Hi, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to buy kana stickers for my keyboard, or if I should just input with romaji instead?

What do most real japanese people do?

[Katsuo]

sandwich Wrote:What do most real japanese people do?

According to my favourite OL, they almost all use romaji.

It's not common to type in kana nowadays, so it would be effort for nothing I reccon.

I've always used the standard Windows IME, meaning I type in romaji, it's converted to kana, and from there, converted to kanji. I can now read kana almost as quickly as I can read Roman letters, and I'm not really concerned about using romaji in this one case.

As long as you make sure to not learn FROM the romaji, your reading-and-writing skills shouldn't suffer. At the very least, whatever meager benefit the kana keyboard might offer doesn't seem to offer enough to me to justify re-learning how to type, particularly when the old kana keyboard-style is rapidly losing ground even in Japan. To the best of my knowledge, the romaji-kana-kanji conversion is now how most Japanese people type/text message/e-mail, etc.

Although on some Japanese mobile phones its still Kana input...like mine. I find it so irritating to use.

Now if only the IME could be done with Dvorak layout I'd be set. Any suggestions in that direction from anyone?

There is pros and cons with both input methods. I don't like any of them. Neither the roumaji layout (QWERTY) nor the kana layout let you write very efficiently.

roumaji layout
PROS
May already know most of the keyboard layout.
To produce a kana (mora) you usually need to push two or three keys.
Have more punctuation symbols.
Have digits.
CONS
Uses the US keyboard layout for letters. If you are used to non-QWERTY layout, you need to relearn where the letters are.
Still needs to learn where non-letter keys produces.

kana layout
PROS
Don't conflict with the keyboard layout you uses for other languages.
To produce a kana (mora) you usually needs to push one or two keys.
CONS
All punctuation can only be reach with shift key.
Have less punctuation symbols.
Have kana on keys that are difficult to reach.
Need to learn the layout.
No digits.

Nukemarine Wrote:Now if only the IME could be done with Dvorak layout I'd be set. Any suggestions in that direction from anyone?

If you have Windows and are willing to make changes in the registry, you can take a look at this. It worked for me and I'm now using a custom version of Dvorak. I haven't yet found where the kana layout is set, but I have been thinking about creating my own layout and replace that too.

I've been contemplating getting a JP keyboard-- I used one at Yamasa, and found it a lot more convenient that the constant clicking in the lower right corner to change character sets. If I do get one, will it work in US WinXP, or will I have to get JP copy of WinXP to make everything work the way I want it to?

I'm willing to sacrifice my spacebar's size for the cause--I just want to make sure it will work.

rich_f Wrote:I've been contemplating getting a JP keyboard-- I used one at Yamasa, and found it a lot more convenient that the constant clicking in the lower right corner to change character sets. If I do get one, will it work in US WinXP, or will I have to get JP copy of WinXP to make everything work the way I want it to?

I'm willing to sacrifice my spacebar's size for the cause--I just want to make sure it will work.

Iirc, [alt]+[shift] switches layouts, and [alt]+[~] switches between the kana in Windows. I could be wrong, but I'm sure there's a keyboard shortcut which is a lot faster than mousing.

AH! Thanks a lot! Now I just need to figure out how to switch from hiragana to katakana. Alt+~ only switches from western alphabet to either one or the other, depending on which one was used last. Kind of annoying, but I'll take what I can get.

Caps lock + alt for katakana. Caps lock + ctrl for hiragana.

Thanks uberstuber! Very helpful.

Smackle Wrote:Caps lock + alt for katakana. Caps lock + ctrl for hiragana.

I could not get this to work and the alt ～ trick didn't work either. But after playing around with it I found that hitting caps lock will switch it from hiragana to "half width alphanumeric". Also the typing teacher at my school showed me a trick where you type it in hiragana and instead of hitting enter, you hit F7 and it switches into Katakana. Hope this helps...

You have to do it in a series. Alt+shift (changes languages) -> alt+~ (changes from Roman to Japanese characters) -> caps lock+ctrl/caps lock+alt (changes kana)

tomclayson Wrote:Although on some Japanese mobile phones its still Kana input...like mine. I find it so irritating to use.

I was under the impression that all keitai are this way? Certainly mine and all the ones I've seen are. Personally, for keitai, I find the kana input so much easier than roman letters (either T9 -- which always predicts the words *wrong* -- or direct). The 12 key layout seems to suit kana much better than roman letters.

Romaji input on a phone would be ridiculous. My phone has two schemes, the usual cycle-through-the kana method, and the 2-key method which involves pressing one button for a column of the kana table, then another for the row (so 6-1 would be は, 6-3 would be ふ, 7-3 would be む, and so on).

I am typing sentences for my SRS. I type out the whole sentence and then hit space bar and go through and fix the kanji that did not come up correctly. Here`s my question:
I want to have the sentence typed in kanji and in kana (to check the answer in the SRS) without having to type the sentence twice. Is there a way to do this? (Either to have a sentence of kana switch to kanji or a sentence of kanji switch to kana.) When I click to copy the sentences, I can`t hit space bar and have it magically turn into kanji anymore.

I just asked a Japanese friend, and he showed me this function on excell: =PHONETIC(
In the parentheses you type the cell number that is in kanji. unfortunately it is only in either hiragana or katakana (not both) but a huge time saver.

JimmySeal Wrote:My phone has two schemes, the usual cycle-through-the kana method, and the 2-key method which involves pressing one button for a column of the kana table, then another for the row (so 6-1 would be は, 6-3 would be ふ, 7-3 would be む, and so on).

The 2-key method sounds interesting. Do you use it? It sounds like it could be very quick once you get the hang of it. I don't think I have it on my phone...

laner36 Wrote:I am typing sentences for my SRS. I type out the whole sentence and then hit space bar and go through and fix the kanji that did not come up correctly. Here`s my question:
I want to have the sentence typed in kanji and in kana (to check the answer in the SRS) without having to type the sentence twice. Is there a way to do this? (Either to have a sentence of kana switch to kanji or a sentence of kanji switch to kana.) When I click to copy the sentences, I can`t hit space bar and have it magically turn into kanji anymore.

If you need to mix kana forms: If you're typing in Anki in Japanese flash card mode, it will automatically convert your text + kanji to a reading in kana in the reading field, and will mix hiragana and katakana. The only downside is that sometimes it will put multiple readings for kanji in braces, so you have to delete the readings you aren't using. And if you go back to the original expression and change it, you have to re-delete the extra readings. (Which is annoying.) But you can just copy/paste out those fields as you need to into your spreadsheet.

rich_f Wrote:But you can just copy/paste out those fields as you need to into your spreadsheet.

Yeah I`ve been using anki just as you say. I was just hoping there is a faster way...

Why not use the spreadsheet function that you described and then import the spreadsheet into Anki? Instructions for importing from spreadsheets are on the wiki.

Is there a way to export from anki as well? I actually copy to anki and then copy the reading from anki to use in trinity...

Yes, click on deck and then export. This will give you a text file. You should be able to import that text file into your spreadsheet program as a tab-separated list of values.

Why are you using Anki to give you the readings? Doesn't that =phonetic() function do a better job?