Channel:Keyboard
From #japanese
An introductory lesson to using your Japanese keyboard.
Contents |
Purchasing Your Keyboard
This in itself can be a difficult task. My personal recommendation is to use a Microsoft keyboard, seeing as most of are using a Windows OS (operating system) anyways, we won't have to deal with the compatiblity issues. Of course if price is an issues, you can always use a third-party keyboard, however I highly do not recommend screwing around with these things, unless you are able to read a Japanese computer manual and are fairly computer savvy.
Geting Started
First thing's first, you need to make sure you have the Japanese Windows IME set up. Otherwise, it will act like a normal English keyboard.
- Hook up keyboard just like any other English one you would use.
- Install the packaged software
Windows IME
Windows IME IS necessary in order for the keyboard to function.
Looking at the Keys
As you can see the keyboard has the American input keys also written on there, however, it also includes the Hiragana in the lettering, as well.
- Try typing with the keyboard in something like Notepad or whatever, you wil notice that it will type the English.
- Here comes the tricky part, in order to use your keyboard like a Japanese keyboard instead of Ro-maji, you will need to set your IME a litle differently. By default everything you type will be converted from Ro-maji into Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji, whatever you need. However, you purchased a Japanese keyboard, and this if you wanted to type in Ro-maji, then damnit you would have stuck to your standard American keyboard. Ok, here we go in order to set it properly typing, follow this picture
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/L4sT_ReSOrT/datsit.jpg OR, alternatively there is a button below the ひらがな/かたかな button that allows you to change from Ro-maji, to the proper lettering, In order to do this, you hit ALT+ひらがな/かたかな. And thereby allowing you to use the keys, instead of the Romanization.
How to Use
After properly switching from Ro-maji to whatever it says on the second option, you should be able to type in Japanese, without Ro-maji. By doing this hit the top button where ` or ~ would be on English. In Japanese in translates to something like half and full. By pressing this it will change from English into Japanese, thereby allowing you to type. If you did not set the option shown in the picture, that button will function from English to Ro-maji, which is convenient for beginners, as opposed to hitting the tray button. Just play around with the keyboard, you will get the hang of it. The side buttons next to the spacebar translate to "No Change" on the left and "Change" on the right. The way Japanese keyboarding works is that they will type what they want then translate to Kanji, by using these buttons you can select a portion of text and change it, or cancel the change, depending on if the Kanji is wrong or not. In order to input the Hiragana, we use the bottom left button, which says "ひらがな (Hiragana) and かたかな (Katakana) on the top, in order to use Katakana, we hit shift then the same ひらがな/かたかな button.
