"Keyboardization" in Chinese writing (joke)

There’s a report on United Daily about the prevalence of mistakes when writing has been “keyboardization” today. Instead of handwriting, people just type on their keyboard to communicate.

For a non-alphabetic language with so many homophones like Chinese, the tendency has a great impact. For one thing, a lot of youngsters are retrogressing in their handwriting. They don’t know how to write since clicking on keyboard has replaced writing the characters stroke by stroke. As a result, they just recognize a general “outline” of a word instead of each stroke of it, which leads to wrong characters.

For another, there’re many typing systems for the Chinese characters. For those who don’t learn any of them, they might use Mandarin Phonetic Symbols to type. To be more specific, the new system of it, which automatically picks out a word for you among the dozens of homophones and requires you to correct it if it picks out the wrong one. For people communicating online, very likely they just don’t bother to do the proofreading since they talk fast. Mistakes or misunderstanding thus come along.

The report shows some hilarious examples of how a sentence can mean so differently if you just don’t check on the words computer has picked up for you. The highlighted parts are the homophones of the red characters, which are what you really mean.

有隻豬在我電腦上         There’s a pig on my computer.

有蜘蛛(zhi zhu)在我電腦上  There’s a spider on my computer.

同學去世真的超好笑 A classmate’s death is super hilarious.

同學去勢真的超好笑 A classmate’s being castrated is super   

    hilarious.

同學趣事(qu4 shi4)真的超好笑 A classmate’s interesting episode is super hilarious.

你會癢是嗎？ You are feeling itchy, aren’t you?

你會仰式(yang3 shi4)嗎？ Can you swim the backstroke?

及時通上吹噓，我弟李添財

I was bragging on Messenger about my brother Li Tian-cai.

及時通上吹噓，我地理天才(di4 li3 tian cai2)

I was bragging on Messenger about my geographic genius.

你腋下如何？ How is with your armpit?

你意下(yi4 xia4)如何？ What do you think?

外面吃東西，儘可能氫彈

Try to eat as much hydrogen bombs as possible when eating out.

外面吃東西，儘可能清淡(qing dan4)

Try to eat as much light food as possible when eating out.

老師教學生電腦，問大家觀音笑了嗎？

The teacher asked students if Guan-yin Goddess had laughed when teaching the computer class.

老師教學生電腦，問大家關音效(guan yin xiao4)了嗎？

The teacher asked students if they had turned off the sound effect when teaching the computer class.

This is why Chinese is a language of poetry, I guess. In fact, Taiwanese poet 陳黎(chen li2) has really composed a poem of such kind that turns a love poem into a dirty one. The title of the poem takes mistyping on the computer as an excuse to make such a twist.

Bombs of laughter might just explode when you’re typing Chinese characters with your computer.

有隻豬在我電腦上=有只猪在我电脑上

同學趣事=同学趣事

及時通=及时通

外面吃東西，儘可能清淡=外面吃东西，尽可能清淡

關音效=关音效

陳黎=陈黎