Typing 'foreign' characters e.g. Umlauts

[Bethgem]

Hi to Berlin Bob, who has just directed me to this thread to learn how to have the letter 'u' with two dots above it as in Grun, the name of my grandfather. He was German born but lived in the UK almost all his life. Now then, all I need to do is to read all this thread again as I am quite lost. I am using Windows XP, not Vista, I hope that helps. I have no idea how to 'program' any special features so I will take advice from the basic level. Help!!!
 

[Bethgem]

This works for me with Windows XP.  Down on your taskbar, where the clock and other program icons are, you should see an icon that says En.  If  you  hover the mouse pointer over it, a hover tip should appear that says either English (United Kingdom) or English (United States).  Click on that icon, and click on the line that says show the language bar.  The language bar will then appear at the top of the screen.  To the right of this language bar is a small down arrow that represents options.  Click that, then Settings, and a box should appear headed Text Services and Input Languages.  From the list there, you should be able to add the Russian Cyrillic, or indeed the German, which gives you the German characters (umlauted letters and scharfes-S, and also the German keyboard layout QUERTZUIOP, etc.  Click apply, OK, and close that box.  In future, you can select either English or Russian by clicking the little En icon (it turns to Ru with Russian).  Of course, you'll have to mark the Cyrillic characters on your keyboard (you can buy sets of labels, or a CD marker lasts a while) or buy a bilingual keyboard.  Sorry if this is not clear!

I did all that and can only see a choice of English (United Kingdom) or English (United States) in the list.

[Roger The Hat]

http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm

You can use the alt key, followed by the relevant number code, to produce the required letter. I've tried it successfully in "notepad".

The above site lists the codes.


'Hat.

[luas]

If you only need the occasional Umlaut, using the ASCII codes is the easiest way, as the previous poster said.  Just make sure that the Num Lock light is on, and that you use the numerical keypad to the right of the keyboard.  Alt plus 129 gives you ü, for example, as in Grün.  If your ancestor lived in England, he must have had problems with officials rendering his name correctly in documents.  I'm surprised he wasn't tempted to anglicise it to Green, which is what "grün" means.  He may have sometimes used the version Gruen, to compensate for the English bureaucrats' inability to cope with the Umlaut.

[Bethgem]

It was my grandfather and he used Green all the time he was here. I have seen his name on a German document recently, and spelt as Grün. Look! I got it! It worked this time because I used the right side of my keyboard with the NumLock lit up! So then, all is well now, problem solved. Thanks to the advice on here. Cheers everyone!

[FosseWay]

Someone asked about Cyrillic several pages ago. My favourite way of writing Cyrillic is to use translit.ru -- you type in Latin, using the conventions at the top of the screen for non-obvious transliterations, and it appears in Cyrillic on screen, which you can then cut and paste into your post/document.

The site supports non-Russian variants of Cyrillic and some other alphabets used in the former USSR, too.

На здоровье!

[danishdots]

I use INSERT on the bar and then use 'symbol' - they are needed in Irish too.

Good luck
Dadnishdots

[Isabel H]

I have found this website useful for typing in foreign languages. Just type, then copy and paste to where you want the text.

http://www.typeit.org/

[danishdots]

If you are typing on word - use 'INSERT' on toolbar and then 'Symbol' and you will find the symbol that you wish to use.

Good luck
Dansihdots

PS
I have copied and pasted the ones that I use most onto a word document and can find them quickly now.