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Typing in other languages | ||
Tags: Keyboard | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Sanghee Groupie United States Joined 5060 days ago 60 posts - 98 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 17 of 25 23 February 2011 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I used to just switch my keyboard setting to Korean to type in Korean and attempted to memorize where the keys are since the layout is different. But now, I have bought a Korean-English keyboard and only have to press a button to switch between English and Korean (The button is between space and right alt, called 한/영) and there's another button if I want to write hanja (The button is between space and left alt, called 한자). It's much more convenient; even though I have the layout pretty well memorized, I like being able to look down from time to time like I do when I type English, and the button to switch between languages is nice. I find it kind of amusing to type what'd otherwise be nonsense if I forgot to switch to Korean (dkssudgktpdy is 안녕하세요), and yet I have no issues with switching keyboard layouts in my mind anymore. One downside is occasionally Microsoft Word will think what I typed makes more sense in Korean than in English, and "help" me by switching my keyboard to Korean for me. That's handy if I really am switching between English and Korean, but not so handy if I'm in the middle of writing and essay for history class.
I have seen online ways of typing Korean using romanization and having the program switch it to Korean for you, but those are really difficult to use and it'd take more effort than just learning the new keyboard layout. I used to type Japanese when I would play an online Japanese game, and I just switched my keyboard setting to Japanese; it let me write the romanization and it'd switch to Japanese characters (as Lucky Charms explained). I liked that at the time because I only knew a few phrases (basically enough to tell people I don't speak Japanese) and it was easy to type, but if I ever seriously study Japanese I'd probably invest in a JPN keyboard. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| urloup Newbie Germany Joined 5015 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: German* Studies: Persian | Message 18 of 25 23 February 2011 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For Windows there is a little tool called "Keyboard Layout Creator". It helps you to create your own keyboard layouts (ok, the name already explains it pretty well). You just have to remember which key represents which sign, since the actual physical keyboard in front of you won't change, of course.
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| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 5123 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 19 of 25 23 February 2011 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Once I've forgotten my Cyrilic/Latin keyboard and having a keyboard with only Latin letters, I was very surprised to find out that there's actually no need in extra keyboard! My fingers know somehow to press the right keys.
Then I tried this out with another alphabetic system I didn't type before. The result of the experiment: having typed some amount of text (approx. 5-10 pages), you know unconsciously where to press. However, with non-alphabetical systems of input it might be different. My advice, don't buy any extra keyboard, just change the keyboard schema in your operating system when needed and try to get along with it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6941 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 20 of 25 24 February 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't, because I didn't want to have to learn a new keyboard layout. Also, I've never seen even a Japanese person use it before. I guess that since they sometimes have to type in Latin letters (for usernames, etc.), they feel the same way that I do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5170 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 21 of 25 24 February 2011 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
For Russian I wrote Perun (old Slavic god (maybe) ), It supposed to be piorun - thunder. (not that this is Russian). As for Chinese and Japanese, i recommend Google ime! it's better than the Windows one, although it does not include writing recognition. (if you don't know pronunciation of certain character, you may just write it with your mouse). Google is good, because there are more entries etc. Don't install this Chinese one (I forgot the name), it's very good, but my computer crashed after it and I had to reinstall my system :( 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| purplepixie Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5017 days ago 26 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Greek | Message 22 of 25 24 February 2011 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks everyone, this has been a really useful thread! And now I can type what I need for Spanish
á é í ó ú ñ ¿ ¡ Muchas gracias!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6941 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 23 of 25 25 February 2011 at 3:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Agreed! The Google IME accesses an online database when you type, not just the internal dictionary (whether that database is compiled from Google search keywords, or from what other Google IME users are typing, I'm not sure), so that the candidate kanji conversions are based on the most popular conversions. This means that celebrity names, brand names, and recent coinages come up without you having to manually put them in. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5344 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 24 of 25 26 February 2011 at 8:13am | IP Logged | |||||
This is very useful, thanks! For German I had memorized the alt codes, but then when I began learning Spanish I realized that I didn't want to have to memorize more alt codes, and now since I've began looking into some Croatian, I realized that the number of alt codes to memorize just keeps getting larger and larger. Until I get to the point in Spanish or Croatian where I am typing large texts and want to type faster, these tool bars shall do me wonders. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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