Now I know my sun, moon, gold...

For tonight's blog, I want to follow up on a question Mom asked a few days ago.  She was wondering via the comments how people are able to type in Chinese characters.  I think she was imagining a gigantic keyboard.  I knew a little bit about it, but not enough to explain, so I do what I always do.  I asked Carol.  She said that from a young age they train to start memorizing a character table.  (Can I just mention here that memorizing is huge in China.  Americans would not believe some of the elaborate things these students can and do memorize.  Like this.) 

So here's how it works.  (I think.  Carol, please correct me if I'm misrepresenting what you told me.)  You start with some of the most common/important characters.  The first character in the left-hand column of the table below is for "sun" (日).  (The table is below the keyboard.)  You can also see it on the keyboard directly under the "A".  So if you want to type that character, you need to hit the "A" key and have a program that understands how to convert your keystrokes to Chinese.  However, since there are thousands of characters, not only do you have to learn which key to associate with which character, you have to look at all the parts of the character as well.

Again, please look at the first row of the table.  See how to the right of the "sun" there are three other characters that look similar?  And see how to the right of that there are more with the "sun" part colored red?  Yeah, so for each of those characters, you have to learn a combination of keystrokes to get the character you want. 

See the character in the next row down, under "sun"?  That's "moon" (月) and you can also see it directly under the "B" key.  (Below that is "gold" (金), which goes with C.)  Again, see how to the right of the "moon" character there are 5 additional characters that are similar?  And see how those are marked in red to the right?  Yeah, I know, it's already making my head hurt, but stay with me.

So, now back to the first row, first character in the third column.  See how it looks like "sun" and "moon" together?  If you want to make that particular character you would hit "AB".  Get it?  So each character is some combination of keystrokes with up to 5 components that you must deduce from looking at the parts and matching them to this table you've memorized since childhood.  Aren't you glad you get to type in English?

字母	字形	例子
	日
	月
	金
	木
	水
	火
	土