Howdy folks,
I’m taking Spanish classes and I’m getting tired of writing everything down. I would prefer to type my assignments and I’ve figured out how to switch my keyboard to type Español but I do not know what each of the keys do.
I know how to type Ñ but I cannot figure out which keys to press to get the upside down question mark, accents over the letter I, or anything else. Is there some way to get a map of what each key does? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Marc
Not much help. I use alt #s. alt 168, gives you a ¿. http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=20801
Just Google “spanish keyboard layout” and print the one that matches yours and tape it to the tower.
This one matches my Spanish keyboard exactly. You may have to experiment a bit because I’ve seen a couple of different layouts for Spanish keyboards.
Second the suggestion that you find a character map and post it, if you will use Spanish keyboerd layout.
My own technique for Hispanifying WXP is to not bother with the Spanish layout but configure the Keyboard to “United States (International)”. When I do that, then the single-quote (’), immediately followed by a vowel, becomes the accent mark (á,é,í,ó,ú); the double-quote in the same manner becomes the diéresis (ü); right-Alt + a vowel also gives it to you accented; similarly, right-Alt + n = ñ; right-Alt + 1 = ¡ , ; right-Alt + / = ¿ This layout also makes the accent-gràve/tilde key operate in such a way that by typing it immediately before a letter it places itself in the right place.
The advantage to me is that it does not displace the characters on the standard American IBM layout from the key on which they are printed, so the $, the @, the *, are all where I’m used to finding them. The inconvenience is that I have to hit the spacebar after the quote mark in order to have it appear as itself (if it’s going to be followed by a vowel), and it ocassionally will throw in some non-spanish characters such as ç, µ, ß and ð, when my finger slips and hits a different Alt combination.
In the Spanish layout manual typewriter keyboard of my youth, ñ was immediately to the right of L, so the touch-type home keys would be asdf/jklñ. The acento/diéresis would be at the far right, next to or above the right-hand shift-lock key, and it was disengaged from the carriage so the page would not move until you typed the vowel. No independent tilde or accent-gràve key, as that is not Spanish.
Thank you for the assistence, everyone, it was very helpful.
Marc
Before you run off, consider using the US International keyboard layout. I’m a gringo with lots of needs to type Spanish on my US Keyboard, and it works out pretty well. The only downside is that the keyboard sometimes switches to US International when I don’t expect it.
An example in US International: Type ol’e and you get olé (I’m on the Mac now, but I think that’s correct). Type jalepe~no and you get japeleño. Pretty nifty, and your keys don’t change.
On a real Spanish keyboard, it reminds me of the old C=64 layout.