Japanese keyboards

[Keilyn]

I've taken it upon myself to go after Japanese keyboards to type in kana. Many use romazi. Even with the fastest typers out there, romanized typing is a problem as it lowers your realtime communication speed.

The typing of one syllable by hand as opposed to typing a syllable per keystroke is annoying. I've gotten numerous requests over the years on setting up these keyboards as western keyboards are set to 101 keyboard layout.

JPN keyboards have 106 keys and without a Japanese keyboard it becomes impossible to type the syllable RO without remapping keys. There is a fix for this to those who have these keyboards and find those keys are not working.

Regedit connects you to your windows registry, the holy grail of changing windows settings

Here is the actual way to get the keys working once the keyboard is connected.

You will need to edit the registry to make it 106-key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\i8042prt\Parameters

Change these entries:

LayerDriver JPN REG_SZ kbd106.dll
OverrideKeyboardIdentifier REG_SZ PCAT_106KEY
OverrideKeyboardSubtype DWORD 2
OverrideKeyboardType DWORD 7

This gets RO to work in order to type with syllables.


Here are standard instructions on operating in the language through the IME

Shift+ [ ] = Dialogue Markers
Shift+ < > ? = Comma, Period, Divider
Shift + z, e,3,4,5,6 = small tsu + small letters
Shift + 7,8,9 = small ya,yu,yo
Shift + 0 = wo

For those who have 101 key keyboards (standard keyboards)

Shift+Alt = Change to alphanumerics (changes language)
Alt+ Caps, Control + Caps = The change from hiragana to katakana (back and forth)
There are additional keys in jpn keyboards to change between alphanumerics and kana without changing to English.

For those who are interested in what keys type what in Kana:

Row 1
-------------------------
1=nu
2=fu
3=a
4=u
5=e
6=o
7=ya
8=yu
9=yo
0=wa
"Dash" = ho
"equalSign" = he

Row 2
--------------------------

Q= TA
W= TE
E= I
R= SU
T= KA
Y= N
U= NA
I= NI
O= RA
P= SE
[ = turns into form 2
] = turns into form 3
\ = mu

Row 3
---------------------------

A=ti
S=to
D=shi
F=ha
G=ki
H=ku
J=ma
K=no
L=ri
;=re
'=ke

Row 4
----------------------------

Z=tsu
X=sa
C=so
V=hi
B=ko
N=mi
M=mo
,=ne
.=ru
/=me

Japanese keyboards, one types Ro through one of the added keys not present on the 101 keyboard. The key to the right of forward slash.

[ and ] are what changes between syllable strength. Like Ha to Ba to PA or Shi to Ji. Typing double-letters like in kikko, is Ki + small tsu (shift + z) + ko.

The JPN keyboards have you use the rules of Japanese in typing, you place the signs that change syllables to stronger forms. Ok, finally, the three letter syllables. In Japanese those are achieved through using a syllables that end in letter 'i" and then using a "small ya, yu or yo"

like if I used Ni

Ni + small ya = Nya
Ni + small yu = Nyu
Ni + small yo = Nyo

How about the sound a cat makes?
Nyau ^_^

I am hoping this helps some who are working with the language. The purpose of this thread is not to have people type in Romazi, but for those who wish to type in Kana to not lose communication speed.

Think of this thread as a "gateway" thread.

If you plan on playing many Japanese Online games in the future or plan on staying for a long time, the 106 key keyboard is worth learning and you can type on a resume that you have experience in formal jpn typing, which is a skill in demand in the US.

Oh yes, the last issue:

Suppose you do have a basic keyboard and just want to remap a key to RO and not buy a JPN keyboard. You can download a remapping program that allows you to build keyboards and then map them. One can also change layouts. I recommend the standard layout with one remapped key to Ro.

This thread is a compilation of data from own experience along with some support pages on the microsoft site along with my notes. I hope it helps someone. ^_^

[AnonymousHat00]

does that mean if i type "hi my name is Tim" what would come up would be how its spelled in Japanese?

[ashley50]

does that mean if i type "hi my name is Tim" what would come up would be how its spelled in Japanese?
are you being serious there?

[OokamiRei]

... i think he is lol. anywho thats a pretty good system, but sadly i'm so use typing with my jp ime that im to lazy to learn your way.

[AnonymousHat00]

I was being serious, and I'll be honest I know nothing about the Japanese language (I'm American) and was just asking a simple question to get a simple answer. Nothing wrong with that right?

So i can assume my assumption was wrong. Oh well.

[Mitz]

http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Guide+to+Buying+Searching+for+J apanese+Keyboards+Mice

Enjoy.

[Keilyn]

I will explain further (as its my own thread)

Way back in the 90s, the leader in creating the keyboard standard was IBM. IBM had created a 106 key layout for use in industrial and commercial computers. At the same time what happened was that in order to make languages work, they attempted to fill a 106 key keyboard.

Over time, this proved useless because there were keys without functions that were left over. Apple had created a 101 key standard that also became popular and eventually the west settled on the 101 key keyboard set.

What they did was widen the spacebar and backspace. I know this because I still have very old keyboards that use the predecessor to PS/2 stored away which have the 106 keys, but of course I cant use them with my keys.

As operating systems were designed and created, they included the 101 and 106 key layout drivers.

When I got my Japanese Keyboard by mail, the extra five keys did not work because the drivers were set to 101 keys instead of 106 keys.

The 106 keyboard layout is a basic standards which allows anyone capable of typing in any language.

Ok, so some of you smart people can reply "Then why is it called a Japanese Keyboard and not a Standard Keyboard?" The answer to this is, its a Japanese Keyboard because it has keys to facilitate the language itself. It is specialized...

A Japanese keyboard allows all alphanumeric typing (English, Spanish, etc), All hiragana and katakana. It has options to change the Kana Set used. One can even underline a passage, change that passage from kanji to hiragana to katakana.

So, where does the IME come from?

When languages started in computers, we were limited to 8 bits. 8 bits = 256 possible combinations. A keyset called ASCII was created. I am sure many of you know of this. This was used in western languages and it worked well, but failed miserably for many other languages.

Later on, Unicode was invented. This was 16 bits. 16 bit = 65536 combinations. Perfect for including all the characters in Asian languages. We then had a problem.

How in the hell do we make a system capable of identifying and typing out these characters as we see fit? Specially in languages with 1000s of different characters.

The answer was to create an IME.

A user works with the input, the IME checks the input and converts based on what is most commonly used. This helps in simple and general typing, but its a nightmare for technical writing.

When you type "Hello, my name is Tim"

It does not, convert to Japanese Language. What you have are two choices, and they are below:

Choice A is:

using Romaji and typing out each letter into the IME and having the IME convert and generate characters. First you have to think of the sentence in Japanese which is

konniti wa. Watashi no namae wa telimu desu.

Remember when people say "ohayou, konniti, konban" to mean Good Morning, Good Afternoon or Good Evening, but its their greeting. Its their way of saying Hello based on time of the day due to the etiquette system that exists in Japan. If you were to say this over the phone, you would say moshi moshi as "hello" in a phone conversation or answering machine message.

Now you run into a problem. Its the whole message except your name has to be Hiragana. When you type in Tim, the syllable Ti is pronounced as Chi. Normal Ti does not exist in Japanese, unless you use katakana. To make the Ti sound, you have to take "Te" and put a little "i" and to get that you would have to type in Romaji input "teli" and then "mu"

The second problem. When you use the syllable "Wa" outside of a word you type ha instead of wa because of how it sounds in a sentence.

Below is exactly what you would type and how you do it in Romaji:

konnnniti ha. (shft+ >) watashi no namae ha telimu desu.

The reason you have four letter N's in konniti wa is because, you have to type the n twice to generate the n in romaji due to n sharing syllables apart from stand alone n.

Japanese do not use spaces, so every word you might have to check for kanji. If I count the number of keystrokes you would have to type 45 characters.

Method 2 = Kana input.

Kana input means you press a key and the IME has your keyboard mapped in the way its mapped in Japan. Each keystroke is one syllable. It also follows the rules of the language. So same sentence

Konniti ha. watashi no namae ha telimu desu.

If I typed it in kana input, its as follows:

ko n ni ti ha. wa ta shi no na ma e ha te Shift+ i mu (katakana switch on tim) de su.

The sentence is simple enough the IME handles it on 20 - 21 keystrokes as opposed to 40 - 45.

In short, if you use Romaji, that may be great for static messages like leaving a message for trading and writing an email, but for realtime communication between people in Japanese parties, you will find even at your fastest, you are still too slow in quick conversations to be of any use.

[OokamiRei]

while i have studied japanese and am quite comfortable talking to Japanese players i don't think many Americans on the jp servers are like that. to be honest without at least some background knowledge on the language I'm afraid this topic would be above a lot of people heads. I'm not trying to downplay what you've done or anything like that. I'm just saying

[Keilyn]

This is why a topic like this needs to exist. The idea was to put the information out there, not to go gun-ho on it.

As it stands, this is a forum mostly for the non-Japanese players, but I've also spoken to Japanese players about the concerns that they have about American and European players.

The main concern they have is the belief that when they type "JP ONLY" in a room, that foreigners believe its a Patriotic/Nationalistic tendency of "My people only" when in every room I've been to with a "JP Only" tag attached to it has only really meant the language itself.

I've come clean in many of these rooms and told them "I live in the United States, but I learned Japanese and can use more exposure." Among with a few things, they have all let me stay and play.

I've been told that the reason they write that is due to the headache of going between languages. Its perfectly understandable to me.

[OokamiRei]

Ive done the same thing tho to be honest i never say I'm from the us, i just only type in japanese. i misinterpreted the jp only tag

[Keilyn]

It takes a while though. I am trying to reach the point I can type kana without looking at the keyboard. I can do this with English and Spanish already. Kana has the complication that I have to keep in memory when to tell the IME to convert.

The IME itself has some pitfalls.

I'll use PSU as an example.

This event an item was released for techers. A new unit. The standard IME did not have the 18 stroke kanji as a direct convert character. The kanji did exist, but since its not used all the time, I had to take it and put in the active list due to the game item.

This is a real pain in the ass to even me, who knows computers. A reason not ALL kanji are included is because there are over 120,000 kanji in existence. The IME puts in the bare minimum. The 1945 kanji needed for everyday reading, along with the 200 - 300 kanji for names and two kana syllable systems. If all of them existed, it would be a pain in the ass if you typed an On-Reading and then had to cycle through a list of 1000+ kanji for each syllable to find the one that you want to convert to.

[OokamiRei]

makes since. i have been trying to find out what i have to type for 瓊 and no matter what i do it doesnt come up on my ime. which kinda suck cause i cant even search the new head unit 八坂瓊曲玉 Yasakani Magatama

[Keilyn]

Thats the kanji I had to manually make "Active" in the IME.