www.CostaRicaTicas.com

For those of you who write in Spanish... do you ever have problems because you cannot type the following letters on a standard American keyboard: á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ? (I think that's all of them) I've been writing to a chica since my last trip and it's annoying not being able to type words correctly. I don't know why I care since she never includes these characters. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what's she's trying to say.

And it's important because a word can have 2 very different meanings without an accent or tilde. For example,

esta means "this" (pronoun)
está means "he/she/it is" (verb)

I have finally figured out how to do it on my regular US keyboard. If you'd also be interested in knowing how, PM me, as I will no post this unless a lot people want me to. It's actually pretty easy.

Just post it. It sounds like good info.

Yeah post it. changing the "keyboard" nationality is easy enough. As it switching between the types. Made especially for Windows XP.

The characters are: á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ (are there any others?)

Here's what you do for Windows XP (I assume it's similar in Win 98, 2000, and ME):

1. In the control panel, select Regional and Language Options
2. Select the Languages tab
3. In the box titled Text services and input languages, click on Details
4. In the Settings tab, and under installed services, click Add
5. Select input language as English
6. Check the box for Keyboard Layout and choose United States-International
7. Click OK
8. Select the Advanced tab
9. Check the box under Compatability Configuration and check the box to extend services to all programs
10. Click OK a couple of times and exit the control panel
11. You should have the language bar somewhere on the page (mine is in the upper right hand corner)
12. You'll see the langauge as EN (english) and you can click to select the keyboard layout. Whenever you want to write Spanish characters, you'll need to change the keyboard layout from US to US-International. (Or delete the default keyboard and you won't need to switch. The international keyboard works for English.)
13. To write one of these characters, you will hold ALT (on the right side of the space bar) and the corresponding letter (a, e, i, o, u, n).
14. Adding SHIFT to the sequence will type a Capitalized character.

Keep in mind, ALT means RIGHT-ALT

ALT + a = á
ALT + e = é
ALT + i = í
ALT + o = ó
ALT + u = ú
ALT + n = ñ

SHIFT + ALT + a = Á
SHIFT + ALT + e = É
SHIFT + ALT + i = Í
SHIFT + ALT + o = Ó
SHIFT + ALT + u = Ú
SHIFT + ALT + n = Ñ

SHIFT + ALT + c = ¢ (Colones)
ALT + / = ¿ (inverted question mark, added to begin a question in spanish)

If anything is confusing or unclear, let me know.

Excellent info Orange. Thanks for taking the time! I have to print this out, so I can take my time and set this up on my computer.
Mikey-B

_________________
You ALWAYS have an option ....... "NEXT" !!!

I have another method if you only need an occasional character.
You can set up a desktop icon of Character Map.

I run XP but I don't think that makes a difference. It's found at:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\charmap.exe

Click on it and you'll get a handy box with all the characters you'll need.

You can also type what you need into one of the following translation links and select the proper translation (English to Spanish, etc) and it will do MOST of it for you. They all work a little differently.

Be careful when using slang or non-standard wording.
http://translation.paralink.com/
http://translation2.paralink.com/
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

If the Spanish keyboard is not available there is an alternate method. To type accent marks and other foreign characters, hold down the alt key while you type the number which corresponds to the character you wish to type. When you let up on the alt key, the character will appear.
In order to do this, you must use the keyboard number pad. This method will usually not work on a computer without a number pad.

á - alt + 160
é - alt + 130
í - alt + 161
ó - alt + 162
ú - alt + 163
ñ - alt + 164
ü - alt + 129
Á - alt + 0193
É - alt + 144
Í - alt + 0205
Ó - alt + 0211
Ú - alt + 0218
Ñ - alt + 165
Ü - alt + 154
¿ - alt + 168
¡ - alt + 173
¢ - alt + 0162

Thanks Orange, this is very helpful for my Spanish studies and for writing back to the chicas when the RFMs come in!

I thought this was important enough to bring forward. Does anyone have the 411 on how to do this on the new piece-of-bloatware MS has foisted off on us, Vista I mean?

_________________
"A man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratification of mankind"--Dr. Johnson
"Amen, brother"-ED

Orb(used to be called start)->Control Panel->Regional and Languation Options->Keyboards and Languages click Change Keyboards, click add, find English->US Interinational. The keyboard icon should show up on your taskbar.

I installed the USInternational keyboard but when I try to type the Spanish vowels it does nothing.
Can anybody help??

_________________
NON ILLEGITIMI CARBORUNDUM

DG

This is kind of a scary thread. Either it tells us who is filling out RFM’s or cares way too much about a chica. The education level of a chica can barely get her to write you and vice versa understand your writing. Just don’t sweat it, because what is important is that they know how to count in 10’s, 20, 50’s and 100’s.

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Hit them fast, Hit them hard and NEXT!
A good chica is like a good carpenter - No wood gets wasted!!!

You need to install the Spanish (Costa Rica) keyboard too. When you do you'll see either an "EN" or an "ES" on the lower right part of your taskbar (next to your system tray). Just click on it and select the keyboard type you want to switch back and forth between them.

Terrific Thread to bring forward--always useful info even if you don't use it to respond to RFMs (as Mr. Cynical intimated). We will need an update as soon as Windows 7 becomes common.

_________________
"A man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratification of mankind"--Dr. Johnson
"Amen, brother"-ED

Hahaha - good points. I've yet to read an email from a chica in Costa Rica that is even close to grammatically correct. The occasional chica email posted here on CRT makes it seem like they all went to the same school for the mildly retarded.

I can't imagine that the chicas would care about missing accent marks. Does anybody know if the chicas actually write to each other with that bad Spanish and understand what's been written?

On the other hand, for the guys learning Spanish it's important to be able to write correctly using a computer. I've had to hand in some written reports in the Spanish classes I took. The methods mentioned above can work in the PC world. For Macs there is a 'special characters' menu item (under 'edit') that will give you most every option.

_________________
"All them women gonna make me,
teach 'em what they don't know how..." TMIB