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A Better Way for Typing Diacritics
Diacritics are those tiny flakes of pepper which have mysteriously landed over words in many languages. English readers frequently ignore them, sometimes at their peril.
These are , for example,
Czech letters with diacritics: "ášřťýčňů....".
If you, like me, use an international (or US) keyboard which provides easy access to "special" characters,
that is characters such as: !@#$%^&*()_+ = -
but you need to type diacritics from time to time, you have several options for
dealing with this.
You can utilize
- two (software) keyboards (or layouts) and keep switching between the two .
- 'dead keys' suitable when you need a wide variety (such as whole families of latin-1 or latin-2 characters.
- the 'compose' key
- BILINGUAL KEYBOARD , which works best for many of us using primarily only 2 languages.
There is no switching, not too many keystrokes, and no need to memorize national keyboard(s).
The usual way, switching between the US layout and the national keyboard layout, works, but not too well. Unless you concentrate, you start typing with 'wrong' layout selected. The placement of keys with diacritics is not intuitive and not marked on the US hardware keyboard.
The problem with using the 'compose' key or the 'dead accent' method is that number of strokes to type text is too large
(about 150% for Czech, compared to national or bilingual ).
The BILINGUAL KEYBOARD is described HERE using the example of US and Czech. The method however can be used for any pair of languages , or for US and Latin-1, US and Latin-2 character sets, etc.
For the Linguist in You
Czech language
Maybe you take pride in mastering a few phrases before you arrive in a new country.
Hedgie's essays aim to help each of you.
Czech language: quick and easy
Have you friends who popped over to Prague for a quick visit
and freaked out when they encountered the language? Hedgie has heard of
guests who quietly refused to leave their friends' apartment without a guide. We think Czech's strange diacritical accents and unfamiliar roots may have shaken their confidence.
Or, perhaps you are frustrated with your computer because your searches and
emails render Czech as an incomprehensible stream of normal letters mixed with squares
and squiggles.
For Your Computer
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