I’ve occasionally wondered, how the structural differences in language between latin descended western romance languages and asian ideographic (CJKV) languages have effected the development of computing and technology.

Digging through Wikipedia I was stunned at the number of different systems that have evolved to bridge this gap, most notably the profusion of different romanization methods that have been applied to the language.

For instance in Japanese alone, there are 3 main methods of Romanization (Hepburn, Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki) and of course 3 a mix of 3 separate other written languages:

Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji characters when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as 統一 tÅ?itsu (“unification”).

Which naturally leads to having keyboards like this:

(left to right)

- Alt: (the normal alt key)
- Converts to Katakana -> 1/2 Width Katakana then Hiragana
- Space: The ittybitty Japanese space bar. That took a while to get used to
- Completion (or conversion), does the same thing as space
- Mode: Changes the mode.

And on screen options like:

For direct input of kangji characters.

(pictures and description by greggman)

As a side note, despite the apparent mind-numbing complexity of these systems, Japan has a literacy rate of 99%.