the umlaut on the keyboard

[red_day_dawning]

Hi
I was wondering if someone could tell me how to instruct my PC to have an umlaut function on the keyboard.  I have Windows XP, & I think a standard, ordinary ("Dell") keyboard.  That way I can include the umlaut when I'm writing in German, & not just add an "e" after the vowel, which always makes me believe I have done a typo!

Comments

[marijke_rose]

If you're going to do that (that's what I did before moving here! I had XP Pro SP2), you're going to really want to find a graphic of a German "QWERTZ" keyboard layout (as you can observe, the "Y" and "Z" switch places between the two layouts). Otherwise you're going to have a hell of a time with it as it IS quite different (the punctuation is all different, but the enter, backspace, et al are the same or similar). I personally prefere the German layout. Good luck!

Also note that a German keyboard has an extra key an American one doesn't (drove me nuts until I figured out my keyboard just DIDN'T have the key).. it's the one that does the HTML brackets (one single key for both brackets).

Good luck!

Otherwise, check under your start menu for Character Map and find them.. Or you can copy/paste these: Ä ä Ö ö Ü ü ß

Lastly, if you want something similar to the US layout, but want Umlaut capabilities, go for a Dutch layout (NL). You can do both double dotted Umlauts and single dotted umlauts (whatever they're called) by hitting the appropriate quotation and then the letter, or the apostrophe and then the letter.

So, for example: " + a = ä

(The Dutch also often use a vowel that is an 'e' with umlauts.. never figured out how to make it on a German keyboard, though.)

[red_day_dawning]

Thanks for your help. Still stuck in assignment-hell, so I'm delaying implementing any changes until I have at least this first assignment completed. The Dutch layout sounds good - I think I'll start by looking at that.