all keyboards, except russian and some others, all have primarily use english letters. most. you would just type it as you would say it out loud. it would convert those sounds to symbols. if you press the space bar, it translitterates whatever you typed in from just that one alphabet that your keyboard layout is set on to all the appropriate alphabet that should be use in that situation. you just have to know how to speak japanese to type in it. but i can read it more or less. in 1st - 6 or 7th grade, you learn 2,030 (about) jouyou kanji (that roughly translates to "common use chinese characters"). in, like the 1800's - 1900's they imported A LOT of chinese symbols in to the japanese written language. you might know this, but just about everybody, unless their asian, that i have ever met always thinks that japan, korea, or china is the same thing. i have done much, MUCH studying and i can tell if someone is korean, japanese, or chinese just by sight, listening to them speak, or i can tell the differences between the written languageses as well. there is a LOT of ignorance here in mississippi. maybe if they took the time to put their shotguns down, they would also learn something that is acctually somewhat useful in the real world. not only am i a mississippian, but im 12. all of this is comng from a 12 year old. the only thing i know from other 12 year olds how like how to play football. well, anyway... nobody knows how many chinese symbols were ACTUALLY imported from chinese, but its at least more than 10,000. you only need to know, like 1,945 jouyou kanji to read a newspaper. back to transliteration, if you were to type in "hai" (yes) with a japanese keyboard layout, it would appear as "はい" but if you pressed space 1 time it would convert it to the proper kanji. if you double tap space, it will bring up a list so you can find the appropriate kanji for the situation. a kanji has its own meaning, but some readings are the same as other kanji. thats where that would come in handy. pretty much most countries learn english letters.
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That's my excuse for a japanese lesson XD. if i bored you, forgive me
Last edited by teckwizz; Jun 24, 2012 at 05:37 PM.