[uranusjr]

Eh, you can find at least three (Traditional) Chinese input methods on any given modern system, and Pinyin is only one of them. Cangjie and Bopomofo require no understanding to Latin alphabets. Not to mention there are other less used methods such as Boshiamy.

[zirgs]

As I understand - Pinyin is still the most popular one. It also is compatible with all standard Latin keyboards and doesn't require touchscreens or microphones. So pretty much all educated Chinese people are familiar with the Latin alphabet. But for most people outside China - the Chinese alphabet looks like gibberish.

[robjan]

Pinyin is used in regions where Simplified Chinese is the predominant written language, but other systems are generally used in regions where traditional Chinese is the written language e.g Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan

[jefftk]

And speech to text!

[zirgs]

Speech to text is very impractical and error-prone.

[jefftk]

Talking to a Chinese-speaking coworker, my understanding had been that speech to text was very popular in China, especially on phones?

[rahimnathwani]

Yes it is.

Tangent: Anthropic's CEO worked on Mandarin speech recognition at Baidu: https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02595

[zirgs]

OK, but it doesn't work in situations where you don't want others to hear what you type. And in places with lots of noise.

[jefftk]

In English I use speech to text a lot (including completely substituting it for typing for a year when I had wrist issues). If your microphone is right next to your mouth and you're using good software it works in surprisingly noisy environments: I can talk quietly directly into my mic on the subway without issues. And when I'm at my desk I use a boom mic next to my mouth, with similar benefits.

Quiet environments were, for me, more of an issue: it combines very poorly with open plan offices since you bother the people around you.