So, Jianpin (简拼 / “Simple Pinyin”) is a way of typing Chinese in an input method editor using only the initials of characters’ romanizations, and I think it’s way cool. Like if you’re entering a Chinese typing speed competition, Jianpin is what you’ll use, no exception — it is FAST! You can just type tsg and hit 1 and there, 图书馆.
And for a while now as I’ve frequented Blorptube’s live chatroom for movie and show streams, I’ve cursed my typing speed and felt envious of this super fast system Chinese has. So that’s what’s got me wondering: what would an English-language form of Jianpin look like? The closest thing I know of is predictive text or even stenotype, but they aren’t really the same thing.
And while pondering this question I of course had to come up with my own idea of how “Jianpin for English” might work, but before I share that idea I just want to make sure that no such thing already exists.
Interesting, because it’s a bit different from my own idea and seems more like a sort of standard predictive text program, right? But there’s probably a good reason why I’m not employed as an IME designer!
Ah, I understand.
I has to be modified to make completions in the middle of words, and split joined words.
It doesn’t sound so difficult to do…