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Although one font can contain all of the glyphs necessary for viewing Native languages on a computer, to type each language, a specific keyboard is required. Every written language uses one or more “orthographies” and each language community builds its orthography to suit its own sounds. It has an inventory of individual letters, characters, and symbols which are used to write the language. For instance, all of the languages of Western Europe use the Roman Orthography (based on Latin), but each one omits letters that are not necessary for that language, and extends the script by adding diacritics (accents) or entirely new letters. The entire list of glyphs employed by a language is called a “repertoire”. In some languages, groups of two or three glyphs qualify as one “letter”, as in the Welsh word Llall, which in listed in dictionaries as having only three letters: LL A LL. As can be seen from the examples, within the Latin script, repertoires vary significantly. For this reason, most languages need their own keyboard layouts. To download keyboards and view the keymaps, use the menu at the top of this page. Select “Language”. There is also a list of all keyboards on this site. |
Examples of Roman Orthography Repertoires:Welsh: a â á à ä b c ch d dd e ê é è ë f ff g ng h i î í ì ï j l ll m n o ô ó ò ö p ph r rh s t th u û ú ù ü w ŵ ẃ ẁ ẅ y ŷ ý ỳ ÿ Mohawk: a á à e é è h i í ì k n o ó ò r s t w y ’ : Dinka: a b c d dh e ε g i j k l m n nh ny ŋ o ɔ p r s t th u w y ɣ
The majority of keyboard layouts on this site have been designed to run on Windows XP and Mac OS X systems without the installation of additional third party software. However, some of the Windows keyboards (syllabics keyboards especially) require Tavultesoft Keyman. The organisation of glyphs (or mapping) on the Roman keyboards follows the US English keyboard found on most computers used by Native people. A few keyboard layouts for languages spoken in Quebec follow the French Canadian map. If you use a different Roman keyboard, such as German, you will unfortunately find that the punctuation marks are found on their US value keys. |
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