METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DATA PROCESSING AND WORD PROCESSING IN CHINESE USING A PHONETIC CHINESE LANGUAGE

摘要

A method and apparatus for data processing and word processing in the Chinese language. A Phonetic Chinese Language (PCL) is defined in which any ideogram can be unambiguously represented by a Phonetic Chinese Word (PCW) no more than four characters in length, each word being composed of letters selected from a defined set of letters that can each be uniquely represented by a 7-bit digital code. Each PCW represents one and only one ideogram and provides the full sound and tone information required to pronounce it. Ambiguities caused by homonyms and homotones are avoided. PCL words are translated into their corresponding ideograms and vice versa by means of a stored monosyllabic dictionary. A method for unambiguously separating a polysyllabic PCL character string into separate words is also provided, which makes it unnecessary to employ a polysyllabic dictionary. Also disclosed is a method of forming an alphagrammic listing from PCL character strings by separating the strings into separate characters and listing them in alphabetical order, provided that homotones and identical ideograms are grouped together even if strict alphabetical ordering of the string would have separated them. The disclosure also includes a keyboard adapted for efficiently entering PCL characters for processing.