Typing Cantonese characters
peterberlin1980
August 07, 2008, 10:49 AM posted in General DiscussionI think there is an input system for typing Cantonese characters using the Cantonese rominazation system but not sure. In lack of such a system how can you type some of the common characters that come up in Cantonese.
Example:行 hang (广东话). You can type xing.
无 moe (广东话). Just type wu, same meaning, same
character.
Some of the characters often used in 广东话 but rare in Mandarin are, I'm sure, available to input using Pinyin (but of course with totally different spellings from Cantonese).
The characters I want to type are
gum (广东话) meaning so (汉语: 这么/那么)
hai (广东话) (汉语: 是)
koi (广东话) (汉语: 他/她)
Does anyone know if the characters for these words exist in the Pinyin imput system and if so how they would be written in Pinyin?
nickcripps
August 09, 2008, 01:37 PMThe drawback with the IME I suggested is that it uses Traditional Chinese... well it's a drawback if u don't like dealing with 繁体字...
hitokiri6993
August 09, 2008, 02:57 PMI use the Jyutping Input Method (粵拼)Here's some of the characters:
mou=冇
gam=咁
hai=係
keoi=佢
Yes, it's hard to write in 廣東話 if you prefer 繁體字。
Go to njstar.com for available IMEs.
nickcripps
August 10, 2008, 12:11 AMThis is where I get my Cantonese IME http://cpime.hk/
It allows you to type all Cantonese characters...and the IME is constantly updated. Last year I had to look up each character by itself, but now I can input phrases...There are also a number of Input methods to choose from, 教師，粤拼，Yale and Sidney Lau... I personally use 教師...我最鍾意用呢個輸入法....
I also recommend installing the
Microsoft Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set
because most computers don't have the encoding to type unique Cantonese characters....
To Hitokiri: Do you use NJ Star now to type Cantonese, I used NJ Star for Cantonese before and it didn't seem to allow you to type unique Cantonese characters.... such as 嚟，瞓, 乜,㗎 etc.... just wondering, cause I found it annoying to type Cantonese through it...
hitokiri6993
August 10, 2008, 05:12 AMNick: I use the Microsoft Jyutping IME, which is available on Vista. :P
nickcripps
August 10, 2008, 10:57 AMOh, 原來係咁！我而家仲未安裝Vista...
peterberlin1980
August 11, 2008, 07:25 AMinstalled咗,唔該for the help
AuntySue
January 19, 2009, 11:19 AMCantoInput.jar from John Burket is great, that's what I use. It does simplified or traditional characters, with your choice of romanisation. You can use it to type Mandarin or English too.
The original site where I picked it up is unavailable, but this one seems to be the same thing with some handy improvements added:
http://5201314.googlepages.com/CantoInput.jar
Hey, get outa there! It's reading my mind! If you've chosen to use Yale input, and your naughty fingers start typing Mandarin by mistake, it's quite likely to offer you some Mandarin characters and tell you that's what it's doing.
nickcripps
August 09, 2008, 01:28 PMYears ago a Cantonese IME based on "pinyin" didn't exist, and I couldn't type the little Cantonese that I knew. But this one I suggested (different post) is really convenient for us who are not familiar with the IME's that people in HK use......
Yeah, if you're using Pinyin there is no way you can type 咁 or 佢. I used to draw them... 係 can be typed if you switch your Pinyin IME to Traditional mode, because 係 is the traditional form of 系 （关系，联系）