Hi everyone,

My name is Emil Smith and I am taking a Spanish class for college this upcoming semester. I’m curious if anyone has any info on how this work, the area I’m curious about is how to deal with entering Spanish characters for homework assignments. If anyone has previous experience with this or has any tips, that would appreciated, thanks!

You can configure a Spanish language keyboard in the regional settings of your PC and enable the alt plus shift command to rotate among keyboards.

Unless I plan to write in Spanish for a good chunk though, I’ll just use the word processing short cut for Office of pressing the control plus ‘ (apostrophy) then the corresponding vowel. This will give me the accented A, E, I, O, or U. For the ñ, it’s control plus shift plus ` (grauv) key then n.  

You can also use the numbpad sequences. With the numlock set to on, Alt plus 1-6-4 gives you the ñ. Alt plus 1-3-0 gives you é. Alt plus 1-6-0 is á and so on.

Don’t forget too, that in Spanish, you also have the inverted question mark and exclamation mark.

Hola,

     You can enter characters you need by turning your keyboard language to “U.S. International (written as U.S-I for my shortcut.” At least, I think that’s what it was called when I used Windows Vista. I’m pretty sure your instructor will have better knowledge of how to set up your keyboard/what it’s new layout will be called. However, I’ve heard that the CTRL key and shift will put your keyboard into the mode I’m describing. After you set the layout up, just press these keys together to get back to your regular U.S. keyboard. Another press of the keystroke takes you back to U.S.-I. I don’t know how to set that up for any languages, though. My teacher gave me instructions on this. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any more help, but here’s what I do know about the new keyboard layout. Different keys do different things, and the accent key actually works. The apostrophe key turns into one which can perform accented letters. JAWS might say something like sidila or something when this is pressed alone. Keep in mind, I don’t have mine set up right now. However, if you wanted to make an accented i—Spanish is common for doing this/accented e’s too--, press the sidilla/apostrophe key followed by the letter you’re using (our example is I and/or e). it would put the accent on the letter in question, and that’s how you make accented letters. If you need that funny little thing over any n, I think you press your shift key along with your accent key, located to the left of one on the numbers row. This is with U.S.-I still enabled, keep in mind. Press your n now, and that should give you that specific sound which is used on words like ninio, I think. It’s been a while since I’ve taken online Spanish, though so can’t give a definite answer on how that n thing was formed. I really didn’t like U.S.-I and was glad when I could  use a normal U.S. keyboard again. Espero tienes un classe excellente de Espa!nal. that’s my best impression for, “I hope you have an excellent Spanish class.” Make sure your screen reader can speak Spanish as well—the voices for JAWS can switch if they find Spanish characters. Let me know how your course goes by e-mailing apiccinino@... or sending to the group. One more thing, hablar and all its forms is written with an h not just the a. however, it’s pronounced ablar—obviously with Spanish vocalization of aw on the a.

Adios,

Antonia – This was my Spanish name in High School but didn’t have one for college, so sad.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Hi Brian, James Malone here. I’m afraid that Emil has set his preferences to no mail, but has selected to go on line to pull his answers off the web site from the list. He is one of my students, so what I can do is forward this message to him. You can however email him off list if you like and explain this as well. I’m sure he’ll want to hear from you. I also explained that this list is not too busy, and he won’t get slammed by a bunch of emails in regards to any issues that doesn’t pertain to him depending on where he has his email settings. He was receiving daily  digest, but decided to go with no mail. If you can please! Explain that the list has several ways to give information to him with several kinds of control without overloading his email?

Thanks for your help.

James