Chinese characters’ pronunciations are expressed using the Latin alphabet with accents for tone (for example tóng xué for 同学, or classmate). Therefore modern Chinese typing is done via normal Latin keyboards by typing the pronunciation (without tones because that’s a pain) and choosing between the keyboard’s different guesses for what you intended to write. For example to say “I want a cake” I’d type “woyaogedangao” and get 我要个蛋糕. This is the Pinyin system, which is used in mainland China among others. Taiwan uses a different system and I don’t know how they type with it.

Source: Am learning Chinese.

So, a half remembered Radiolab episode or maybe it was 99% Invisible talked about this. If I remember rightly they did consider changing it because it was so much quicker and easier typing in English and Chinese character set takes up a lot of storage which was a big deal in early computers. Until someone figured they could break down all the Chinese characters into a much smaller selection of base shapes. So you could make a character by pressing a small selection of keys. So it meant a much more manageable keyboard. I think it’s even resulted in quick Chinese typists being faster than English ones.

Pinyin. They also have fancy keyboards with only 9 buttons and predictive text.

Sample Text:

同志们

这个外国人连一点中文的知识都没有

真是笨蛋

Video of me typing it: https://i.imgur.com/uPKBdJh.mp4

The text is a joke btw, don’t take it too seriously.

Edit: Thats Pinyin for Mandarin. For Cantonese, theres Jyutping.

Is there some kind of algorithmic key pressing magic that goes on in order to produce said characters

The umbrella term for the software used for East Asian Language input is “Input Method Editor.” IMEs exist for languages besides CJK also, such as for Vietnamese. Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method

There are a handful of methods of input pinyin is taught in China and Zhuyin is taught in Taiwan.

Pinyin is romanized and much easier to learn in my opinion but mashes similar sounds together in a confusing way that isn’t obvious. Zhuyin uses a Chinese derives writing system and is more accurate towards how it’s pronounced but a little more difficult to learn especially for foreigners.

There’s a good podcast episode, maybe overheard at National Geographic on the wubi method and why the creator thinks it’s the best. Essentially pre-pinyin this genius guy came up with another method of input that even today is the fasted way to input Chinese but not as easy to learn as pinyin. Pinyin also carries over some ideological baggage as China wants everyone to learn the same first language at least so the main method of learning and input is pinyin. This is annoying for dialect speakers who have to type pinyin even when the pronunciation is off like Sichuanese or not even the same language like Cantonese.

Personally pinyin is a genius system that makes the language very easy but it can also be too much of a crutch for foreigners.

Now that they type out characters phonetically, a lot of people don’t remember Chinese characters any more, even though they can still mostly read them, which is starting to be a new problem over there.

BTW this is a hard problems, and its one very effective way the government installs keyloggers on many people

Removed by mod