Japanese Kana Keyboard Layout - Where is the key?

[highscheme]

This whole debate about romaji is stupid anyway. If you're in Japan, you're not reading romaji if you can read the kana and kanji alternatives. You're not writing in romaji either. If someone who speaks Japanese wants to know how to pronounce a kanji, such as a name, you give them the kana. If you can't read the kanji, you might find furigana. If you feel more comfortable typing using the kana keyboard, you wouldn't need the romaji input system, and it's no one's business anyway.

Look, I don't want to get into some huge pissing contest with you or whatever but the fact is you were extremely high-handed whether you meant to be or realize it or not. And considering you have edited your wording to be a lot more softer after the fact, I think you did realize that you might have been out of line, and I respect that.

From the first response I was trying to help you. The fact that you didn't yet have a way to type in Japanese (at least *all* of the characters) made me suggest that you look at the standard way to input.

Again, the problem doesn't stem from you wanted to learn how to type in KANA or even your diversion from romaji itself. If you have some idiosyncrasies regarding Japanese, it is completely natural. But assuming you have already learned KANA, its a moot point. It is a merely a personal preference—albeit one that causes you to have to remap your keyboard or change the input method for any random computer you would use in Japan.

It's the fact that you are arguing that romaji is unneeded and useless to people that live in Japan. Again people living in Japan *do* type using romaji input method. Aside from this major point which you have already accepted, there are signs in romaji. You have to explain things to people that are not Japanese using romaji. Software commands, URLS, Names, many other things can be in romaji.

This is coming from someone who lived in Japan for 5 years. It has nothing to do with laziness unless you haven't learned kana to begin with. Believe me, I am well beyond that point, as are anyone who has taken even a beginning Japanese course where you learn the kana in the first week.

Again, are you required to know romaji? No, but to have a complete understanding of the language you will have mastered it, because it *is* in fact one aspect of it.

I guess I just don't understand why you continue to call romaji a crutch unless you are absolute beginner who is using it because you can't write in kana and don't want to learn. Are you really lumping the people in this thread into that category? I would assume by the level of knowledge in general showed by the posters that they, like me, have mastered kana a long time ago and it is a non-issue.

If you mean to say, you are still memorizing the pronunciation of Japanese and/or KANA and don't want romaji to interfere with your learning; this makes perfect sense to me. But again, that doesn't make romaji useless to people who live in Japan. The point is, you can use BOTH romaji & kana. It is not an either/or dichotomy.

And your hard argument to the contrary is what baffles me and probably many others in this thread.

 

[Ochire]

The sensitivity in this thread is unreal.

tyu

 

[highscheme]

Anyway, if that bothers you, I really don't care. This whole friend reeks of insecurity, bias and (again) hilarious righteous indignation. Let's agree to disagree, if you can bare it.

What don't you understand? I have no problem with which way you decide to put input into your computer.

I have told you this in multiple posts.

I have a problem with you making blanket and incorrect statements and taking it to a level of personal attack when people were originally in here to help you.

 

[iketeru]

That is exactly true. That's the sense of Japanese. And you are "iketeru."

めちゃめちゃイケてますよw

iPadから送信しました~

 

[puma1552]

OP--thanks for the keyboard clarification, I get it now.

That said, purely out of curiosity, since you seem so determined to learn the language why didn't you buy a Japanese keyboard model?

 

[sushi]

That said, purely out of curiosity, since you seem so determined to learn the language why didn't you buy a Japanese keyboard model?

Darn good question!

I am a touch typist and it took me a while to adjust to a Japanese keyboard. After I got used to it, I found it weird to be on an English one again. But now I seem to be able to use both equally.

On a side note, I have a Japanese friend who much prefers English keyboards over Japanese ones. Electrical Engineer type. Funny.

 

[Ochire]

Hey guys!

To answer your question, I got the British one because of price (ridiculously good deal)

 

[PacMookBro]

Wow this thread is going on and on...

Did I solve the OP's problem already?


Here goes the solution (AGAIN) I've stated this earlier:

<SHIFT> + ' (Single Quote) is ろ


YES. It is mandatory to learn Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji in grade school in Japan. They are clearly presented in school textbook.

NO. You are not obliged to learn any of four writing system if you are not Japanese. It is your personal choice to learn the language fully.


The Question has been Answered. Now. This thread is over. Let's talk about stupid iPad in different thread!

 

[Ochire]

Hey man I did thank you a few times before.

 

[sushi]

I'm removing my subscription, anyway. Bye guys.

So because some folks disagreed with your opinion, you are leaving?

That makes no sense to me.

Just a suggestion. Pick up an Apple Japanese USB or BT keyboard. Easy to use when you are at home.

BTW, I've lived in Japan for a few years and I've seen all types of input patterns. For example, see my post above reference my one friend who prefers a US English keyboard over Japanese ones. Of course he must enter everything Japanese via Romanji. Many others do as well. Others use Kanji/Hiragana/Katagana method.

Personal preference is a good thing!

 

[puma1552]

My girlfriend is the same as your friend, sushi; she hates Japanese keyboards and is like "English keyboard much more simpler!" haha

 

[highscheme]

Hey guys!

To answer your question, I got the British one because of price (ridiculously good deal) but I was going to try and get one with a cyrillic keyboard originally.



You clearly did have a problem with how I type and what I've learnt, judging by your incessant posts on the first page that I tried to ignore.





Someone doing things different to you shouldn't bother you so much. Live and let live. Why must you control everything?

I made zero personal attacks (I find that perception hilarious too) and my 'blanket' statements were 'misinterpreted' (strawman; or in the case of PMB, genuinely) as covering Japanese speakers as well as non-Japanese speakers.

Besides, we've heard different sides to the argument and I don't see any quality consensus on the issue of whether romaji is actually necessary beyond some technical aspects of computers.

Here's a tip: stop taking people on the internet so seriously, even if I was coming across as you seem to have perceived me. That attitude is very unpleasant, and undignified as it must bother you in real life.
We disagree. It's ok. Besides... it's romaji, not ethics.

tyu

Ok, you are right.

Your posts haven't been continuously condescending.

It was wrong of me to take offense at you insulting me then editing it out after the fact.

It was wrong of me to suggest that you think about learning romaji.

It was even more wrong of me to suggest that you think about using the 90% standard input method.

You don't keep referring back to the first 9 posts where I was trying to figure out whether or not you know about the romaji input method as an example of me being against you using the KANA input method.


You didn't call me insecure and righteously indignant. And even if you might have, you didn't mean it as a personal attack at all.

You really did provide a multitude of reasons why you continued to say that romaji was unnecessary to learn.

I didn't really clearly give you several examples of why it is important to learn.

I can't give you countless more examples if you would actually discuss the actual statement in question rather than attacking me personally (right, you never did that—I forgot).

You didn't give me a "hint" about my conduct on the internet.

I am obviously just a control freak as you alluded to in your final farewell post.

I should be ashamed of myself. Surely, you are the model of reason, logic, and level-headedness by which all others should be judged.

 

[jonnyram]

So because some folks disagreed with your opinion, you are leaving?

That makes no sense to me.

I think he just meant he had subscribed to the thread, so he could find it easily, and now he's unsubscribed as the initial point of discussion is over

 

[sushi]

My girlfriend is the same as your friend, sushi; she hates Japanese keyboards and is like "English keyboard much more simpler!" haha

I think he just meant he had subscribed to the thread, so he could find it easily, and now he's unsubscribed as the initial point of discussion is over

I see. That makes sense.

I must admit that the OP did confuse me a bit. Seems like if you were wanting to input Japanese using Japanese characters (Kanji/Hiragana/Katagana) that you would choose a Japanese keyboard and not an English one.

 

[lewis82]

I'm too lazy to read trough all this, I don't know if his problem has been solved.

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=ukelele

Ukulele. Free utility to edit keyboard layout files.

 

[sannaim]

Press SHIFT + " to get ろ.

Kana input is superior to direct because you only have to type about half as many strokes to form the same sentence. Even though it takes a while to learn, it pays off in the long run. Whether or not it's "popular" is irrelevant; Apple provides it as an input method and therefore it should be just as functional as the rest.

 

[AkiyamaRuss]

Found it!

the ろ key is on the `/¬ button on a windows keyboard. I'm not sure if it's the same for Macs as I don't own one. (I found this when googling for the same problem)

But after reading this I'm definitely going to look into romanji input. I want to get as acquainted as possible [even if I do need to learn to adjust a few things later ]

Thanks for the heads up guys ^_^

 

[mfuchs88]

How are you showing us the key right in the thread title if you can't find it?

 

[RecycleBin]

lol wow look at everyone in here getting butthurt about someone not wanting to use romanji

if you guys are so up on efficiency or how "the rest of the world does it" instead of doing things your way or the elegant way or whatever, what are you doing here when you could be buying a pc

way to alienate the OP instead of answering his question, dang

 

[mikeo007]

I like when people act snarky yet they fail to realize that they're replying to a 17 month old thread.

 

[BubbaMc]

Indeed, romaji input is the standard here...nobody, and I mean nobody uses the kana keys.

Well the OP is.

 

[PracticalMac]

Does Apple have option to change the keyboard?

Where did you buy the MBA?

(PS, I am annoyed you can only chose English and Spanish KB).

 

[og3plus]

I signed up just to answer this question in case anyone was having the same problem as me.

As OP said, "ろ" is typed by pressing [shift + '], but you can also find this by clicking on the language icon, and clicking "Show Keyboard Viewer." This opens the virtual keyboard, and if you press "shift," you can see that "ろ" appears where "け" is. This can help you find any other keys that may be difficult to find otherwise, such as punctuation keys.

I also wanted to add to the discussion about romaji vs kana input.

As many others in this thread have mentioned, most people in Japan appear to use romaji input. In fact, I saw an article from 2009 that says that 90% of Japanese people use the romaji input method. I am inclined to believe the number has only grown in the last 7 years.

I looked for reasons why, and found these cited most often:

Romaji Input Strengths:
1. Less keys to remember - If you know the alphabet keys (26 total), you can use them to type Japanese. However, if you want to use the kana method, you have to learn the 40-something new keys in addition to the 26 alphabet keys, totaling in 70-some different keys you have to know by heart.
2. Better for mixed English/Japanese texts - When using the romaji method, you can easily type an English word by starting the English word with a capital letter. This means you don't have to go through the trouble of switching input methods, either by using the mouse or shortcuts (alt + ~). This is critical in office settings, where English words are mixed heavily into documents/emails.

Kana Input Strengths:
1. Faster - When typing purely in Japanese (i.e. not mixing in a lot of English), kana input method is faster, no question about it. You are pressing half the number of keys by using kana. I haven't looked into it, but I'm certain that there are many speed typists who specialize in kana input.

So the conclusion that most people have drawn is that romaji input is better suited for real-world typing, and kana input is only favored for a minority of people who either learned it first, or need to type extremely fast. It would be interesting to know what input method court stenographers use.

edit: Never mind. It appears they have a special machine for that kind of job!

 

[asoksevil]

I signed up just to answer this question in case anyone was having the same problem as me.

As OP said, "ろ" is typed by pressing [shift + '], but you can also find this by clicking on the language icon, and clicking "Show Keyboard Viewer." This opens the virtual keyboard, and if you press "shift," you can see that "ろ" appears where "け" is. This can help you find any other keys that may be difficult to find otherwise, such as punctuation keys.

I also wanted to add to the discussion about romaji vs kana input.

As many others in this thread have mentioned, most people in Japan appear to use romaji input. In fact, I saw an article from 2009 that says that 90% of Japanese people use the romaji input method. I am inclined to believe the number has only grown in the last 7 years.

I looked for reasons why, and found these cited most often:

Romaji Input Strengths:
1. Less keys to remember - If you know the alphabet keys (26 total), you can use them to type Japanese. However, if you want to use the kana method, you have to learn the 40-something new keys in addition to the 26 alphabet keys, totaling in 70-some different keys you have to know by heart.
2. Better for mixed English/Japanese texts - When using the romaji method, you can easily type an English word by starting the English word with a capital letter. This means you don't have to go through the trouble of switching input methods, either by using the mouse or shortcuts (alt + ~). This is critical in office settings, where English words are mixed heavily into documents/emails.

Kana Input Strengths:
1. Faster - When typing purely in Japanese (i.e. not mixing in a lot of English), kana input method is faster, no question about it. You are pressing half the number of keys by using kana. I haven't looked into it, but I'm certain that there are many speed typists who specialize in kana input.

So the conclusion that most people have drawn is that romaji input is better suited for real-world typing, and kana input is only favored for a minority of people who either learned it first, or need to type extremely fast. It would be interesting to know what input method court stenographers use.

edit: Never mind. It appears they have a special machine for that kind of job!

This thread is pretty told but brought a really interesting topic about romanization and how different it can between countries in Asia. I would like to add my two cents regarding 注音符號 (bopomofo)

I thought that learning to type with a Japanese keyboard would be awesome when I first started learning Japanese. Then I found out no one uses it anyway and I gave up. I still have one that I bought off ebay for $20 many years ago. I don't see the point in actively avoiding to even learn/understand romaji, if your language ability is good already it's not going to be detrimental in any way. I still want to master typing in 注音符號 for Chinese, but that's another story .

I think for most Taiwanese if not all of them, there isn't an option of not choosing the 注音符號 keyboard as this is what it's basically taught in schools and used by everybody else. 注音符號 can be considered the Taiwanese equivalent of the Japanese kana and so as the kana keyboard, here's a standard bopomofo keyboard with all the syllabus.

Eten keyboard:

Standard iOS bopomofo keyboard:

Dynamic keyboard (you need to hit alt or shift for the other syllabus)

My observation is that people just memorize the 41 keys (that's how my girlfriend can use it even on a british keyboard) but even if they weren't able to memorize it, there's a "standard way" of ordering the syllabus, just like when you start spelling the alphabet. You usually start with A,B,C,D,E, etc but with bopomofo is ㄅ，ㄆ，ㄇ，ㄈ and as you can see on the keyboard, there's a logical sequence. There rare other layouts like the Eten but I am not that familiar with it.

Also, romanization in Taiwan is not actually taught in schools so most people don't really know any form of romanization (they either try to romanize it using the English language, a la Hepburn or have to look it up on the Google translate, dictionary, MOFA website). It is mostly used for foreigners though it isn't really useful as even if you know how to spell it, most people won't actually know it.

There are many different ways to romanize the language and Taiwan uses a lot of them, there's the Wade-Giles, Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, Tongyong Pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin (the one used in China) Gwoyu Romazyth, etc. Wade-Giles is usually used for names and historical places (first romanization method). Most Taiwanese have their names in Wade-Giles, TP, MPS or some sort of combination of them. HP was introduced about 10 years ago and is mostly used for roads, MRT stations and everything else in the Northern part of Taiwan. The South uses TP.

The advantages of 注音 is basically speed compared to HP.

There are less key strokes. For instance ㄓˋ (2) is ZHI4 (4), ㄒㄩㄥˊ(4) is xiong2 (6). I am not sure if there's any desktop keyboard that allows it but on Android and iOS (since iOS 7) you can already type even faster because there's word prediction and no need to type the tone (you have to on desktop systems) therefore removing one keystroke for every single character. You can also type way faster for instance: ㄊㄞˊㄅㄟˇ (6 strokes) ㄊㄞㄅㄟ(4 strokes) or even ㄊㄅ (2 strokes) for Taipei.

Disadvantages are that you need to memorize the 41 key strokes if you aren't using a TW keyboard.

For language switching or English typing I actually think it's quite fast, you just hit either Shift or Caps Lock and you can start typing roman letters.

One thing they could use for the mobile system is to also recognize when there's a typo and apply the auto spelling like it's present on latin languages, though I guess it's harder to implement.

Just my two cents!
[doublepost=1477554083][/doublepost]

Does Apple have option to change the keyboard?

Where did you buy the MBA?

(PS, I am annoyed you can only chose English and Spanish KB).

I guess that depends on their supply. I was able to have my top case swapped in the UK for the Western Spanish layout but if I were using the Japanese or Taiwanese one I doubt I would get it serviced in the UK, I might actually have to wait for them to ship it from Japan/US or Taiwan.

 

[PracticalMac]

I guess that depends on their supply. I was able to have my top case swapped in the UK for the Western Spanish layout but if I were using the Japanese or Taiwanese one I doubt I would get it serviced in the UK, I might actually have to wait for them to ship it from Japan/US or Taiwan.

When one orders from Online Apple Store, (last time I looked) in the US choice either English or Spanish.
Even if it cost alittle more, Apple should offer all the major keyboards.