Lesson 11 - How to Type in Chinese

Ever wondered how Chinese people type?  Do they have strange keyboards with keys for each stroke?  Not at all!  It's actually easier than you might think.

Chinese people use the exact same keyboard as in America, as opposed to other countries (like France where the keyboard is called "AZERTY" instead of "QWERTY").

To type Chinese characters, all you really need to do is to type the pinyin.  The options for which character you want to include come up below and you select your option.

If you don't already have Chinese available to you easily on your computer, you can follow the easy steps on this site (it shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes to set it up).

For Windows:
http://www.wikihow.com/Add-Another-Language-to-Your-Computer-Keyboard

For Mac:
http://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Keyboard-Language-of-a-Mac

Here is an example of what you would do to type 你好.

Something to keep in mind is that typing a spacebar selects the highlighted option.  If you want, say, option number 4, you can do several things.  You can use the arrow keys to move to the side or you can type "4" on your keyboard and it will be selected.

What if your option is not in the first 9 characters?  All you need to do is press on the "down" arrow key to go to the next "page" of characters below.

Another great thing about typing in Chinese is that you don't need to worry about those tricky tones!  You just need to know how to spell the word.  You still need to know tones for conversation purposes, so don't completely ignore them, but this cuts you some slack.  

Say you want to write a long sentence.  Do I have to select each word individually?  Nope!  If your are lucky, you can type an entire sentence with only one selection.  Here's an example:

Can you remember what this means?

Like always, the best way to learn is to practice, so make sure you practice using this once in a while to get the hang of it.  At first you may be really slow, but worry not!  You are sure to get much faster.

Exercise:

Try typing this in Chinese with your new keyboard settings.

- My name is 小王 (xiao3 wang3).

- My dog's name is 小黑 (xiao3 hei1).

- How are you?

Best of luck!

Answers to exercise (no peeking!):

- 我叫小王。

- 我的狗的名字是小黑。

- 你好吗？