注音打字

How fast can you type zhuyin?

A 60-second test on the standard Dai Chien layout, the one every phone and computer in Taiwan uses. Type the zhuyin for each word as it appears. Nothing to sign up for, and you can retake it as often as you like.

60 seconds. Type on your own keyboard if you have the zhuyin layout installed, or tap the on-screen one, which highlights the next key.

Fastest zhuyin typists

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How zhuyin typing speed is measured

This test reports characters per minute, written 字/分鐘, because that is how Chinese typing speed is measured. Words per minute is an English convention that depends on words being separated by spaces, which Chinese text does not do. Counting the characters you actually produced is both more honest and easier to compare against any other Chinese typing test.

Each Chinese character takes two to four keystrokes in zhuyin: the symbols of the syllable, then a tone. So the number is naturally lower than an English words-per-minute score, and comparing the two is meaningless.

What counts as fast in Taiwan

Chinese typing speed is a certifiable skill there, and employers ask for it by number. The TQC 中文輸入 certification sets three thresholds, each also requiring an error rate below ten percent:

實用級 — practical: 15 字/分; The floor for data-entry and clerical work.
進階級 — advanced: 30 字/分; Close to the average speed reported for typists in Taiwan.
專業級 — professional: 80 字/分; Fast enough that typing stops being the slow part.

The bands in this test borrow those numbers, but the two are not the same exercise. TQC runs for ten minutes on continuous text, where phrases you have typed a thousand times carry you along. This is sixty seconds of unrelated words with nothing to predict, so the same typist scores lower here than they would there. Treat a result as a floor rather than a ceiling.

How typing zhuyin actually works

You spell out a syllable's sound, add its tone, then pick the character you meant from the candidates the input method offers. It is spelling by sound and then choosing, which is why knowing the 37 symbols is most of knowing the keyboard: the keys simply are the symbols, laid out roughly in the traditional order.

The layout is called Dai Chien (大千). It is the default on every device sold in Taiwan, and it is built into iOS, Android, Windows and macOS with nothing to download.

How to get faster

Learn the symbols first. Hunting for a key you half-remember is what costs the time, not finger speed.
Let the tone key end the syllable. Reaching for space after every character is a habit worth not forming.
Type things you would actually send. Isolated words plateau quickly; sentences build the rhythm.