DISAMBIGUATION OF PHONETIC CHINESE INPUT BY RELAXATION-BASED WORD IDENTIFICATION

Among the various Chinese input methods for computers, the national phonetic 'input method is the most favored one by casual users in Taiwan. Possible reasons include the following: (1) users need not decompose each character into parts which in most cases are puzzling non-conventional Chinese radicals; (2) everyone learns the national· phonetic symbols in primary school; and (3) the number of the national phonetic symbols is only 37. Also, there exists a well-known ordering among the symbols. Hence it is easy for most. people to memorize them well, which facilitates the finding of proper symbol keys, in contrast with the difficulty of searching the unnatural radical keys required by radical-based input methods.