For example, in English, you might type something like:
r u going out 2nite?
Instead of:
Are you going out tonight?
How does that sort of thing work when texting in a logographic language? Is it just emoji city, or can they mix and match characters to make things more compact?
And similarly, is there a formal journalistic shorthand system that gets used when jotting down comments in real-time, e.g. in China, Korea or Japan?
Thank you kindly!
Yes. For example in Chinese underground metro is 地下鐵路 roughly “ground under metal road”.
The shorthand is 地鐵, roughly “ground metal”. And everyone understands that as the metro.
how easy is it (e.g., number of key presses) to get 鐵 on your keyboard? it looks massively complicated, I’m counting like 22 strokes or so
There are different input methods. I use phoenetic one so I only have to type 3 letters and select the character.
There is also “quick” input method which you only need to pay attention to 2 parts of the character when you type, then it gives you a selection of the most likely characters.
Oh, boy, do I have a Radiolab episode for you! “The Wubi Effect”
oh boy!