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Homonyms in Chinese is always perceived as an impossibility but actually not a problem at all for inputting Chinese in pinyin (with a computer). Single characters represent the fundamental concepts in Chinese, but most thought units are phrases of 2, 3, 4 or more characters. long By inputting phrases instead of the individual characters homonyms are exponetially reduced the longer you make the phrase. A 10-character phrase will probably represent a unique string. Phrase input technology has been in use in the mainland for at least a decade. A google version is also available since 2008. Average users can input Chinese text about 2 - 3 times faster than they can write. The phrase input method is so precisely controllable that it is often used in the reverse mode: using a phrase to capture problematic words that cannot be spelt correctly with pinyin, eg, typing the phrase "aluminium alloy" to capture the word "aluminium".
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