What is an IME?

An IME, short for Input Method Editor, is software that lets you type a language using a different input method than the raw characters on your keyboard. For Japanese, an IME lets you type romaji, meaning Japanese sounds spelled out in Latin letters, and it converts what you type into hiragana, katakana, or kanji.

Without an IME, typing Japanese from a standard keyboard would be impractical. Japanese uses thousands of kanji, far more characters than could ever fit on a physical keyboard, so an IME does the work of turning a small, familiar set of keys into the full range of Japanese text.

The basic mechanic is simple: you type the romaji spelling of a sound, and the IME converts it as you go. For example, typing "ka" produces か. This is how hiragana and katakana get typed, sound by sound.

Kanji works a bit differently, since many kanji share the same reading. After you type out the full reading of a word, the IME offers a suggestion list of matching kanji, and you pick the one you mean. The general idea is always the same: spell the sound, then let the IME handle the conversion.

Typing kana and kanji with Kumi

1. 1

   Type romaji, and it becomes kana

   Type the romaji spelling of a word and Kumi converts it to kana as you go. Typing "nihongo" gives you にほんご.

2. 2

   Press space to convert to kanji

   With a kana word in the field, press the space bar. Kumi opens a suggestion list of matching kanji, for example 日本語 for にほんご.

3. 3

   Pick a suggestion

   Press Enter or Tab to accept the highlighted suggestion, press a number key (1 to 9) to choose a specific one, or press space again to move down the list. Arrow keys work too.

4. 4

   Switch scripts or undo

   Use the EN / あ / ア pill (or press F6 for hiragana and F7 for katakana) to switch what new typing produces. EN types plain Latin letters, handy for answers that contain them, like AはBより or Tシャツ, and your text is kept when you switch back. Made the wrong choice? Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac) undoes a conversion.

Full sentences work exactly like they do in the IMEs built into Windows, macOS, and Android: convert as you go, one word or phrase at a time. Text you have not confirmed yet is marked with a dotted underline. Punctuation like 、 and 。 confirms the text before it automatically.

• Enter confirms, it never sends. While anything is underlined, pressing Enter confirms it as written and the underline disappears. Your answer is only submitted when you press Enter with nothing left to confirm, so you can Enter your way through a sentence just like on a real IME.
• Adjust how much gets converted. Sometimes the suggestions grab more kana than you meant: type やどくしょ and the list matches やど (宿) when you wanted や plus 読書. The suggestion list also offers shorter cuts of what you typed, so just tap や to keep it as is, and どくしょ converts next. The part being converted is shown with a solid underline; on a keyboard, Shift+Left and Shift+Right adjust it precisely.
• Fix something earlier in the sentence. Tap or click anywhere in your text and just type. The correction converts to kana right where your cursor is, and the rest of the sentence stays put.

The field below is Kumi's real built-in IME, seeded with にほんご. Press space to see the kanji suggestions, then accept one with Enter or a number key. The same IME powers your answers throughout day-to-day study in Kumi.