I’m learning to speak Polish. As someone who enjoys learning challenges I certainly found one in this wonderful language. (And any language that calls November “Listopad” has got to be interesting.)

Generally I create my own study materials whenever I study something intensely and that’s where I hit my first stumbling block – how to I type in the Polish accented characters on a US Keyboard:

ą Ą ć Ć ę Ę ł Ł ń Ń ó Ó ś Ś ż Ż ź Ź

There are a couple of alternatives available to you:

• Use a Polish Keyboard layout with your US Keyboard – creates shortcuts that apply to all applications running windows
• Use a Word Document that has specific keyboard shortcuts assigned to generate the characters – these shortcuts only apply to the word document.

Both techniques are describes below

POLISH KEYBOARD LAYOUT WITH A US KEYBOARD

HOW TO ENABLE ON WINDOWS 7

Launch control Panel

 

The Control Panel will launch

 

In the upper right type “keyboard” to search for the keyboard-related control panel items

 

Under Region and Language click change keyboards or other input methods

 

 

The Region and Language dialog launches.

Click change keyboards.

 

The Text Services and Input Languages dialog will launch

Click Add

The Add Input Language dialog launches

Find the node that says “Polish (Poland)” and click on the [+] to expand the node

Expand the Keyboard node

Check the “Polish (Programmers)” item

 

Click OK

 

Back at the Text Services and Input Languages dialog, click the drop down for the Default Input Language

Select the polish keyboard you added

 

Click OK

 

Click OK

 

Close the Control Panel

 

 

Now test it out. Launch Notepad and start typing

WORD DOCUMENT WITH SHORTCUT KEYS

Unlike German, for which when using a US Keyboard Microsoft Word has out-of-the-box keyboard shortcuts to help you type German characters (for example ë and ß), this doesn’t isn’t immediately possible with a default document in Microsoft Word 2007. One character (Ó) is available but the rest are not.

Fortunately, by using the Insert Symbol feature you can also assign your own keyboard shortcuts. So, for those who are starting to learn this language I’ve made a sample doc available on my SkyDrive, that comes pre-built with the shortcuts.  The diagram below (also present in the doc) in the doc shows how to generate the characters.

HOW TO USE

Just download and open the file at the link below.