00blunt

Does anyone on here speak/write japanese or chinese?

RA2OR

Would a Chinese/Japanese keyboard be full of keys with funky designs instead of letters and numbers?

Shawn

I took Mandarin in university for 2 years. So I do speak the language, but my writing has badly degraded because I have not practised in a year or so.

Keyboards in China are just like in America, I was able to confirm this when I went to Beijjing in 2001. Aside from the written characters (Hanzi), there is also a way to write chinese using the english/international alphebet (Pinyin).

For example, if I wanted to say "I'm very busy at work" I can write "Zai gongzuo, wo hen mang". The only tricky part is that the Pinyin should have accents over some characters as well but usually it takes special software to write and see them. However, most people who understand Chinese quite well know what you mean without the accents. Haha, I think I still need them.

Accents are important because the same word with a different accent means an entirely different thing.