Archive
Web-based Greek to Roman characters transliteration using Greeklish
http://speech.ilsp.gr/greeklish/, 255 characters max. Or 5000 max at http://services.innoetics.com/greeklish/:
Keyboarding game and Typing tutor for ESL students unfamiliar with Roman letters keyboards
- For ESL learners unfamiliar with Roman letters keyboards, the LRC features only a few keyboards with non-Roman character overlays, and otherwise software transliterators integrated into Windows that, while allowing typing in L1 for dictionary lookup and note taking, still require familiarity with the Roman letters keyboards. To help ESL learners getting started, here are a 2 websites I found:
- A typing tutor:
- pros: pedagogically sound: English words are given as cues, and an on screen keyboard that can be operated from the hardware keyboard, but gives hints when needed by highlighting the next letter on the keyboard after a waiting period
- cons: a bit drab.
- An arcade-like keyboarding game (Missile command/Tetris):
- cons:
- bit too much sound,
- not advertisement free
- letters only, not practice of English words
- pros:
- autostarts and thus can be directly launched for students from the teacher station as a divertissement during slow times in the LRC ,
- reasonably entertaining,
- Levels that start slow, but adaptive.
- cons:
Bab.la.com: Arabic–English Online Dictionary
Bab.la features: easy lookup (1,2,3), and for each lemma: grammar information (4), synonyms (5, with lookup (6)), usage samples (7), pronunciation help (8: audio, but not IPA), reverse lookup (9).
And an example for the reverse lookup: 
.
In short, this is a real dictionary, unlike Google Translate, which is amazing in itself, but often misused by language learners. Unlike Google Translate, Bab.la helps with lookup by Arabic letter, but does not come with a phonetic transliteration to make it usable with a Roman letters keyboard. Fortunately, the LRC features to phonetic transliterators integrated into Windows: MS-Maren and Google Arabic Input.
New keyboard shortcuts for diacritics on LRC Teacher PC
- The US international keyboard layout that has come with MS-Windows for many years (though – except in the LRC – not set as default, you need to enable it in the control panel) greatly facilitates typing of characters for most languages that use Roman script with common diacritical marks, but does not cover Pinyin and similar diacritical marks.
- Carly from Carleton, as avid a language teacher as a technologist, had the great idea to extend Microsoft’s US-international keyboard so as to include all the Pinyin tone marks (and other accents useful for linguists). Here is the upshot, extracted from her instructions, but excluding what (either shortcut or (use of common accents within Pinyin is now covered also below) purpose) has not changed from the shortcuts of the non-extended US-international keyboard that used to be the default in the LRC:
-
What you want Which keys you press (before comma is “dead” key = no result until after next key) Example acute accent, pinyin 2nd tone
‘(=apostrophe), vowel
á é í ó ú
grave accent, pinyin 4th tone
`(=grave), vowel
à è ì ò ù
macron accent, pinyin 1st tone
hyphen, vowel
ā ē ī ō ū
pinyin 3rd tone
%(=shift+5), vowel
e.g. ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ
ü with pinyin tones
Accent, double-quote
e.g. ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ
letter with dot below
; (=shift+period), letter
e.g.
letter with double acute
: (=shift+;) , o or u
ő, ű, Ő, Ű
- We are offering the extended US-international keyboard this as an optional keyboard on the teacher and student PCs with Windows 7.
- To select the new keyboard layout, use the language toolbar, click on 2nd option:
- To explore the new keyboard layout use the Windows On-screen keyboard which will let you peek ahead after your pressed a dead key.
- To bypass a special dead key (= get the normal behavior of the key), press SPACE after it.
Imran’s Phonetic Keyboard for Arabic
Learners of Arabic who type in Arabic on a Western Keyboard prefer a keyboard layout closer to the phonetic of the US keyboard than the Arabic keyboard layouts that MS provides (but try also phonetically transcribing IME like Google Arabic Input or Microsoft Maren – provided the pedagogy of your writing assignment permits that! Also note the LRC has 1 hardware keyboard with overlay keys for Arabic). Here is what your keyboard installation looks like in intl.cpl: 
The LRC writing input methods (“keyboards”) are not configured right
- In intl.cpl, we do not want keyboards installed for western and central-European (= characters a-z, merely altered by diacritics) languages, including US. We type these languages, including US-English, with the us-international keyboard extended 2.1, which has to be set as default, and that US-English extended 2.1gets checked as the keyboard for all western languages ("show more"). The regular US keyboard gets removed/made invisible to the user, and with any reasonably recent version of MS Sysprep tools, that is no problem anymore.
- For non-Western languages, the built-in windows keyboards should be "checked", and also the alternate input that we had to download and install methods need to be "checked" under their languages: MS Maren, Google input methods nee to be enabled (checked): e.g. Farsi is not enabled (checked).
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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