Viewing How to Type Foreign Language Characters on Your Keyboard

Viewing How to Type Foreign Language Characters on Your Keyboard

Often one of the hurdles when learning a language is figuring out a way to type foreign characters. The Internet has solutions, but most require a lot of memorization or necessitate switching keyboard layouts. This article describes a simpler method.

Many foreign languages use characters you will not see on the typical English keyboard. Various applications provide unique ways to recreate them - or might recommend copying and pasting from the Windows Characters Map, employing ALT-number key sequences, or switching your keyboard language.

Unfortunately, most methods require an inordinate amount of memorization or take a lot of time to implement.

This article presents an easier way! Foreign language students and professional translators alike will benefit from the information presented here.

The first step is to locate a macro program for your computer. Windows used to come with a utility called "Recorder" back in the Windows 3.11 days. However, Microsoft phased it out with newer versions of its operating system. To be honest, it wasn't very robust anyway. Nowadays there are hundreds of freeware and shareware macro programs. These timesaving utilities allow you to use shortcut keys to perform repetitive tasks and keystrokes.

I have used Hot Keyboard (from hot-keyboard.com) for years. It is not free, but it is an excellent program with more features than most people will ever use. In order to make my own foreign language activities easier, I developed a series of macros that requires very little memorization. By learning five different keystroke combinations, I am able to type all the letters of the German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish alphabets (language) - without switching keyboard layouts.

This article will not provide specific information on how to run any particular macro program. Instead, it gives you a suggested layout for producing foreign language characters that is logical and easy to learn.

Letters with Grave Accents:

Create lower case characters by using CTRL-SHIFT-(letter) and upper case characters with CTRL-SHIFT-(letter above lower case letter).For example, = CTRL-SHIFT-a and = CTRL-SHIFT-Q.

Letters with Acute Accents:

Create lower case characters by using ALT-SHIFT-(letter) and upper case characters with ALT-SHIFT-(letter above lower case letter).For example, = ALT-SHIFT-a and = ALT-SHIFT-Q.

Letters with Circumflex Accents:

Create lower case characters with WIN-ALT-(letter) and upper case characters with WIN-ALT-(letter above lower case letter).For example, = WIN-ALT-a and = WIN-ALT-Q.

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