The structure of Japanese : How we encode our messages #BarcampBKK3

At the #BarcampBKK3, I enjoyed Lightning talk. Anybody can speak anything in 5 min.

When @preetamrai talked about Japanese Furoshiki wrapping things, it reminded me my old school days. I used to make lunch and wrapped the lunch box with little Furoshiki to bring to school. It was about…. 15 years ago.

This is one of the topic I talked at #BarcampBKK3.

When I was a school girl, about 12 years old, we didn’t have mobile phone yet. We had little pager which can receive text. To send text, you we have to use telephone. Some people had asked me how Japanese people text with only numbers. Phone has only 0123456789*#.

Here is the answer. Japanese alphabet (not Kanji – Chinese characters) has structures like this.

Ok…. My cat’s name is “CHIKUWA”, “CHI” can be “TI” in Japanese Roma-Ji.

CHIKUWA = 422301

With this cheat sheet, if you know how to pronounce Japanese, you could text to girls (but now days we have mobile with keyboard…. )

something like this. Most of us, kids could encode our message with our pointing fingers, it was like auto-pilot. We could encode and text without thinking.