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Typing in other languages

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
25 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4  Next >>
purplepixie
Diglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 5017 days ago

26 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Greek

 
 Message 1 of 25
23 February 2011 at 10:17am | IP Logged 
This is a very newbie question - not new to learning languages, just to writing about it on the internet!

How do you type accents, tilde, umlaut, non-roman letters etc online? I am using a samsung netbook and have no idea how to do this, so my written Spanish online always lacks accents etc. And I'd have no idea where to start with a language using a different alphabet like Greek or Thai.

Could someone explain to me, treat me like an idiot? (I'm not the most techno-savvy person around!)
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Psychedelica
Diglot
Newbie
NetherlandsRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5304 days ago

7 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: Dutch*, English
Studies: Spanish, French, Swedish

 
 Message 2 of 25
23 February 2011 at 10:53am | IP Logged 
You could change your keyboard layout to one that has dead keys, so that when you press ' and after that e, for example, you see é, when you press " + u you get ü, etc. You can also use AltGr as a dead key, which I prefer, but the most common is ' (and ", and ~...). I assume you use Windows, so this should work.

Another way is to use Alt codes.
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JimC
Senior Member
United Kingdom
tinyurl.com/aberdeen
Joined 5539 days ago

199 posts - 317 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 3 of 25
23 February 2011 at 11:10am | IP Logged 
This is the best method I have come across (and I have tried a few). This little tool sits on top of any window and can be used in any program or browser window.

Unlike other such tools, you don't have to be online to use it.

Spanish Letters

Jim
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stelingo
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5824 days ago

722 posts - 1076 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin

 
 Message 4 of 25
23 February 2011 at 12:04pm | IP Logged 
Similar to the one suggested above and available in a multitude of languages

lexibar

Useful when typing online when not on your own computer:

lexilogos
2 persons have voted this message useful



zekecoma
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5336 days ago

561 posts - 655 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

 
 Message 5 of 25
23 February 2011 at 12:25pm | IP Logged 
I use the US International keyboard layout. Won't work for a lot of languages. But for
German, Spanish, French, Dutch it work perfectly fine. I just have to do

Alt + q = ä
Alt + s = ß
Alt + y = ü
Alt + p = ö
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Lucas
Pentaglot
Groupie
Switzerland
Joined 5159 days ago

85 posts - 130 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 6 of 25
23 February 2011 at 12:29pm | IP Logged 
- German: I have a swiss keyboard, so there's no problem with the umlaut.
- Portuguese: I don't know how to write the tilde, so I don't write it...same for the
mäcen in slovak (for example there should be a mäcen on the c and the n of "mäcen").
- Russian: russian letters doesn't correspond with latin ones of the keyboards, so I
write in latin transcription.
- Chinese: you type the syllab in phonetics and the system proposes you a list of
characters from wich you choose the one you need.

2 persons have voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6695 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 7 of 25
23 February 2011 at 1:36pm | IP Logged 
When I write in Greek or Russian or Esperanto or Icelandic I mostly use a homepage called Lexilogos, which has something like a virtual keyboard (there are some other homepages with the same thing). But on my ordinary Danish keyboard I luckily have most of the combinations with ordinary accents (including things like ñ,ü and ê), and then I have memorized a number of combinations with the ALT key plus a number: ß = ALT +225, ç = ALT + 135, etc.

Edited by Iversen on 23 February 2011 at 1:37pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Tropi
Diglot
Groupie
Austria
Joined 5423 days ago

67 posts - 87 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 8 of 25
23 February 2011 at 2:31pm | IP Logged 
Which languages do you want to write? For the Indo-European languages changing the keyboard layout should be sufficient. You can do that with:
- Windows: I think it's control panel -> regional settings
- Mac: System Settings -> Regional Settings
- Linux: depends on which GUI you use, GNOME and KDE have a setting manager for sure. But you can use the cli tool "xkbsettings" else.

And for more "exotic" languages like Korean, Japanese, Chinese etc. you have to look it up. For example I use the ITABC input method for Chinese which allows me to type syllables in pinyin and then puts the correct character for me. (Or let's me choose if more than one fit.)


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