How do chinese people send a text

triple-M

recently I saw an asian guy on a bus texting on his phone and then thought to myself,If hes texting in chinese how does he do it on a standard phone without use of the chinese alphabet or symbols???is there some kind of system?
thanks

galwayrush

You only need numbers to order a Chinese.:D

ntlbell

triple-M wrote: »

recently I saw an asian guy on a bus texting on his phone and then thought to myself,If hes texting in chinese how does he do it on a standard phone without use of the chinese alphabet or symbols???is there some kind of system?
thanks

txp spk ftw gr8 m8's r gr8 m8's n ny cntry

biko

You can get Chinese symbols on the phone I think

Dont be at yourself

For Japanese, you spell the word using their phonetic alphabet or the roman alphabet, and it automagically converts it to chinese characters. The same way they input text with a PC, FYI.

Hagar

Chinese sms text.

el rabitos

they use chopsticks

triple-M

Magnus wrote: »

You can get Chinese symbols on the phone I think

afaik theres thousands of different symbols in their alphabet

Terodil

There are several ways to transcribe Chinese. Pinyin is the most standard one these days. It's based on the pronounciation of words. There's only 80 or so unique syllables, combined with the 4 (5) basic tones of Chinese, that gives you around 280 distinguishable syllables. Some Chinese leave it at that and simply type pinyin pure. Others go one step further and find the proper Chinese sign by identifying the appropriate radical (= recurring parts of signs) and the number of additional strokes needed to complete the sign.

triple-M

Hagar wrote: »

Chinese sms text.

a ha but what im wondering is how would they type something like that with just the standard 0-9 ,*,# on most phones

arybvtcw0eolkf

He was obviously texting someone in Ireland because there are no telephones in China!...

Why?..

Because in China there's too many 'Wings, and there are too many 'Wongs and they're afraid they might....

WING THE WONG NUMBER


/sorry, I'll show myself out!


.

Jumpy

ruv u hny. c u r8r. rol

Jumpy

Jumpy wrote: »

ruv u hny. c u r8r. rol
__________________
Officer of the BTSP.
Boards Text Speak Police
I fukn h8 txt spk. Use yr full kb.

Hypocrite! :pac:

flanum

erm maybe he was of asian descent and possibly born in ireland? he might not speak chinese, maybe he was texting in english or irish???

Gummy Panda

NekkidBibleMan wrote: »

For Japanese, you spell the word using their phonetic alphabet or the roman alphabet, and it automagically converts it to chinese characters. The same way they input text with a PC, FYI.

Its Kanji character set i think. I remember reading an article about a new trend of Japanese ebooks been written on mobile phones. The complaint from Japanese literature teachers and such, was that phones have limited Kanji characters so the writer would have to be really imaginative or they'd be dumbing down Japanese literature.

IIRC Kanji, is a Chinese character set used by Japanese more so for books.

AFAIK, Chinese have a nation wide simplified character set.

Mr.Lizard

Hagar wrote: »

Chinese sms text.

"Eingang", "Wählen", "Zurück" ? I'll never understand that crazy Chinese language of theirs.

triple-M

flanum wrote: »

erm maybe he was of asian descent and possibly born in ireland? he might not speak chinese, maybe he was texting in english or irish???

thats not the point i was only using him as an example......hmmmm i wonder..what does a chinese keyboard look like anyone ??

Hagar

NekkidBibleMan wrote: »

For Japanese, you spell the word using their phonetic alphabet or the roman alphabet, and it automagically converts it to chinese characters.

Converts it to Chinese characters? That must be very confusing for the poor Japanese.

triple-M

triple-M wrote: »

thats not the point i was only using him as an example......hmmmm i wonder..what does a chinese keyboard look like anyone ??

here's one. :eek:

and another with simplified characters.

galwayrush

手机短信缩写lol

triple-M

Deleted User wrote: »

here's one. :eek:

and another with simplified characters.

wow,thanks,so i take it they dont have a standard straight forward alphabet from A-Z

galwayrush

This message is displayed on most Internet searches in China.

这页不可能被显示


(This page cannot be displayed.):rolleyes:

esp www.上.ie

galwayrush

galwayrush wrote: »

This message is displayed on most Internet searches in China.

这页不可能被显示


(This page cannot be displayed.):rolleyes:

esp www.上.ie

Ah yes, the great firewall of China!

Terodil

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Its Kanji character set i think. I remember reading an article about a new trend of Japanese ebooks been written on mobile phones. The complaint from Japanese literature teachers and such, was that phones have limited Kanji characters so the writer would have to be really imaginative or they'd be dumbing down Japanese literature.

IIRC Kanji, is a Chinese character set used by Japanese more so for books.

AFAIK, Chinese have a nation wide simplified character set.

Japanese and Chinese are not comparable.

Japanese has two sets of 'alphabets'. A type of shorthand that can be 'automagically converted' (because it's purely phonetic), and the longhand that shares the same ancestors as the Chinese sign language (they are not identical, however). I can see why Japanese professors would be concerned by the shorthand taking over.

Chinese itself is a collective term. There are 7 major dialects (AFAIK linguists tend to contest that label and would rather prefer 'language' due to the massive differences) in spoken Chinese and 2 major styles of writing. There's the 'old style' which is prevalent in Hong Kong, Taiwan and some bits of Southern China still, and there's the 'simplified style' which is used in most of mainland China. The simplified style was introduced by Mao and his cronies to spread literacy.

For Chinese, there's no magic transcription. Every single word needs to be typed in several steps.

1. type in pinyin (e.g. hua4)
2. select radical (the 'mouth with breath' one in this case)
3. determine remaining number of strokes (6)
4. find the word from a selection menu ([])

Local-womanizer

Mairt wrote: »

He was obviously texting someone in Ireland because there are no telephones in China!...

Why?..

Because in China there's too many 'Wings, and there are too many 'Wongs and they're afraid they might....

WING THE WONG NUMBER


/sorry, I'll show myself out!


.

That deserves a thanks for being so bad.....:P

FruitLover

If the guy was using a Chinese phone, he might have been entering syllable characters, which get changed into Hanzi. If he was using a European or American phone, he was probably just typing in pinyin.

Gummy Panda wrote: »

The complaint from Japanese literature teachers and such, was that phones have limited Kanji characters

Modern Japanese (and probably Chinese) phones now have a wide variety of Kanji available.

Hagar wrote: »

Converts it to Chinese characters? That must be very confusing for the poor Japanese.

The Japanese use Chinese characters along with simplified symbols for verb modification, etc. "Kanji" literally means "Chinese character".

Terodil wrote: »

I can see why Japanese professors would be concerned by the shorthand taking over.

There's zero chance of that happening. Young people sometimes write certain words in hiragana or katakana, but there's no way Kanji is going to disappear entirely. It's far more efficient (once you've gotten over the initial learning hurdle).

Dont be at yourself

Hagar wrote: »

Converts it to Chinese characters? That must be very confusing for the poor Japanese.

Not so much. The Japanese writing system is based largely on kanji, or Chinese characters.

We

Terodil wrote: »

There are several ways to transcribe Chinese. Pinyin is the most standard one these days. It's based on the pronounciation of words. There's only 80 or so unique syllables, combined with the 4 (5) basic tones of Chinese, that gives you around 280 distinguishable syllables. Some Chinese leave it at that and simply type pinyin pure. Others go one step further and find the proper Chinese sign by identifying the appropriate radical (= recurring parts of signs) and the number of additional strokes needed to complete the sign.

this

TPD

Voice to text software on the phones. Patented, so feck off.

useful_contacts

Hagar wrote: »

Chinese sms text.

50 quid for a BJ? what a rip off!!!

admiralofthefleet

galwayrush wrote: »

lol

ROR

FruitLover

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

ROR

I never understand why people make these jokes. Chinese people have no problem pronouncing 'L'.

You're presumably thinking of Japanese people, who often have difficulty distinguishing between 'R' and 'L' due to the fact that they don't have exactly these sounds in their language.

Turd Ferguson

FruitLover wrote: »

I never understand why people make these jokes. Chinese people have no problem pronouncing 'L'.

You're presumably thinking of Japanese people, who often have difficulty distinguishing between 'R' and 'L' due to the fact that they don't have exactly these sounds in their language.

/thread

rubadub

triple-M wrote: »

thats not the point i was only using him as an example......hmmmm i wonder..what does a chinese keyboard look like anyone ??

I was on business there and every one I saw was a US keyboard. We have Chinese people working for our company and they loaded stuff onto the PCs here. When they typed in words they all started to change symbols, sort of like predicitive text. When I used the PC they just pressed some button to change to english, most were also typing in english anyway so had to have it.

I would presume the phones also have some predictive method to get words in. Sometimes on the PC they would be laughing at the messages that were presented, it looked like full sentences were being predicted.

Some of the women who looked in their 40's in accounts were still using an abacus alongside a calculator and high spec PC. When you hear them talking a lot you will notice many do use a fair bit of english.

The_Minister

Here is a relevant article on the thread topic.

triple-M

triple-M wrote: »

recently I saw an asian guy on a bus texting on his phone and then thought to myself,If hes texting in chinese how does he do it on a standard phone without use of the chinese alphabet or symbols???is there some kind of system?
thanks

Id imagine you just change the language to chinese in the setup menu and then you can txt in Chinese.;)

AnonoBoy

This thread has been both informative and mildly racist.

I like it.

Steoob

Jumpy wrote: »

ruv u hny. c u r8r. rol

Post of the century! haha

ScumLord

Life is going to suck after the Chinese take over.

Lirange

ScumLord wrote: »

Life is going to suck after the Chinese take over.

We were promised the Japanese were on the brink of doing the same in the early 80s. I'd rather the Japs than the Chinese myself.

Thirdfox

Lirange wrote: »

We were promised the Japanese were on the brink of doing the same in the early 80s. I'd rather the Japs than the Chinese myself.

Can you even tell the difference? (speaking as a Chinese person)

We use the pinyin as mentioned above - sms characters are limited to 70 characters instead of 160 with "normal" symbols. But 70 Chinese characters generally say a lot more than 160... example: dictionary (10 characters) = 字典 (2 characters)

So, want to be economical with your text? Send it in Chinese

And yes, the speech thing is more from Japan than China (though I believe I have heard Chinese people just mangle English too...no worse than westerners trying to speak Chinese). My most memorable example was when my Japanese roommate told me he was "going out to buy a ramp for the room"... confused me so much until I discovered his new desktop lamp.