Typing Polish Accented Characters on a US Keyboard
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
