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Learning keyboard for foreign languages. | ||
Tags: Keyboard | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| magic9man2 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6409 days ago 149 posts - 153 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Taiwanese, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 9 of 19 31 December 2007 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
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For Japanese typing it's very easy the way I do it. I just set it so I can switch between English and Japanese using a language bar in the corner. Just type the sounds you want and use the space bar to decide which kanji to use for the sound.
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| ilanbg Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6190 days ago 166 posts - 189 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (classical), Persian | Message 10 of 19 31 December 2007 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I've since decided to use the Arabic-QWERTY keyboard for my Arabic. It matches up the sounds of the Arabic
alphabet to similar letters in the Latin alphabet on the QWERTY keyboard. It's not the same layout that Arabic writers would use but until I foresee myself using any computers in the Middle East (or elsewhere that speaks Arabic), I don't see the need to learn anything more complicated than that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6349 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 11 of 19 31 December 2007 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
I think you will be alright. If you feel comfortable then it should be fine. The only reason I can think of to use a Middle Eastern layout is that shift kinda makes sense with some letters (e.g. alif -> alif hamza, lam -> lam alif). I don't know how letters are related to their "uppercase" in a QWERTY Arabic keyboard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChrisWebb Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6043 days ago 181 posts - 190 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 12 of 19 04 January 2008 at 4:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I just use stickers for Korean typing, I find it preferable to having to use the visual keyboard that Microsoft includes in the IME as that seems less than predictable at times.
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| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6024 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 13 of 19 04 January 2008 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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i really need to get myself sticker for korean.
i hope i can maybe find transparent sticker paper (i know it exists!) it's just too bad the korean keyboard isn't as simple as the japanese one :( (although it's built completely logical) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 6808 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 14 of 19 05 January 2008 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Typing in Japanese is a breeze. Typing in Chinese......euh......please just stick to pinyin or zhuyin for now if you do not wish to give Chinese up. :)
I use the keyboard layout that natives would use. Since you still have to learn the keyboard one way or the other, why not just catch up with the mainstream once and for all? Nevertheless, the AZERTY is really bizarre; I find it not only weird but also insufficient for the French language. I just found something Canadian Multilingual Standard, and it looks nice enough. I'm considering changing my layout for French to that one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6252 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 15 of 19 05 January 2008 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm getting a Japanese keyboard from eBay (I found a cheap one... my final price with shipping was $24). My rationale was that I need a new keyboard anyway -- sometimes the keys don't register very well -- so I might as well get a Japanese one. Although stickers work almost as well, and of course there's always romaji input with the IME, the Japanese keyboard's extra keys look attractive to me. For instance, I'd like being able to quickly switch to katakana without having to hit alt+Caps Lock, which is always kinda awkward for me. I don't think the Keyboard Layout Editor can fix that, either.
For typing in Spanish, I use the US International keyboard layout with a standard QWERTY keyboard, and I'll probably make my own keyboard layout to accomodate the particular set of diacritics I need (for Spanish and other things) in the near future. - Kef Edited by furrykef on 05 January 2008 at 2:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6252 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 16 of 19 09 January 2008 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I got the Japanese keyboard. It was a pain to configure correctly, mostly due to Windows' stupidity, but now it works!
Unfortunately, the keyboard does have some drawbacks. For instance, the apostrophe has been moved to a key where you'll need to hit SHIFT to produce the apostrophe. That's a little annoying... I miss being able to produce one with one keystroke. Caps Lock doesn't work when typing in English, though this seems to be an IME issue. Not a big issue in my case, but something to be aware of. (The key works. If I have this configured as a US keyboard, for instance, it'll work normally. But I wouldn't normally use a Japanese keyboard that way.) Kana input has a few drawbacks, too. It's a pain to type punctuation characters like ! ? ( ) < > in full-width in kana text. If you need to use the ゛ or ゜ marks, the character will still take as many strokes as it would in romaji. Many characters do indeed take fewer strokes, though... おはようございます。僕の名前はケフです。 I get 28 strokes for that, not including the strokes to switch to/from katakana to type "Kefu" (since such switching is usually unnecessary for katakana words unless they're words it won't recognize), but including the use of the SHIFT key to type the maru (Japanese period). The same sentence typed in romaji would be, "ohayougozaimasu.bokunonamaehakefudesu." 38 strokes. So, on the whole, you probably can type quite a bit faster than in romaji mode once you get used to it. I'll probably keep using this keyboard, but it's certainly not critical for typing in Japanese at a reasonable speed. (You can only type as fast as your brain allows, anyway!) I must say I like not having to hit alt+caps lock to switch to katakana and such, though... - Kef 1 person has voted this message useful |
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