Typing Japanese characters on a Mac

If your learning content requires you to type Japanese characters, you can use the input method built into your Mac's operating system to do so. This method will allow you to type Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji characters in any exercise that requires typing. If the instructions below do not work on your system, make sure that you have enabled the Japanese input method, then consult your operating system's instructions for typing Japanese characters.

Note: See Typing Japanese characters on Windows for instructions relating to that platform. Japanese typing options will not be available on iOS or Android tablets, although you can still use the Easy Typing feature. On any operating system, if you prefer to enter Japanese answers by selecting characters instead of typing them, set the Easy Typing switch on the activity's screen to On.

To type Japanese Hiragana or Katakana characters on a Mac:

1. Position your cursor somewhere where you can type Japanese text.
2. In the upper right-hand part of the screen, locate the small icon representing the current typing language. Click on that icon to display the list of languages, then select the Hiragana option (marked with the symbol ) or the Katakana option (marked with the symbol ).
3. Type the Romaji representation of the characters that you want to type. Romaji is a system for transliterating Japanese phonetically using English letters. Most Hiragana and Katakana characters can be typed as a consonant followed by a vowel. If there are transliterations shown in the content, you can usually use them as a rough guide to what you need to type, but be aware of a few exceptions:
• For the character that represents the nasal sound (ん in Hiragana, ン in Katakana), type nn.
• The character は (usually pronounced 'ha') is sometimes pronounced and transliterated 'wa', particularly when it is functioning as a particle. However, it is always typed with ha.
• In transliterated Japanese, long vowel sounds may be indicated either by a single vowel with a macron (such as ā) or by two vowels in a row (such as aa). To type the Japanese characters, you will need to enter the two vowels. For example, even though the syllable さあ may be transliterated as sā or saa, it should always be typed as saa. Note that the long o sound represented by ō is typed as oo in some words and ou in others, depending on which Japanese characters it is representing. Look at the actual Japanese characters to see which combination is needed - for example, both そお and そう could be transliterated as sō, but the first of those syllables would be typed as soo and the second as sou.
4. As you type, your letters will be converted into Hiragana or Katakana characters with a line underneath. When you are done typing, press the Enter key and the underline with disappear.

To type Japanese Kanji characters on a Mac:

1. Position your cursor somewhere where you can type Japanese text.
2. In the upper right-hand part of the screen, locate the small icon representing the current typing language. Click on that icon to display the list of languages, then select the Hiragana option (marked with the symbol ). The Hiragana option allows you to type both Hiragana and Kanji characters.
3. Type the Romaji representation of the characters that you want to type. The letters you type will be converted into Hiragana characters, with an underline.
4. Press the Space bar. The Hiragana characters will be converted into Kanji characters.
5. Do one of the following:
• If the Kanji characters that appear are the ones you want, you can either go on to type other characters or press the Enter key if you are done typing.
• If the Kanji characters that appear are not the ones you want, continue with these instructions.
6. Press the Space bar again. A box displaying other possible characters will appear.
7. Do one of the following:
• Click on the character that you want.
• Type the number that appears next to the character you want.
8. When the character you want appears in the typing field, you can either go on to type other characters or press the Enter key if you are done typing.

A note on numerals:

You can type Japanese numerals by following the Kanji instructions above, entering either the Romaji transliteration for the name of the number or the English numerals. Remember that Japanese uses the characters for ten (十), hundred (百), thousand (千), ten thousand (万), and so on to indicate place values for digits. For example, the numeral 34 would be written 三十四, meaning "three tens and four".

See also:

• Things to know about Japanese
• Enabling an input method on Mac
• Installing an input method on Windows
• Typing Japanese characters on Windows
• Language-specific information

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