Comment by numpad0
4 months ago
It's also a key enabler to CJK typing on computers. CJK scripts never map to keyboards well, so instead of actually typing, approximate representations are typed in and regularized into written forms using similar technologies as spell checkers. It's a neat thing if you speak one of the languages, sort of interesting that a similar tool haven't been integrated into English keyboards.
Doesn't Chinese input usually work by typing Latin codes for characters? Korean characters represent syllables made up of shapes representing individual sounds, those fit on a keyboard just fine. And I'm not sure about Japanese, there they may use something like spell checkers to map kana to kanji.
Another interesting challenge with CJK languages was just displaying them. You need higher-resolution graphics and a much bigger character ROM to even consider that.
Romanization systems for Chinese vary, but all have the issue that a single "word" in the romanized system can map to dozens, if not hundreds, of actual "words" in the target language.
Pinyin is sort of the standard for romanization, although other systems exist, as well as inputs that aren't based on romanization (bopomofo).
Take the pinyin `fei`. Just looking at the tones that can be on this word, it can mean at least 4 words (my dictionary app couldn't find any neutral tone words). In reality, its at least dozens, each with different contextual meanings.
This is a history Chinese keyboards before word processors, and even as they were first introduced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40537464
IIUC there are ambiguity problems in Chinese and Korean, just less than there are for Japanese. Korean input has no end-of-character marks and multi-character entry could be split different ways, Chinese has bunch of homonyms-in-Latin, and Japanese is a huge mess(like always, if I think about it...)