

With a good IME, like sougou, there's no doubt that this is the fastest input method, with only 2 strokes for any character, or 4 for 2-character compounds.

This is the one I use, as I like speed and efficiency in typing, and I'm willing to remember the positions of the finals on the keyboard (which most people find slightly harder). Lai = L + L, as L maps "L" in the initial position, and "ai" in the final position). For people not satisfied by regular Quanyin (whole) pinyin, there's Shuangpin (double pin), in which you only type 2 keys for any character, the initial consonant and final section (e.g.
The best pinyin for mac windows#
Sougou, Windows or Mac's native IME, google's IME (which had an incident of plagiarizing sougou's database), QQ Pinyin, Baidu pinyin etc. The most common input editor by far on the mainland is pinyin input. I'll just dump words, and put all data at the end to support my claims as much as I can. Learners are not proficient enough to use those in Chinese. One issue though might be lack of English menus, dialogs, settings, and help for the IMEs that don't come with your OS. People learning Chinese with a western language background are probably most likely to use IMEs that come with their computer or OS.īut it would be very good for us to know which ones actual Chinese speakers really use. For people who haven't travelled to these countries and who are just trying to learn Chinese, the IMEs from Chinese and Taiwanese companies and ones that can be downloaded from websites that don't have any English are probably not well known. I don't think Hong Kong uses bopomofo and with their changing demographics from Cantonese where pinyin wouldn't work to Mandarin, I'd be very interested to know which kind of IME is most used there, and which actual implementation.īest answers will be able to refer to some official website or statistics. Do we know which type is most used? And do we know which specific ones of the main types are used? Here in Taiwan most people do not use a Pinyin based IME, there are several IMEs based on bopomofo and others based on character shapes. Hong Kong and Taiwan both use traditional Chinese characters. If I choose to learn the most popular one I will have the best chance of finding somebody who can help me when I have questions about it. But it would be good to know which Pinyin IME is most used currently. I assume most people in these places would use a Pinyin IME. PRC, mainland China uses simplified Chinese characters, as does Singapore. Because there are many kinds of input method and many implementations of each kind of input method, it's not really practical to learn many.
