Software that can be used to input into a computer Chinese based on the pronunciation of the dialect spoken in eastern Guangdong province, in cities such as Chaozhou and Shantou, has been downloaded nearly 50,000 times.

The software was uploaded by Zhan Dongrong and Wu Yongna, husband and wife in Jieyang, eastern Guangdong, on July 22, according to the Guangzhou-based New News Express.

Zhang, who is a staff member at a computer company, and Wu, a teacher of computer science, spent the past two decades developing the software.

Zhang started to work on it in 1991 after learning that some of his friends were finding it difficult to type the lyrics of local folk songs into computers.

The tasks that took him the most time were collecting, sorting out, conducting textual research and coding of the words in dialect, Zhang said.