Talk:Pinyin input method

Some Incorrect information
The line below:

"...Because pinyin is used mostly in the People's Republic of China, pinyin methods frequently work better when inputting simplified Chinese. Depending on the quality of the traditional Chinese support of the system in question, input of traditional Chinese may not work, or it might not be possible to input some characters, or some of the convenience features might not work..."

This is incorrect. Pinyin is purely a romanization scheme based on pronounciation. Traditional Chinese doesn't have different words, just a more complex character set. I myself currently use the Taiwanese input system with Hanyu Pinyin turned on for typing purposes.

According to PC Home (A Taiwanese PC magazine), Hanyu Pinyin was rated #2 fastest Chinese input system. (Whether for simplified or traditional)


 * I agree with the person above. I use Pinyin to type traditional, and I can say that it's perfectly the same as simplified. Taiwan's method of typing called ZhuYin is a duplicate of the PinYin system with the exact same pronounciation. For example, "bo" would be "b" and "po" would be "p". It's just another alphabet. I use pinyin mainly because I'm type mostly in english and I'm not familiar with the locations of the Zhuyin system. This obviously means that the pinyin system is the same as the zhuyin system, except with different symbols. I would recommend to someone who is familar with this topic and familiar with editing Wikipedia to mention the similarities of PinYin with the ZhuYin system. 207.81.184.128 01:34, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge with Pinyin
This should be merged with Pinyin 207.81.184.128 01:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. There are more about Pinyin method than what is in this article. Neither do I know enough to expand it myself nor do I have the interest to do the research. However, given there are articles for even simpler input methods such as LetterWise and T9 (predictive text), I say to keep these 2 articles separate. --Voidvector 02:08, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge - The 2 articles have the same content. In the case these articles are separated, there should also be another article called "Zhuyin_method" and "Wugu_method" etc. I find that this article might have been created by mistake.207.81.184.128 01:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging of sounds, "f" and "h"
It's a minor point, but this edit:

"For some speakers of Mandarin who merge the sounds represented by c and ch, s and sh, z and zh, n and ng, n and l, or h and f, pinyin-based input methods can be difficult to use" to

"For some speakers of Mandarin who merge the sounds represented by c and ch, s and sh, z and zh, n and ng, n and l, or hu and f, pinyin-based input methods can be difficult to use" edit summary: (it's hu- changing into f- not h- to f-)

is not correct. As far as I know, some southern Chinese speakers merge "f" and "h" and not "f" and "hu", eg erhu, Hunan become erfu and Funan (Fulan). Erhu does not become erf. LDHan 01:04, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The fuzzy input is set as hu to f. This means that when you type the F key on the keyboard which normally would allow only characters that has the initial f-, instead if the fuzzy inupt option is enabled, characters that starts with hu- would also be displayed along with characters with initials f-. It does not display all the characters with the initial h-, rather only those that begins with hu-. For example, toggle on fuzzy input and type huaguo the program will automatically choose 法国(faguo) instead of 滑过(huaguo). The sound erf doesn't exist in Mandarin Chinese. Typing Funan would not result in Hunan with the default fuzzy input settings. --71.166.156.73 05:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. It appears what you are describing is the default fuzzy input setting of a particular pinyin input programme. However the quoted sentence is talking about Mandarin phonology without reference to any specific pinyin input programme, whether using default settings or not. The fact is that people do say funan (or fulan) instead of hunan or erfu instead of erhu, as well as f- instead of hu- (I was wrong about hu- not changing into f-). I have changed it to: "For some speakers of Mandarin who merge the sounds represented by c and ch, s and sh, z and zh, n and ng, h or hu and f, or n and l, pinyin-based input methods can be difficult to use." LDHan 09:31, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Advantages & Disadvantages
I think when we talk about these, there should be a comparison between the pinyin method and other input methods, but not a comparison between mandarin speakers and non mandarin speakers. So a true disadvantage of pinyin method could be the input speed is not comparable with other methods such as wubi and so on.--Mukdener|(Talk to me) 03:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Out of date
This article is somewhat out of date in terms of modern Pinyin method implementations. Multi-character input feature has become standard for like a decade now. Partial input (as in the "yyh" example used in the article) is fairly standard feature in most current free IME as well (MS Pinyin, ZNABC, Google Pinyin, Sogou Pinyin). --Voidvector (talk) 08:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Fuzzy pinyin
The obvious disadvantage in adition to choosing between more homophones is that they prevent people from learning the standard language. It's like accepting wrong spelling in English. Anyway why would a nonnative speaker use this method? Nonnative speakers learn the standard language, they are supposed to distinguish between those sounds. Imitating Mandarin speakers with local accents is very offensive. It's natural for nonnatives to learn other dialects, but not Mandarin with accents. The word "nonnative" should be removed. --2.245.191.28 (talk) 01:21, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Double pinyin - one only need type "vshwrfmngshego"
However, if you disable double pinyin, you only need to type "zhrmghg", the initial letters of each syllable. Depending on the system, the first four letter could suffice as well. This doesn't work with double pinyin because it assigns finals and consonants to consonant keys. After a consonant, the system expects a final, not a consonant. Double pinyin is very bad when you want to type whole idioms. --2.246.83.165 (talk) 22:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)