on your website - to do this, you need to copy the code and paste it into your website or blog. We are also open to suggestions for the features you need - just write to us and describe what is missing (the more details, the better) - we will do what you need!

Chinese keyboard and English translation online

In order to translate text typed on your keyboard online, simply click the “Translate” button and the world’s most popular online translator from Google will open in a new window. The default translation is set to English language, but you can choose any other at your discretion.

Background: typewriters

For a long time, typing was carried out according to the principle “for each hieroglyph there is a separate printed element.” Therefore, I had to work with monster machines like this:

Typewriter from Shuange, 1947 (the principle of operation was invented by the Japanese Kyota Sugimoto in 1915).

In 1946, the famous Chinese philologist Lin Yutang proposed a version of a typewriter built on a completely new principle - the decomposition of hieroglyphs into their component parts.

Electromechanical typewriter by Lin Yutang, 1946

Unlike its large predecessors, the new machine was no larger than its Latin counterparts, and there were few keys on it. The fact is that the keys corresponded not to hieroglyphs, but to their component parts. At the center of the device was a “magic eye”: when the driver pressed a key combination, a variant of the hieroglyph appeared in the “eye”. To confirm your choice, you had to press an additional function key. With only 64 keys, such a machine could easily provide 90,000 characters and a speed of 50 characters per minute!

Structural methods

One of the most common structural input methods is kill zixing(Wubing zixing - “five-line input”). How does it work? I warn you right away: it’s difficult.

In fact, all Chinese characters are divided into four groups:

Basic 5 strokes (一, 丨, 丿, 丶, 乙) and another 25 very frequently used hieroglyphs (each of them has an associated key).
Hieroglyphs, between the graphemes of which there is a certain distance. For example, the character 苗 consists of the graphemes 艹 and 田, between which there is a distance (although in print they are a little “compressed” and it may seem to you that there is no distance between them).
Hieroglyphs whose graphemes are connected to each other. Thus, the character 且 is a grapheme 月 connected to a horizontal line;
尺 consists of the grapheme 尸 and a dash.

Thus, 毅=U+E+M+C. To enter hieroglyphs consisting of more than four graphemes, you need to enter the first three graphemes and the last.

The most difficult ones to enter are hieroglyphs consisting of two or three graphemes. Since there are so many of them, several hieroglyphs will inevitably appear, vying for the same key combination. To distinguish them, the developers came up with a special code. This code consists of two digits, the first is the serial number of the last line of the hieroglyph, and the second is the number of the hieroglyph group (remember the four groups into which hieroglyphs are divided).

True, during my entire stay in China I have never seen such keyboards :)

Phonetic methods

The Google Pinyin and Sogou Pinyin input systems go further - they remember user preferences and suggest the right words based on the context.
Here's an example of how Google Pinyin parses a seemingly jaw-dropping sequence

As we can see, for phonetic input we also do not need any special keyboard - any keyboard with the Latin QWERTY layout is sufficient. Well, for example, the one in front of you is quite suitable :)