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Keyboarding Foreign Languages

Back to Computing in the Lab

If you are typing in a Western-font language in MS Word, you may be happy simply to use the "insert symbol" function. However, there are a number of other ways to type characters with diacritics (ñ, à, ó, ç, etc.). There is a system of numeric codes to produce letters common in Western European languages. Or you can change the keyboard so that some keys function as accent keys or so that they are mapped to a different alphabet (Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew) or produce characters in Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. Click on one of the following three choices to explore these:

Changing & Accessing Windows KeyboardsChinese, Japanese, and Korean using NJStar

Konyin Keyboard (Little 215 and Turlington 1317 only)

Using ASCII codes to produce accented letters

1. Changing and Accessing Windows Keyboards

If you are logged into a particular lab computer, you can add keyboards or character generation functions which become part of your profile on that computer. If you use the same computer again, you should be able to access these keyboards easily.

First, check the language and keyboard icons in the taskbar to see what keyboards are available.

If the language or keyboard you want to use is not available, follow this path to add it:

1. Start menu
2. Settings
3. Control Panel
4. Regional and Language Options
5. Languages
6. Details
7. Add (before adding a keyboard or IME you may need to click a box to access this feature)

The Default Input Language is probably English. Leave that alone. You can add languages and the appropriate keyboards by selecting from a list. For Japanese, choose the language first and then add the Microsoft IME (Input Method). For Chinese, choose Chinese PRC and then the simplified Chinese Pinyin IME.

After adding the keyboards and accepting/applying/OK'ing all the settings, you can access the keyboard or IME using the keyboard icon on the taskbar, or you can left-click to see a special Language Bar which floats on top of the application. You may need to change the keyboard selection for each program you open, and select an appropriate font for typing in the language involved.

To type Japanese or Chinese, you will need to be sure you have the floating Language Bar which gives you all the options you need. Open the program in which you will type, then switch to the Japanese of Chinese IME. To type in Chinese Traditional characters, look for an arrow at the right end of the toolbar and add "Char Set" to the options. If a character typed in Pinyin is not what you wanted, use the arrow keys (to the right of they keyboard) to arrow back over the character. A selection of possible characters will appear.

A map of the Israeli Hebrew keyboard.

Two computers in 1317 Turlington have Arabic key-caps.

For many Western-font languages, a good choice is the English (International) keyboard, which allows you to type accented text using a dead-key system (the apostrophe and some other keys accent a vowel or other appropriate letter which is typed afterwards). For a picture of the International Keyboard layout, see this SUNY Cortland site. Once you get used to it, it is handy for typing accented letters as used in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc. Or you can use the ASCII codes (below) to type accented text.

2. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean using NJStar programs

In the Little labs and on some Turlington 1317 computers, we have available NJStar Chinese and Japanese wordprocessors. These are easy to use. Currently most of the Turlington 1317 NJ Star installations have a glitch, however, so discuss using the program with the lab director first. Another NJStar program, Communicator, allows typing in Japanese, Chinese, or Korean into internet interfaces or email.

 3. Konyin Keyboard

This is a special keyboard, currently installed in Little 215 and on four computers in Turlington 1317 (walk-in use). It is designed to be used for typing Nigerian text. However, because the Nigerian character set includes a wide range of diacritical marks, it can be used for typing almost any character in any language that uses a Western character set.

Follow the instructions above to add the Konyin or Nigerian keyboard to your keyboard choices. Select one of the West African fonts available in the lab for MS Word. Then RESTART the computer. After a restart, the Konyin software will work.

To type a diacritical mark over a letter, press the letter key, then hold down the special ng key while pressing the key marked with the diacritical you want. If you want the diacritical on a capital letter, type it as usual and then add the diacritical.

To type the special letters shown on some of the keyboard keys, use the ng key with that key. To type it in caps, use shift + ng.

4. ASCII codes for accented letters used often in Western European languages