Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Escribir en español

I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 and learning to speak Spanish, so I wanted to know how to type the accented characters and inverted exclamation and question marks. As it turns out: it's pretty easy, even with a generic UK keyboard. Follow these easy steps to do it yourself:

System > Preferences > Keyboard

On the Layouts tab, click the "Other Options..." button, then expand the "Compose key position" element. Select "Right Alt is Compose." Close the Keyboard Layout Options dialog and focus the cursor on the "Type to test settings" box.

For á, é, í, ó and ú:
Press and release Right-Alt, then press and release @', then press and release the vowel key.

For the upper case Á, É, Í, Ó and Ú:
Press and release Right-Alt, then press and release @', then hold shift while pressing and releasing the vowel key.

For ñ:
Press and release Right-Alt, then press and release ~#, then press and release n.

For the upper case Ñ:
Press and release Right-Alt, then press and release ~#, then hold shift while pressing and releasing N.

For ¿:
Press and release Right-Alt, then hold shift while pressing and releasing the ?/ key twice.

For ¡:
Press and release Right-Alt, then hold shift while pressing and releasing the !1 key twice.

4 comments:

Jono said...

Typing on a UK Apple keyboard has its own pitfalls: to get ñ or Ñ you need to hold down alt while you press n, release alt, then press n a second time. For áéíóú, first hold down alt while you press e (this sets up the acute accent) then release alt and press the appropriate vowel.

Jono said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jono said...

Getting the correctly accented characters on my Windows 7 netbook is like a game of chance:
First, add a new keyboard "United States - International" (every time you switch to this keyboard SHIFT+2 will become @ instead of " and vice versa, etc.) but you'll be able to type in accents using dead keys (multiple presses result in a single character). For example ~n > ñ. 'a > á and so on for éíóú. "u > ü. The trick is knowing where to find " and ~ because they're swapped and there's no "United Kingdom - International" keyboard. A bit of oversight in the Microsoft camp, I think, and I'm not too happy about it.

Jono said...

The other two necessary Spanish symbols ¿ and ¡ can be found in Windows 7 by holding RIGHTALT+? or RIGHTALT+1 when using the same "United States - International" keyboard.