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Question about keyboards; for non-English speakers
Topic Started: Jan 8 2007, 02:34 PM (202 Views)
dolmansaxlil
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This might be the stupidest, most sheltered question ever. But for people who do not speak English, and routinely converse in languages that use accents in all sorts of places, are there keyboards that have those accented letters right on them? Or do they just get really good at using the codes to insert them? Is there a special button to turn an e into an e with an acute accent?

I'm assuming that languages that use characters other than the ones we use in the English language must have their own keyboards.

Just curious!
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The 89th Key
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I've def seen keyboards in other languages, but it did look like a standard QWERTY layout, so it's a good quesiton about languages that have dozens of extra characters.
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Klaus
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A german keyboard has dedicated keys for "äöü" etc. The whole assignment of characters to keys is also a bit different (e.g., y and z are swapped).

Klaus
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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***musical princess***
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French key boards do too.

When i was holiday and popped on here, it was hell to try and usse it.

It's kinda like QWERTY but with alterations and it did have special keys for the accute letters.

It was crackers to get your head around when you are used to looking at the screen when you type and not at the keyboard. :wacko:

x
x Caroline x
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dolmansaxlil
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So is the keyboard bigger and the configuation slightly different? I suppose it would make sense for the key placement to be different, since QWERTY was developed so keys that are hit most often in succession would be far apart for the old manual typewriters...
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AlbertaCrude
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At home we have a Latin/Cyrillic script keyboard.
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justme
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AlbertaCrude
Jan 8 2007, 06:53 PM
At home we have a Latin/Cyrillic script keyboard.

that is so cool :smile:
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***musical princess***
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dolmansaxlil
Jan 8 2007, 10:50 PM
So is the keyboard bigger and the configuation slightly different? I suppose it would make sense for the key placement to be different, since QWERTY was developed so keys that are hit most often in succession would be far apart for the old manual typewriters...

No, it was the same size, they just double or tripled up on some keys.

Like, the one i was on had the full stop, comma, forward slash and question mark all one one key and you would choose ether shift or alt or whatever with it to get the specific one you wanted.

Some of the letters were like that too.

x
x Caroline x
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dolmansaxlil
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I considered going to McMaster for university (it was my backup school), and when I received the early admittance package, I chose my courses and filled out all the paperwork (one of those superstitious actions that I hoped would make my first choice accept me). One of the courses offered was Conversational Latin and I SO wanted to sign up. I'm not sure how useful being able to order a salad in a dead language would be, though. :P
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QuirtEvans
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I took a couple of years of Latin in high school. Boy, was that deadly dull.
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
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maple
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keyboards for PC usually have 102/105 keys. however the shape/location might differ slightly. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout for descriptions of many of them

One thing to note is that the keyboard layout can be configured in the operating system's Control Panel. go to Control Panel | keyboard to add "input locales" and switch layouts. In other words, the letter printed on the keyboard is produced as such only if the Control Panel is configured to the appropriate locale.
I'm used to a English-US layout, so if I happen to use a foreign machine with a foreign keyboard (like french or german), I switch the layout in the Control Panel, and ignore the signs on the keys.

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Riley
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dolmansaxlil
Jan 8 2007, 05:56 PM
I considered going to McMaster for university

:woot:

I live 5 minutes away from McMaster.

And some Mac students are my coworkers.
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Riley
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QuirtEvans
Jan 8 2007, 08:50 PM
I took a couple of years of Latin in high school. Boy, was that deadly dull.

I took one year of Latin in high school.

Despite a very interesting teacher, it was dull.
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taiwan_girl
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Old Chinese language typewriters had many, many keys, each which was a character. I have never used one, but I understand that you could change the keys to replace characters. Because it was so complicated, you could only type 5 words or so a minute.

Today, with computers, there are a couple of two ways of doing it. Each chinese character is made up of smaller sub-characters. You type a couple of the sub characters and it will give you a choice of what the final character is. Also, you can type it in phonetically, using the chinese phonetics.
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Frank_W
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Spanish and Japanese keyboards are different, both in layout and function key designations. When I'm typing in Japanese and I type the first syllable of the word, it pops up a context menu with several different choices of Kanji characters that will fit that sound, (not necessarily the context!), or the choice to simply leave it as Hiragana or Katakana.
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dolmansaxlil
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Wow! This is far more interesting than I initially expected! Thanks for the input, all! :)

On a side note, there is a HUGE push on using word prediction software for kids with learning disabilities who have difficulty expressing themselves in writing. In wonder if advancements in word prediction technology have been a direct result of the systems that taiwangirl and Frank suggest?
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