Normally with IME/hiragana input I can type はな and transform it immediately to 花
before continuing.
But when I have written a whole sentence like わたしははなをかいます。and accepted this in IME I don’t know how to go back and tell the IME to suggest replacements for はな.
The same question arises with flick input on my tablet or phone. I am using the Samsung keyboard where I have fat arrows to modify the kana to be replaced, but I can only modify the sequence of kana that have not yet been treated by IME - see the picture: I can select か, かい, かいま or かいます but nothing else - I cannot go back to はな.
It’s a good habit to get used to converting after every word. My personal method is “word+particle > convert > rinse, repeat”.
わたしは > convert; はなを > convert; かいます > convert
I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if Japanese were the “international language” instead of English. Because the dominating keyboard layout in the world would probably be Japanese and not QWERTY. Or maybe we wouldn’t be using any keyboards at all? Would English speakers have to input kana and then convert it to romaji?
Yeah, I have this same problem, but when you think about it it kind of makes sense. The processing system has to assume that you want to keep any of the hiragana that you don’t immediately convert otherwise it could change any number of combinations that you don’t want it to. For example, it could change that はは into 母 or いま into 今. The inability to change it afterwards is probably to speed up the processing system as you are typing so it’s actually faster to just retype it rather than reselect it, have the computer figure out what you’re trying to do, and generate the list of all the possible kanji you might want. It still sucks for those of us used to the ease of typing in QWERTY, but it’s just something we have to get used to.
Yes, that looks a little better than the Samsung version. It offers even options to convert only part of the input (beginning at the left). These options are marked with 部分.
