Description

Single Kanji Conversion (単漢字変換) is a system to input Japanese characters and convert these to corresponding kanji. It can not convert word. It is the method before the MSX-JE to input the JIS characters, and used by default when MSX-JE is not installed.

The Japanese language has three forms of characters:

• the Kanji are adopted logographic Chinese characters, they are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems

• the Hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings and as phonetic complements to disambiguate readings, particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji is considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember

• the Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.

Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, they generally correspond to syllables while Kanji are ideograms, which express an idea, an concept, something that corresponds to the assembly of several kanas. This assembly is more easy in a Japanese Word Processor with the MSX-JE input system.

Use

Under BASIC in kanji mode, the JIS character entry in Single Kanji Conversion mode is done by pressing CTRL+SPACE or GRAPH+SELECT (and the same to exit the mode). From then on, you can enter a Japanese character then press the space bar to display the candidate characters.

The following keys allow you different actions.