Sharing Resources/Irish Keyboard

Kathleen has emailed me for all of us to share our links and information. I want this information to be privy to anyone learning Irish so I will put it in this blog.

Kathleen wrote:

Seo na seoltaí gach duine sa ghrúpa. Here (are) the addresses (of) every person in the group.

I love how Kathleen writes both in Irish and English to get us used to how it looks.

My email response:

Thank you Kathleen!

Firstly everyone, it's been such a great opportunity to set up this group! I know Kathleen and I are delighted this has come to fruition as I'm sure you are as well!

Seán won't be joining us unless he is in town. He lives in Sacramento and will keep in touch via email. I will be sending him sound files of both my own voice (once I get my speakers fixed) and the files I get from Forvo. I welcome everyone to make sound files for him so he can get to know all of our accents as well as our progressive sound of how we say words.

Does everyone know you can add the Irish keyboard for faster typing of fadas? It takes a little while to get used to, however if we're going to be writing each other authentic Irish emails it would be good for us to use fadas as neccessary for Irish.

If you go to Control Panel/Reginal and Language Options then click the Languages tab, there will be an option to add the Irish keyboard under the details of text services and input languages box. You can then add Irish from there.

The alternative, and easier method is to choose Irish under the default Languages tab and click apply (You can see if you did this correctly by looking at the time and date, it will say it in Irish). It will then add ink corrections as well as the Irish keyboard by default. Then just change it back to English and the ink correction and keyboard for Irish will appear in your options under theLanguages/details.

All you have to do is click the left-Alt and Shift keys (if you kept the defaults) to change between the Irish keyboard and the English one.

Layout of Irish Keyboard

Please note this is for the Windows keyboard and not the Mac.

When the Irish keyboard is selected you can test it by Shift-2. Holding Shift and the 2 key will produce the symbol " or parenthesis symbol.

To then produce the fada, or acute letters, hold the Right-Alt and then press the vowel acute you are looking for: á é í ó ú.

If anyone needs further help with this feature I'll be glad to walk you through it. Just give me a call!

Happy Irish everyone!

Marlene