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I've just finished my two months travelling in China and have arrived to spend one month in Taiwan.

I now want to learn as much as I can about how Mandarin Chinese is used here.

One thing different in Taiwan is that people type using Zhuyin Fuhao a.k.a. bopomofo. So I want to learn both bopomofo and how to type it.

A website I'm using to learn bopomofo via flashcards requires me to type in bopomofo to test myself. There are a good few IMEs in Windows 7 for traditional Chinese and I've fiddled with a couple of them but have not found out how to enter "raw" bopomofo without the IME converting to characters.

To illustrate:

To enter a character such as 馬 you would type ㄇㄚˇ

But in certain situations you don't want ㄇㄚˇ to be converted to 馬, you just want it to stay as ㄇㄚˇ.

How can this be done? (The website is memrise.com but please don't just suggest some other site or app to help me learn, because I'm curious to figure out how to enter bopomofo anyway.)

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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  1. Use the default installed Chinese language pack (Chinese Traditional Taiwan Microsoft BoPoMo)

  2. When typing, try using the space bar, this works for characters that don't represent anything by themselves (ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌ etc...). This won't work for characters that are associated with words (ㄚ=阿, ㄞ=哀, ㄛ=喔)

  3. For ㄅㄆㄇ that are associated with words, you will have to scroll down and pick what you want. A little more of a hassle, but still works.

  4. Tones can be used by themselves. just insert them and press space bar (ˊ ˇ ˋ ˙) But I will warn you beforehand, they are written in superscript and hard to read.

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Use your own IME:

1) enter image description here

2) Make sure that your IME is:

enter image description here

3) Choose "Phoetic" and directly input what you want.

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  • Yes this is IME I installed when I got to Taiwan. But it seems I didn't explain well enough that my problem is how to type bopomofo and get it to stay as bopomofo and NOT converted. Installing it is the easy part!
    – hippietrail
    Jan 27, 2014 at 4:14
  • I'm really sorry for my inability to explain this in a way you can understand. I can type ㄇㄚˇ but it always gets converted to 馬, even when I want it to stay as ㄇㄚˇ.
    – hippietrail
    Jan 27, 2014 at 5:08
  • There is of course one huge disadvantage with downloading and installing this IME for a Chinese learner. The installer is only in Chinese and has many options and popup windows which a learner has no hope of coping with unless a Chinese friend is there to guide them through. This is one advantage the IMEs that come with a computer or OS have - they do not assume that only fluent native speakers will have occasion to use them and have options, menus, popups, settings, help, etc in English or the language of the OS.
    – hippietrail
    Jan 27, 2014 at 8:06
  • Well……Sorry but you can just use IME，I've upgrated the answer;)
    – xqMogvKW
    Jan 27, 2014 at 8:08
  • I did have the MS simplified IME installed but when I installed the Sogou IME it seems to have taken the place of the MS one instead of just adding itself to the end of the list \-:
    – hippietrail
    Jan 27, 2014 at 8:15
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This is quite easy to me, are you using MS IME?

follow the tutorial in this page http://goo.gl/PAAj2

when you reach the "Add Input Language" part, select "Chinese(Traditional) - Phonetic", then save setting, then switch your IME to "Chinese(Traditional) - Phonetic", press any bopomofo characters you want, then press space bar, the characters you want should appear(sometimes you have to select them from a list).

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14
  • Well I want to use MS IME to type in Pinyin and have another keyboard/IME to type in Bopomofo. I don't think it's possible to install two instances of the same MS IME, one with each setting. I didn't foresee this though when I posted the question. This is also the case with CA55CE37's solution which I didn't realize immediately.
    – hippietrail
    Jan 27, 2014 at 15:35
  • I can have multiple input methods, and each has a different keyboard layout(I've just tried), don't know where your problem is. When you say Pinyin, did you mean the input method used in mainland china? If so, you should be able to have Pinyin and "Chinese(Traditional) - Phonetic" coexist and each has a different setting.
    – ChaoYang
    Jan 28, 2014 at 3:02
  • Yes I can have two different IMEs installed but I can't have two copies of the same IME with different settings installed. As I already use the MS IME for typing Pinyin for Simplified Chinese I can't also use the MS IME for typing bopomofo for Traditional Chinese. But the answers so far tell me how to change the MS IME settings, thus leaving it no longer able to type pinyin for simplified Chinese.
    – hippietrail
    Jan 28, 2014 at 4:03
  • I can have the Chinese Traditional Phonetic, but that leads to my original problem in my question, that the bopomofo is always converted to hanzi, and sometimes I don't want it converted.
    – hippietrail
    Jan 28, 2014 at 4:05
  • Just trying to help, when you say MS IME did you mean the language bar? while IME refers to input methods?(I am not a native speaker) If so, your MS IME should be able to install different input methods. Press "EN" button on the language bar to change your location then cycle through each input methods by pressing ctrl+shift. There are many input methods for chinese, the input method for doing Pinyin and the input method for doing bopomofo is different. It is strange for you to say that you want to do both(Pinyin and bopomofo)in one input method.
    – ChaoYang
    Jan 28, 2014 at 7:52
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Use Rime and Chuimfuhau schema from the Rime-aca project.

Next, type bopomofo in pinyin. Enjoy the ease.

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