Changing the Keyboard Input Language

Keyboards come in a variety of language-specific versions that incorporate special alphabet characters used in those languages. Your desktop or laptop computer might have a keyboard configured for American English, UK English, French, Canadian French, German, Swedish, Danish, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Russian... the list goes on, and includes some specialized languages such as Gaelic, Inuktitut, and Maori. Some keyboards, such as the Japanese keyboard, depict two alphabets.

When you first set up your Windows Vista computer, you choose an input language that matches your keyboard, and Windows Vista programs itself to correctly recognize the keys that you press to match the letters, numbers, characters, or commands depicted on each key.

Under some circumstances, you might want to use a keyboard configured for a different language, or you might want to instruct Windows to treat your keystrokes on your existing keyboard as if you were using a different-language keyboard. For example, if your computer is set up to recognize a US English keyboard and you frequently correspond with customers in a languagesuch as French, German, or Swedishthat uses characters not included in the English alphabetsuch as ç, ä, or åyou will need to enter letters that don't exist on the US English keyboard. You can enter those characters in a Microsoft Office Word document by selecting them from the Symbol dialog box, and in most programs by pressing Alt and then a specific number combination on the numeric keypad, if you have one. (The symbol is inserted when you release the Alt key.) Or to save yourself that trouble, you can connect a language-specific keyboard to your computer. All the letters of that language appear on the keyboard and you simply press the keys to enter them.

If you are familiar with the layout of a language-specific keyboard but don't want to physically switch keyboards to enter the keystrokes in that language, you can configure your computer to recognize keystrokes as though you were using the different-language keyboard. You switch between input languages by using the tools on the Language bar that appears on the Windows taskbar.

In this exercise, you will configure your computer to enter keystrokes as though you are typing on a Swedish keyboard. There are no practice files for this exercise.

1.	In the Control Panel window, click Clock, Language, and Region. Then under Regional and Language Options, click the Change keyboards or other input methods task. The Regional And Language Options dialog box opens, displaying the Keyboards And Languages tab. [View full size image]
2.	Click Change keyboards. The Text Services And Input Languages dialog box opens, displaying your current input language and the input devices configured for that language, as well as any other languages you have installed.
3.	Click the Default input language arrow to expand the list of available languages. Only the original input language appears in the list. To accept input from another language-specific keyboard, you must first install the language.
4.	In the Installed services area, click Add. The Add Input Language dialog box opens.
5.	Browse through this dialog box, noting the available languages. Expand a few of the languages and their Keyboard lists. Notice that each language does not have its own keyboard, but some have more than one associated keyboard.
6.	In the list, click the Expand button to the left of Swedish (Sweden), and then click the Expand button to the left of Keyboard. Expand The standard keyboard options for this language are Swedish and US.
7.	In the Keyboard list, select the Show More check box. The list expands to include all the available language keyboards.
8.	Scroll the list to see the amazing variety of available keyboards. Some languages have up to six available keyboards, each with different keyboard layouts or alphabets. You can enter the selected language (Swedish) from any of these keyboards.
9.	In the expanded Keyboard list, select the check box of the keyboard that is connected to your computer. Then click Preview. Troubleshooting If you are working on a standard US English keyboard, you will notice that there are six layouts available. If you don't know which yours is, select US. A diagram of the selected keyboard appears.
10.	Click Close. Then in the Keyboard list, select the Swedish check box, and click Preview. A diagram of the Swedish keyboard appears. [View full size image] Notice the three Swedish letters to the left of the Enter key: Å, Ä, and Ö. These are the last three letters of the Swedish alphabet. The characters in these three positions on your own keyboard have been rearranged to make room for them.
11.	Close the Keyboard Layout Preview window and, provided the first keyboard preview displayed a keyboard layout matching your own, click OK in the Add Input Language dialog box. Troubleshooting If the US keyboard did not match your own keyboard, repeat Step 9 until you locate one that does match. The Default Input Language list and Installed Services area now include both your original keyboard language and keyboard layout, and Swedish with two keyboard layouts. Your original language is still selected as the default, as indicated in the Default Input Language list. Note that each language in the Installed services box is represented by a specific two-letter combination in a small blue square. The two-letter abbreviation for Swedish is SV, short for SvenskSwedish in Swedish.
12.	In the Text Services and Input Languages dialog box, click OK. To the left of the notification area on the Windows taskbar, the Language bar appears, displaying the two-letter abbreviation of the default input language. Tip The contents of the Language bar vary depending on what language-specific capabilities are configured. You can change the location and appearance of the Language bar from the Language Bar tab of the Text Services And Input Languages dialog box.
13.	On the Language bar, click the input language button. Then in the input language list, click Swedish (Sweden). The input language button label changes to SV, and a keyboard button appears to its right.
14.	Click the keyboard button. The keyboard list displays the two keyboards you chose for Swedish input: Swedish and your own.
15.	In the keyboard list, click Swedish.
16.	To confirm that the input language has changed, click the Start button, and then with the insertion point in the Start Search box, press the single quote (') key to the left of the key. Start The letter ä, which appears to the left of the Enter key on the Swedish keyboard, appears in the Search box.
17.	Experiment with the input languages if you want. Then redisplay the Keyboards and Languages tab of the Regional and Language Options dialog box, and click Change keyboards.
18.	In the Installed services area, click Swedish (Sweden), and then click Remove.