IM service...?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_graphomaniac/]

I'm looking for an instant messenger program I can use with a Russian penpal. He's fluent in English, but the purpose of our e-mail correspondence has been to learn each other's languages, and we'd like to find an instant messenger that will allow us to use Cyrillic so I can mangle Russian and he can correct it (ahem). I've been through the majors, MSN, AIM and Yahoo, but if they have a setting that allows Cyrillic, I haven't been able to find it. Can anybody recommend a messenger?

By the way, my penpal and I met through a service called eTandem. I haven't seen it mentioned here in the community's memories or other entries, so here's the link if anyone's interested:
http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/etandem/etindex-en.html

The service matches people seeking to learn each other's language, and can make the match as specific or broad as you like. I've met four Russian penpals through it, and all of them have taught me heaps - and are great friends.

Comments

[ruggafluff.livejournal.com]

I believe GAIM (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/) supports such things. I vaguely recall a friend of mine IMing me using Japanese characters, so it's entirely possible they support Cyrillic too.

If it doesn't, well, eh. You're no worse off than before, at least. :P

Indeed

[37greenbeans.livejournal.com]

Yes GAIM works great for that. I have used Yahoo and GAIM - couldn't get it to work with MSN or AIM - but my friend who has WindowsXP could - it might depend on the type of OS you have. But GAIM for me works the best. And I'd recommend it for other reasons aswell. But either way you need to install it on your computer first.

[margaritka.livejournal.com]

msn allows russian, as does icq. you just have
to change the regional settings on your pc
so that you can type in cyrillic. you might
want to make up a key so that you know which
latin letters represent each cyrillic letter.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

MSN allows you to use Cyrillic. You just have to be able to set it up on your computer (which you would have to do in order to type in Cyrillic with ANY program.)

Yahoo also allows cyrillic, but when you try to copy and paste into a translation site, it lookes like "???? ???????? ?? ????" (bunch of question marks).

[ex-zadoff59.livejournal.com]

tryed majors but not ICQ?

[gnomygnomy.livejournal.com]

AIM does it. You have to have Cyrillic enabled on your keyboard, but it does work. Here's what you do:

Download AIM, if you don't already have it.
Go to Preferences
Select "Font"
Click the "Font" button
In the Font window, find the drop down box for "Script," and select "Cyrillic."
Click "OK"
Then click "Apply."

Anytime you want to write in Russian, make sure your keyboard is in that mode. You don't have to keep going back into AIM Font Prefences and resetting it every time you want to switch between languages, just do so by changing the mode of your keyboard. Hope this helps!

[vyacheslav.livejournal.com]

Yep, MSN and yahoo are probably the easiest options.

What I did was I made a key that hangs on my desk, and I also wrote which cyrillic letter is which directly on the keyboard. Note that other keys change as well. The numbers that run along the top of the keyboard will give you the symbol they represent when used with the shift key about half of the time. To make a period you have to use the ?/ key, and to make a comma, you have to use the period key on the number pad.

Try Miranda IM

[kurush.livejournal.com]

You`ll have MSN, ICQ, AIM, and some other in one small (and fast!) program, with countless plugins.

Re: Try Miranda IM

[flower-flavor.livejournal.com]

Trillian is still better :P

Re: Try Miranda IM

[kurush.livejournal.com]

Yeah, better. If you can make it work more or less stable O_o

[nolimeta.livejournal.com]

icq

[krol.livejournal.com]

As was mentioned above, this is not the IM problem but rather an issue of correctly tuning your system for cyrillic. ALL the instant messaging programs I tried so far DO support Russian language. Since I have always been using the US-English versions of the operating systems this experience is beyond doubt.
ICQ is the most popular in Russia, closely followed by all kinds of clones and multi-messenger programs like Trillian. MSN IM is also ok.
You only have to enable Russian language support. A lot of advice on the subject can be found in the web. If your OS is MS Windows you can start from asking Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/dev/winxpintl.mspx) for instruction. You may have to change the default language for non-Unicode programs to Russian under "Control panel -> Regional and Language options -> Advanced" for XP or similar settings for Win2K.
But if for any weird reason you still can't figure how to do it, use ICQ online (http://go.icq.com/), which does not require installation and will support cyrillic as long as your browser does.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_graphomaniac/]

Hmm... I've configured the computer to accept Cyrillic as keyboard input, which allows me to write e-mails in Russian... But changing the default language for non-Unicode programs might be my answer for the IM programs. (At the moment all I see is gibberish when I set the keyboard input to Cyrillic, and I've got the most recent version of MSN and AIM. Grr.)

Thanks also for recommending ICQ online, that might be the best option for me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_graphomaniac/]

Thanks for everybody's suggestions!