(no subject)

[mekkababble.livejournal.com]

Greetings friends,

I just saw this community and am tickled pink, purple, and all the colors of the rainbow that this exists. I've had one year of Russian so far and plan on studying the language more in St. Petersburg over the summer. Apart from looking for people to practice with I do come bearing a question: does anybody have any idea how to get a keyboard to type in Cyrillic? I do have this one website that'll let you type on screen, but I know there's an easier way to do it.

Anything would be great. Thanks in advance.

Comments

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

You should find all the answers to your question in this post: http://www.livejournal.com/community/learn_russian/211506.html

[kupa7884.livejournal.com]

May I ask what program you will be studying with in Petersburg? I am just finishing up my second year of learning Russian, and I will also be studying it some more this summer in Petersburg. To answer your question about writing in Cyrillic, you can set your computer to write in Russian. If you use Windows, you should be able to access your computer's language options. From there, you will be able to add Russian to your computer's list of accepted languages. I use Windows XP, so if you need any more detailed help, let me know. And it is good to know there are other Russian enthusiasts out there!

[mananas.livejournal.com]

There are stickers you can buy to put on your keyboard...

[arrestthisman.livejournal.com]

Far as I'm concerned, this is your go-to place for setting up the russian keyboard: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/kbd_e.htm#p1251
He provides a homeophonic layout that is much more comfortable to an english speaker than the russian layout. Also, he makes it pretty simple, while most other site explanations I tried first were hard to untangle.

[mekkababble.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure of the program's exact name, but I'm going with a company called AIFS near the end of June. What about you?

Also, thank you everybody for your help.

word

[gnomygnomy.livejournal.com]

That website is awesome. Although, the phonetic layout is something I'd veer away from if you actually plan on going to Russia. Better to force yourself to learn the standard Russian keyboard now than face the setback later, don't you think? :)

[kupa7884.livejournal.com]

I am also going with AIFS at the end of June. So we will undoubtedly get to know each other.

[suku-vse.livejournal.com]

Well ... You can e-mail me at krikousha@hotmail.com. I live in Baltimore. I'm a native speaker and I'll be glad to help you with practice.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

The phonetic layout makes your initial step easier, but prevents you from using the actual Russian keyboard in the future. In Russia, you cannot find a phonetic keyboard -- each and every keyboard is standard Russian (йцукенгшщзхъ -- фывапролджэ -- ячсмитьбю) with every key marked with a Latin letter as well (qwertyuiop[] -- asdfghjkl;' -- zxcvbnm,./)

[nbuwe.livejournal.com]

As I've mentioned in another thread - I'm a native speaker, I live in Russia, and I've been using phonetic layout for 14+ years, and nothing really prevents me from using Russian keyboards (hard to get a non-Russian keyboard here anyway :) - I just don't pay attention to Russian keycaps on them.

The only time it might be a problem is when you would need to use a public computer that you cannot configure in any way. In practice that never was a problem for me. Last time I had to use such a public computer was in an Amsterdam internet cafe, where they don't have Russian keyboards anyway. :)

Overall, I had to use so many different keyboards (German, Finnish, ...) that I really no longer pay much attention to keycaps, even for the ASCII part (unfortunately, I'm not really touch-typing).

I'm not advocating phonetic Russian layout as "superior" to traditional "йцукенг", but can you folks please stop spreading stupid FUD?

Just for the fun of it - take a look at different Cyrillic layouts and how inconsistent they are (hint: use Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator - free download from microsoft web site). So if someone decides to learn, say, Bulgarian in addition to Russian - will he have to learn a brand new keyboard layout too? Belorussian - another layout? Serbian - another one. And so on ad nauseum. That just doesn't scale.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I respect the Independent Thinkers.
Anyway, to know a standard layout BEFORE you start looking for unbeaten paths is quite good.

[nbuwe.livejournal.com]

But that's not what your original comment says. It is factually false as worded.

Both яверты and йцукенг has pros and cons. But as you had worded your comment to be so blankly dismissive of яверты I felt obliged to chime in with a few words in favor of it. :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I'm not "advocating" anything, either; I only say that STARTING with an alternate tool makes you feel sorry that you can't use the conventional tool on;y too often.
It's like learning how to drive in a car with automatic transmission, without mastering the manual transmission first :)

[mekkababble.livejournal.com]

That is really kinda cool. Can I IM you or e-mail you sometime so we can talk?

[kupa7884.livejournal.com]

yes, definitely, my screen name is listed in my user info