Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The great Chinese puzzle: how to adapt the language to modern communication technologies

Jing Tsu describes the vast problems posed in fitting a language without an alphabet to a typewriter keyboard

A 1986 Chinese typewriter. [Getty Images] 
issue 22 January 2022

Any student of Chinese will sympathise with the 17th-century Jesuit priest Fr Emeric Langlois de Chavagnac when he wrote: ‘One can only endure the pain of learning it for the love of God.’ With its convoluted characters, subtle tones and numerous homonyms, it can seem as though the language just doesn’t want to be learned.

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