Job Discussion Forums

[GreenEyes]

When I was living in Japan I bought a MacBook Pro with a combined English-Japanese keyboard. So I have English on the keys as well as hiragana. Recently I started studying Japanese again and would love to learn how to write letters to my friends in Japanese. But I'm not sure how to do this. To the right of the space bar is a key that has "kana" written in hiragana and also katakana. To the left of the space bar is a key with Kanji on it. On the top of my computer screen I managed to add a button that allows me to change between English and the different Japanese scripts. But when I click on the Japanese options I'm not able to type fully in Japanese. Instead I get the "tsu" symbol underlined and nothing else, regardless of which key I'm pressing.

Any suggestions? I might have to call customer service at the Mac store in Tokyo for help, although I'm hoping that someone around here might know what to do. I know this is a job discussion forum, but couldn't figure out where I should be posting this.

Thanks!

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

What language is the operating system in? If you can have a Japanese keyboard but an English language operating system, then you still have an English language computer, and you won't be able to use the hiragana on the keys, and things like the quotation marks " will just be labled in the wrong place.

But, OTOH, I have an English language Mac bought in Canada and I can toggle between CDN, Hiragana, Katakana and Romaji characters, and the hiragana works just like it does on Japanese computers- you type tsu and you get つ, then you choose the kanji (it took a bit of messing around to be able to set it up, and I'm not really a computer wiz, so I can't actually remember how I eventually did it). Most people (and by this I mean both foreigners and Japanese people) don't actually use the hiragana markings on the keyboard, they actually type in the romaji reading and have it come up.

The key to toggle between the two on a Japanese PC computer is the top row, far left beside the "1" key and above the "tab" key (it doesn't toggle to katakana, you just put in the hiragana and choose the katakana character from the list that contains the kanji). I can't imagine that Mac Japan decided to use a significantly different keyboard layout than PCs. (The keyboard layout in Japan, other than specialty keys, is actually almost the same as the North American Commodore Vic 20's and Commodore 64's!!! )


picture of Vic 20

picture of Commodore 64

If you put "Mac discussion Boards" into google, then you'll find a bunch of them. You may find the answer you need on one of those sites.

[slodziak]

To make sure you have all the options you need selected, do this:
1. Go to system preferences.
2. Open 'International'.
3. Select 'Input Menu'
4. Make sure the 'Kotoeri' are selected (hiragana, katakana and romaji).
5. Tick box 'show input menu in menu bar' at the bottom of the page.

Now a flag should be showing in the top right hand corner of your menu bar, it will probably be an American flag. Click on the flag and you will see your kotoeri choices available for you to select.

The best is then to do as GambateBingBangBOOM suggests: choose Hiragana and then type words using the roman characters on your keyboard to create the hiragana phonetically.

Another option to quickly toggle between the English keyboard and Japanese is to press the apple/option key and the space bar together; by doing so you should see the flag change from American to Hiragana and vice versa.

[Speed]

[untmdsprt]

The Mac OS should be the same regardless of the keyboard. Starting in Leopard, the menus are all in English if you have your system to boot in English. If you go to the preferences under the kotoeri menu item, you can select whether you want to input in romaji or kana.

Since my Macbook has a US keyboard, I've left the input as romaji. Even the school's PC I'm using now has either a romaji or kana input feature, even though it has a Japanese keyboard. I've found the romaji input is actually faster.