Japanese 1 Course asking me to type in Japanese

Hey odonnellb12 Im a beginner and I was in the same place as you are a few days ago. Trust the method and you will learn. Not everything all at once, the flash-card system will keep on prompting you for the words you find difficult and eventually they will sink into your memory. First, short term, then long term - just remember to review your words and you will get it! I bet you will remember the Kanji for Kampai now :smiley: 乾杯! 頑張る!

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your reply. The problems is that it’s expecting me to actually type out characters that I don’t have on my keyboard. How can I type these characters if I’m using an English language keyboard?

Thanks,
Brenden

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Im afraid I have been doing the courses on my iPad and iOS gives a limited keyboard with the characters we need. Maybe that is cheating! But I know that usually when typing in Japanese on an English keyboard on PC or Mac you would type the Romaji sound by sound that should then produce the hiragana automatically and when you have hiragana that can make Kanji you can press the space bar to choose between the different Kanji (because there is usually a choice). I don’t know with Memrise on PC but you may need to install a different software ‘keyboard’ in Windows or OSx or Linux and choose that as your input (dont worry you can still use your hardware keyboard) - Sorry Ive forgotten how to add a new language, but google ‘typing kanji (your operating system)’ and I’m sure there will be a tutorial!

I hope that all helps!

simply, you have to install some Japanese keyboard on your puter/device

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=install+japanese+keyboard&sa=G&gbv=1&sei=hmerWN-qEIefaIrGgYAL

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I recommend using the Google Japanese Input. It’s what I use and it’s very easy to install and use.

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/japaneseinput/eula.html

I downloaded IME so I could type in japanese.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30390
Select Japanese and download.
Typing is easy as f**k, you just type in romanji and kana magically appears! Also, if you type a word in kana (for example in hiragana) and press space a brief list of kanjis and kana appears so you can select the way you want to write that word.
This solves your problem of needing to type as well, since you have to type the word in romanji correctly.
I hope this helped.
Sorry if there was any mistake in this reply, english is not my mother tongue.

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I’ve tried downloading the keyboard, but it refuses to work, and now I can’t progress properly because I type an answer and memrise tells me “you wrote romaji instead of japanese.” I know I wrote in Romaji, but I have no way of writing the Japanese! I read somewhere that a special on screen keyboard is available for some courses, but I can’t find it, so…

what os are you using?

os is computer type, right? I have windows 10.

Jone_Sams wa not taking about w10

And yet, IME is the only keyboard option for Japanese on my computer, and it doesn’t work. What do? Edit: I’ve now found an online keyboard, I think it’ll be fine now… Thanks for the help!

It’s possible you have to change the language settings of your keyboard.
I first have to go from azerty to querty, and then choose Japanese.
You also might have to install Japanese in the lanhuage settings. And the system often takes some time to react. You have to fiddle a bit to make it work.

To be honest, you absolutely need a Japanese keyboard installed to learn the language. Learning through romaji is a bad habit because you won’t actually be able to read real Japanese, as it’s never actually written in romaji. Unless you only want to learn how to speak Japanese, I’d highly recommend finding a way to get a Japanese keyboard installed. Ganbatte! :grinning:

I think you mean an IME. Even Japanese seldomly use a Japanese keyboard.

I’ve ran into this as well. however I already use google IME so I CAN do it. My issue is that memrise expects us to use kanji without having taught it yet! That’s really poorly done!

There, frustrations vented. Back to studying.

i think odonnellb12 want a application that can make him type with a onscreen keyboard in japanese. Window 10 does not has such feature but you can install japanese language pack and a software called Hot Virtual Keyboard. This keyboard shows characters in hiragana and katakana. がンばて:grinning:

I’ve installed the keyboard of Windows, but the real problem of the course is that Memrise is expecting to write Kanji, but some of those kanji are really difficult. This Kanji sometimes are from a N3 or N2 level, so it’s useless. I think that the only solution is to write hiragana aswell, and if you know the kanji you write it down.

I don’t know what do you think about this, or what kind of solution you had found.

The best method for using IME is to type romaji, which automatically converts to hiragana and press enter after each word. If you need katakana, press f7 and then enter to convert the whole word to katakana. If you need kanji, type out the reading in hiragana and press space to scroll through kanji with that reading or with a reading close to what you typed. In very rare cases, you may need to look up the kanji you want with f5 and search through a dictionary to find it. Most Japanese people type this way and it is pretty damn efficient. I found this guide online if any of that didn’t make sense.

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こんにちは guys this may have already been mentioned. On the one hand there is the auto-correct/ suggestion drop down that appears which is super helpful, but for me it sometimes doesn’t have the words that I need. There is actually a way to fix this inconvenience.
So I was having an issue with 乾杯 “kampai!” it wouldn’t appear in the suggestions when I typed かんぱい.
If you go to settings and click on Japanese and go to options,
then scroll down to keyboards and click on Microsoft IME and go to options
You will see this option below, which allows you to adjust how Microsoft reads the words you are trying to type and you can add-in/personalize your typing. Copy and paste the word/spelling you need, and type what you want it to read.

This is just my quick fix to these minor inconveniences, hope this helps. 乾杯!
And sorry guys I had more guiding images, but they wouldn’t let me post them since I’m a new member. ごめんなさい

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im having trouble finding certain kanji in my drop down options when i type in hiragana
can some one help me out