Qwerty???

Always puzzles me when I see a Roman keyboard in Anime.

Theres one in both `Applessed` Movies.

And in `Ergo Proxy`...

And in `Noein`...

To be fair, `Appleseed` and `Ergo Proxy` are set in English speaking settings.

And the two characters in Noein we see using them, are Quantum Physists..we can assume they do speak and write english... (And one is definatley using an english language programme.)

What do you think?

Or do all anime characters by default speak Bonin island? (A place in the world where they `do` speak a mix of english and japanese.)

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I imagine it is hard to change away from something once everyone's used to it. I type without looking at the keyboard so I'd find it pretty hard to use a one that wasn't QWERTY. As it is, I've never encountered one that wasn't (though the BF's has the right-side shift key where the slash key ought to be -very irritating to use!) but I recall my Dad once traveling in France and grumbling in his emails about how tedious it was to type them on the non-QWERTY keyboards he was encountering there.

In Japan qwerty keyboards are far more common than any other type. The reason being is romaji is taught to all elementary school students (that's how to take a Japanese word and romanise it). Instead of a keyboard with all the hiragana and katakana 'alphabets' on the keys, it is just as easy to type it in romaji...

If you want an example of romanji.... romanji is as good as any! LOL (It means roman characters)

Admittedly, it does get more complicated than that, because all the word processing programmes then start suggesting kanji characters based on the letters you're typing.

I stunned my co-workers because I could touch type (and naturally ended up doing all the English word processing necessary). They, on the other hand, had to stop and choose the right character to fit what word they were writing.

Their admiration, however, soon turned from 'wow - that's awesome!' to muttered 'that damn woman, comes in here and five minutes later walks out with a whole page while I'm still on the second paragraph!'

There have been experimental completely Japanese keyboards and you often have the choice of typing out the two letter syllable or choosing a function that designates a key for each one (the character is in a different colour above the key itself), but the people I had conversations on this topic with all said they prefer the qwerty (the reasons why would require a lesson in Japanese so I won't bore you with it! LOL).

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Thats chinese.

The Japanese have several scripts.

KANJI -chinese characters

HIRAGANA a sillabary

KATAKANA another sillabary, dont know the difference.

(can anyone explain?)

Thanks for your informastion. I can be terribly ignorant on Things Japanese. (Its not like I will ever go there. And its strange how my adventuring friends treat Asia with indifference. If I was the traveling type, I would definaly go to Asia.)

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"If you think I am a Condor, you may keep that opinion;
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Kanji (the symbology) - if I recall correctly - originated in Chinese symbols. Thus, the symbol can have the following:

1) The meaning of the original kanji but the Japanese pronounciation
2) The pronounciation of the original kanji but the Japanese meaning
3) the meaning and pronounciation of the original kanji

Hiragana is - as Green mentioned - appended to the kanji to provide verb tense, additional syllables after the kanji sound, or a "fully expanded" pronounciation guide.

Katakana is also for sounds (Onomatopoeias) as well as words borrowed from other languages.

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