Boshiamy (嘸蝦米, meaning "It's nothing!" in Taiwanese) is a Chinese character IME that uses a combination of shapes, sounds and meanings, based on the letters of the Roman alphabet, to build characters.

Shapes

Some characters are built by using the shapes of Roman letters. For example, 哈 is OAO, 命 is AOP, and 印 is EP.

Sounds

Some characters are built by the initial sounds of the Chinese pronunciations of character components. For example, 粉 is represented as MBD, where M is from "mi" (米), B is from "ba" (八), and D is from "dao" (刀).

Also, some characters are formed by the way the name of the letter is pronounced: 一 (yi) is E, 二 (er) is R, and 機 (ji) is G.

Meanings

Some characters are formed by the first letters in the English meanings of character components. For example, 森 is TTT ("tree tree tree"), and 轟 is CCC ("car car car").

See also

Chinese input methods for computers