Day +1057 : Google Pinyin

I am fine today.

I would like to introduce to you a very good Chinese input method offered for free by Google. Google Pinyin, now in version 2, provides many features that speed up the input of Chinese characters.

Though the input is based on Pinyin, the input speed can be incredibly fast with the introduction of simplified Pinyin input (简拼输入), where we only need to input the first character of the Pinyin of a word. For example, we just need to type “wmggxxqdy” to input我们高高兴兴去钓鱼 :-) Incredible, isn’t it? It is hard to believe that we can now type Chinese words faster than English’s :-)

Another feature that is very attractive is we can configure the tool to synchronize our input pattern through Google account. With this, whatever input pattern that the tool picks up based on our input habit or any shortcuts (词组) that we configured manually will be preserved across computers. Let says we configure a shortcut, “xdhpzt” to represents 宣道会蒲种堂 on our home computer. By right, only this computer will understand this shortcut. However, if we synchronize the input tool through Google account, any computers with Google Pinyin that log in to Google account will be able to use the shortcut as well. So we do not need to train our computer one by one :-)

There are plenty of other useful features that make it a valuable tool.

However, this applies for simplified Chinese characters (简体字) input only. If you need to input traditional Chinese characters (繁体字), then forget about this tool. It simply doesn’t work.

Turning to traditional Chinese mode, we get the traditional Chinese phrase我們家里有一只小狗 instead of 我們家裏一只小狗.

You can download the tool at http://www.google.com/ime/pinyin/ and its features are detailed at http://www.google.com/ime/pinyin/feature.html.

Happy typing :-)

See you next post :-)